Why taking Greenland won’t break NATO

We’ve been through a lot together, Greenland and America.

First there were the Nazis, who infiltrated weather teams on Greenland during World War II to radio updates to the Wehrmacht. We sent the Coast Guard to serve as the Greenland Patrol, and they held the line. The Germans, caught between advancing western allies and the Red Army, were unable to break out beyond Greenland and threaten Labrador, Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence as many feared they would.

After the war ended, a new nemesis arose. Our old war-time partner, Joseph Stalin, turned his victorious forces of Eastern Europe’s liberation from the Nazis into an army of occupation that quickly subjugated half the continent, snuffing out the embers of democracy for nearly half a century to come.

We quickly pivoted from postwar euphoria and demobilization to planning for a long, cold war. It was bad enough that from 1945 to 1948, Eastern Europe fell under Stalin’s thumb. But then in 1949, he split the atom and the USSR thereby emerged as the world’s second nuclear power. With his large standing army smothering half of Europe, and his potent arsenal of air and sea power extending his ambitions overseas, we had to scramble.

And scramble we did. First, in 1949, we formed NATO with a dozen of our European friends and allies, followed by Greece and Turkey in 1952, West Germany in 1955 and Spain in 1982. And also in 1949, Newfoundland and Labrador — until then British — joined Canada, bringing their defense and security under control of our next door neighbor and ally in Ottawa.

Two years later, we and the Danes jointly agreed that America would extend our wartime defense of Greenland through the Cold War, with our bilateral defense treaty providing access to the vast and lightly populated territory. At the same time, we bore most of the cost of the island’s defense, to Denmark’s great relief. President Truman offered to buy Greenland outright, but the Danes turned down our $100 million offer.

The idea of us defending Danish sovereignty over such a large chunk of North America, at our cost, struck many as a bad deal. But we kept at it.

Between 1954 and 1957, we completed the construction of the world’s most audacious construction project, the DEW Line (short for Distant Early Warning Line). It stretched from Alaska across Canada and Greenland and incorporated an air base at Thule, now the Pituffik Space Base. At one point, we built up to 17 military installations with a total manpower of 6,000 troops — far more than today’s 150-200 at Pituffik (the sole remaining U.S. base on the island).

Back then, we feared an armada of Soviet bombers laden with A-bombs barreling over the horizon, dodging our anti-aircraft batteries and dropping their deadly payloads on American cities. We all needed to be ready to duck and roll.

But by the late 1950s, ICBMs emerged – and with these deadly ballistic missiles, a more insidious and (for a long time) indefensible threat. In little more than 20 minutes, nuclear hell would fall on us from the heavens. Slow, lumbering bombers were no longer needed. Nor were our efforts to counter them, as the deadly intercontinental missile entered the nuclear arsenals of America and the Soviet Union.

Greenland became less essential to our survival, which came to depend more and more on space-based surveillance and, in time, ballistic missile defense systems (of the sort we have in Alaska). Our presence in Greenland declined, though our bilateral defense treaty with the Danes remained in effect. It was updated in 2004 to catch up to more modern, less colonial times, with the (then) Home-Rule government in Nuuk joining the treaty – and in so doing, gaining a voice in the future defense of their island.

Growing Autonomy

In 2009, more robust self-rule would strengthen Greenland’s autonomy, with an eye to eventual independence. But somewhere along the amicable journey toward a more independent Greenland actively involved in its own defense and security, a warming world with its increasingly accessible Arctic resources and declining sea ice caught the attention of nearly all world powers. At the same time, Russia resurged as a military power, and China rose as an economic superpower with an increasingly potent and global military reach. In no time at all, the Arctic was in play.

As Russia turned its tanks on Ukraine in a bid to restore its imperial past, NATO expanded across the once neutral Nordic region, nearly to the gates of Saint Petersburg (as it must have seemed to Russians). And soon, the future of Greenland itself came into play once more. But not from China or Russia, as the White House now contends in its effort to sell its vision for Greenland’s future under the star spangled banner. But rather from America itself.

When Trump’s Big Idea first arose in 2019, people laughed it off as preposterous. But with its successful overnight snatch-and-grab of Venezuela’s ruling family without a single lost American life (or aircraft), the White House was emboldened.

