Greenland deal’s real test comes after the signing, former US Arctic official says
The security agreement the United States, Denmark and Greenland signed in New York this week may look like a resolution of the long-running standoff over the island. But its durability will be decided in the Danish and Greenlandic parliaments, and its investment rules may outpace Greenland’s ability to enforce them, according to a former senior U.S. diplomat.
In an analysis published Thursday by the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), Sharon Hudson-Dean, who served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Northern Europe, NATO and Arctic security in 2024 and 2025, urged skepticism about whether the deal settles the matter for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term.
Trump, Greenland Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen signed the agreement on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 22, four days after Trump announced it on social media. The deal has no expiration date and blocks non-NATO countries from establishing bases on the island without the parties’ agreement. It would remain in force even if Greenland becomes independent, and it tightens screening of investment from countries outside NATO and the European Union, while reaffirming Danish and Greenlandic sovereignty. At the ceremony, Frederiksen described it as a bigger and better successor to the 1951 defense agreement, one that could last forever.
Hudson-Dean notes that Trump has for seven years treated ownership as the path to controlling Greenland, and that with voters unhappy over prices and the Nov. 3 midterm elections approaching, an unambiguous win would be politically useful to him.
On defense, she writes, the headline provisions regarding permanent U.S. basing rights, expanded military access and the ban on non-NATO bases, break little new ground. They build on the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement and a 2020 framework agreement among the three governments, and in effect move the island back toward the heightened alert posture of the late Cold War. At its peak, the U.S. operated 17 installations in Greenland with more than 10,000 personnel. Today its presence is limited to Pituffik Space Base, where roughly 200 U.S. military personnel work alongside Danish and Greenlandic contractors.
The investment provisions are where Hudson-Dean says the agreement deserves closer scrutiny. The deal limits sensitive investment in Greenland to investors from the U.S. and its NATO and EU allies, a blanket exclusion rather than case-by-case review, and a step beyond Greenland’s own investment screening bill, which has been before its parliament, Inatsisartut, for close to a year.
“Strictness on paper is not the same as capacity in practice,” Hudson-Dean writes.
Greenland has no screening authority and no experience vetting complex ownership structures or beneficial-interest disclosures, she notes, and its small civil service faces real constraints. The domestic bill would not have covered U.S. military-adjacent activity in any case, since that falls under Danish jurisdiction. Whether Greenland builds an institution capable of spotting disguised political interests, she argues, will determine whether the deal has economic substance.
Hudson-Dean traces the investment question back to China’s push into Greenland between 2014 and 2018, which included bids to build three airports and a stake in the Kvanefjeld rare-earth project. Those efforts were blocked, largely at Washington’s urging, relayed through Copenhagen. Greenland’s openness to foreign capital at the time stemmed from its 2009 move to self-rule and a drive to reduce dependence on Denmark’s annual block grant ahead of eventual independence.
She also points to a 2014 Pentagon decision to move the Thule Air Base maintenance contract from its longtime Greenlandic-Danish operator to a U.S. company, costing Greenland tax revenue and jobs. The contract did not revert to a majority Greenlandic-Danish contractor until 2022. That decision did not cause Greenland’s interest in Chinese money, Hudson-Dean writes, but it removed a dependable income stream just as Nuuk was looking for alternatives, meaning Washington helped create the opening it later worked to close. The new agreement obliges the U.S. to award contracts to Greenlandic sources wherever possible.
The deal still requires approval in both the Danish Folketing and Inatsisartut, a process Hudson-Dean notes has historically been slow: the 2023 U.S.-Denmark Defense Cooperation Agreement took two years to clear the Danish parliament. Public sentiment toward Washington is also at a low. A survey earlier this year found that 60% of Danes consider the U.S. an adversary, and a separate poll showed 76% of Greenlanders do not want to be part of the United States.
With the midterms also likely to give Democrats more leverage in Congress, Hudson-Dean concludes that ratification, not this week’s signing ceremony, is where the agreement’s staying power will be decided.
