The ‘Donroe Doctrine’ reaches the Arctic

By Charlie Edwards, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 12 January 2026

Ever since Republicans introduced the Make Greenland Great Again Act in January 2025, authorising the president of the United States to open talks with Denmark on acquiring Greenland, Donald Trump has kept up the pressure on Copenhagen, even suggesting he might take the island by force. But Washington cannot override Greenlandic consent or Danish sovereignty without incurring lasting strategic costs.

Following the operation that captured Venezuela’s then-president, Nicolás Maduro, on 3 January 2026, United States President Donald Trump has intensified pressure on Denmark over Greenland. Against this backdrop, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland’s Minister for Statehood and Foreign Affairs, Vivian Motzfeldt, travel to Washington this week to meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for trilateral talks on the island’s future. The meeting comes as the Trump administration elevates hemispheric defence, the organising principle underpinning the US 2025 National Security Strategy, to focus on the Western Hemisphere, even as the Arctic case is more being built through political messaging than underpinned by strategy.

A strategic obsession

While the talk of ‘taking’ Greenland is exceptional, US administrations have treated the island as strategically essential for basing, early warning and control of the northern approaches for decades. Under current treaty arrangements, nothing prevents the US from increasing its military presence in Greenland. Some strategic choices regarding Greenland have already been made, with Washington prioritising defensive early-warning assets at Pituffik Space Base over sustained forward engagement in the wider Arctic.

It has also been mooted that Pituffik will be modernised to support the Golden Dome project, a proposed missile-defence architecture with space-based capabilities. So the administration’s current approach is all the more confusing and counterproductive – a further example of which was Vice President J.D. Vance’s visit to Pituffik in early 2025, which became a public relations failure and deepened suspicion in Greenland that Washington is treating the island as an object, not a partner.

From the moment Trump outlined his intention in 2019 to buy Greenland, his transactional approach to the island has raised profound concerns in Copenhagen and Nuuk regarding the long-term reliability of its most critical partner. NATO member states have also reacted with increasing alarm. Greenland sits at the intersection of two core alliance interests: the defence of the North Atlantic and the integrity of member-state territory.

It also risks producing the opposite of what Washington claims to want; albeit, Trump has said the US will do it ‘the easy way’ or ‘the hard way’. Either way, fear of US predation is likely to shift Greenland closer to Denmark in the near term and make the politics of Greenlandic independence more cautious, not less. Moreover, at the very moment NATO is trying to project unity over Ukraine and deterrence in the High North, Trump has created another credibility problem for the Alliance.

The view from Nuuk

As receding Arctic ice unlocks terrain previously inaccessible to human exploitation, Greenland has evolved from a peripheral interest into a central strategic concern. This has forced its leaders to reconcile national self-determination with the competing security demands of larger powers. The cornerstone of this effort is the ‘Nothing about us without us’ strategy, which serves as a guiding principle to ensure Greenland is an equal partner in any discussion concerning its territory, resources or security.

The primary barrier to full sovereignty remains economic dependency. Greenland relies on an annual block grant from Denmark of approximately €600 million. This grant funds roughly half of its public expenditure and 20% of its GDP, supporting essential services like healthcare and education. With the country’s primary export, the fishing industry, facing biological limits and declining quotas, the current revenue model is proving insufficient to bridge this gap.

To replace this grant and make independence viable, the Greenlandic government has looked to its untapped mineral wealth, critical for the green transition and advanced military technologies, found in world-class deposits such as Tanbreez and Kvanefjeld. Greenland has become the site of geo-economic interest for the US and the European Union as they seek to diversify supply chains away from Chinese dominance. This has been exacerbated by the departure of Chinese companies from Canada and Greenland in recent years, which will likely provide more opportunities for the West to take control of mineral resources.

Nuuk’s strategic westward pivot towards its North American neighbours, the US and Canada, has also come at the expense of the EU – a much lower priority for Greenland. By seeking direct shipping and flight routes to the American continent, Nuuk aims to dismantle colonial-era trade structures that have long centred on Copenhagen.

Greenland intends to institutionalise this through a proposed Arctic North American Forum, designed to strengthen regional cooperation and give Nuuk a forum that does not run through Denmark. Yet Trump’s coercive rhetoric is likely to complicate that westward strategy, and it strengthens the case in Nuuk for widening ties with the EU and Nordic partners to hedge its political and economic risks.

A key part of Nuuk’s strategy has been to use the prospect of Chinese infrastructure investment as leverage, pressuring Western partners to provide alternative funding for projects. This was most notably demonstrated in 2018 when Chinese bids to construct international airports in Greenland compelled the Danish government to intervene and provide its own financing package. This investment is a critical precursor to the mining strategy.

The extraction industry requires logistical stability that the current, limited infrastructure cannot support, whereas new airports and a planned US$468m subsea telecommunications cable support vital infrastructure while also meeting security needs and backup communications.

At present, Washington’s approach sees Greenland as a strategic commodity to be bargained for with Copenhagen. But a deal predicated on Greenlandic consent, meaningful consultation, and beneficial investment is more likely to bolster Western security while reinforcing Nuuk’s strategy. Any other approach is almost certain to harden domestic resistance, strain Danish-US ties, and ultimately put the practical business of operating in the Arctic on ice.

Author

Charlie Edwards: Senior Fellow for Strategy & National Security; Head of Analytics, Six Analytic.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of CEMAS editorial team.