Untapped Mineral Wealth

If we can grab Venezuela’s oil (the world’s largest known reserves) at so low a cost, why not Greenland too, with its bountiful untapped mineral wealth? And so now Greenland has transformed from beneficiary to target of American military power. Will, as many fear, the NATO alliance start buckle under this strain?

While the alliance is distracted by this internal strife, some fear that the Russians might make a grab for Svalbard, or the Baltic statelets, where Moscow’s ties are long and deep (and where their sovereign ambitions are perhaps even more convincing than America’s for Greenland).

I wonder if Russia might also be tempted to grab Hokkaido, and continue the war that Stalin began in 1945 when he invaded the then-Japanese Kuril Islands. Come to think of it, now might be a pretty opportune time for Beijing to seize Taiwan – so all at once, a new world order can emerge where regional hegemony once again reigns supreme.

But I’m not worried about NATO’s survival or alliance cohesion. In 1951, when America entered into its bilateral defense treaty with Denmark to secure Greenland, NATO was at its zenith of unity and cohesion, and was at the time still quite small. A year later, NATO expanded to include Greece and Turkey, which would in 1974 go to war against one another, on the island of Cyprus.

In 1966, NATO survived the exit of a key founding member, France, and had since the 1954 to 1962 Algerian War excluded the contested French colonial territory from its collective defense commitments. Not defending NATO member states’ remote colonial territories was thus established as a norm for the alliance, not an exception – one that is newly relevant once again.

With the subsequent expansions of NATO in the years since the Cold War ended, the alliance has become ever more fractious and diverse. Despite that the alliance has not only endured, but become stronger.

Denmark says if President Trump annexes Greenland by force, it will mean the end of NATO. Many European allies agree. But this is not a foregone conclusion. NATO has overcome such internal dissension before.

When Iceland and Britain fought over disputed cod fisheries from 1958 to 1976, the dispute was over an expanding maritime frontier as the Law of the Sea expanded territorial waters (to the frustration of global fishing fleets long accustomed to fishing in what were now somebody else’s territorial waters).

When Greece and Turkey came to blows, it was over a dispute on Cyprus, an island just beyond NATO’s borders. And when France exited NATO, the alliance quickly modified its commitments to defend formerly French colonial territories in Africa.

Now, as America turns its hunger for territorial expansion to Greenland, it is explicitly challenging Denmark’s right to colonize this vast North American island that America has been defending since World War II. As Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, told Jake Tapper recently on CNN: “There’s no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you’re asking of a military operation. Nobody’s gonna fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”

The dispute over Greenland is ultimately a North American issue. Its logic is rooted firmly in the Monroe Doctrine, which has been guiding American policy off and on since 1823. It’s more like the dispute between Iceland and Britain over the High North Atlantic cod fishery, or between Greece and Turkey over the future of Cyprus, another island nation contested by larger powers, which NATO easily weathered.

Whether America annexes Greenland by force or not remains a question on everybody’s minds right now. But we need not worry about NATO or its ability to weather this new storm. It’s been through such storms before, and has always come out the other side intact — or even stronger.

Surreal Situation

Yes, it is surreal that the alliance’s leader is challenging the sovereignty of a small member state. But America’s challenge is not to Denmark’s traditional homeland in northern Europe; it is to its colonial claims in North America, a claim America has every right the question.

When American polar explorer Robert Peary made North Greenland his stomping grounds at the end of the 19th century, it became known as Pearyland. He fully expected Pearyland to soon become an American colony — as did Denmark. Only when the U.S. passed on this opportunity, tired of the colonial game (as a former colony that itself had famously thrown off its master), did Denmark pursue its own claim.

In the years since, America has second-guessed its initial disinterest in this largest of islands time and again. And under the presidency of Donald Trump, extending American sovereignty over Greenland has become national policy. Now, it may be ready to make its move.

Denmark and Greenland understand this, and while they deeply oppose it, it need not end their alliance with America. Compensation will be offered, fences will be mended, and long-standing partnerships will endure.

And NATO, I am confident, will live happily ever after – as it has before. There’s really no reason to fear otherwise.

Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Arctic Today.

Barry Scott Zellen is a Research Scholar in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut and a Senior Fellow (Arctic Security) at the Institute of the North. He is the author of “Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation in a Contested World.”