‍Denne artikel blev oprindeligt publiceret af China Global Television Network (CGTN). De synspunkter, der kommer til udtryk, er forfatterens egne og afspejler ikke nødvendigvis RIKOs holdninger som institution. / This article was originally published by China Global Television Network (CGTN). The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of RIKO as an institution.

There is one objective the US cannot secure in Greenland under the current status quo, and that is to keep out the EU’s newly established defence cooperation, called Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO).

This helps explain why the US seeks full control of Greenland. Other explanations, such as Trump’s personal political ambitions, or access to natural resources, can also play a role, but function largely as political noise that obscures the real underlying interests.

This is a systemic and long-term US policy that predates the Trump administration. It is rooted in US’s quest to maintain global dominance in the 21st century, where the EU, alongside China and Russia, has long been viewed as a strategic competitor.

As long as European states depend on US security structures through NATO and US intelligence services, European sovereignty remains limited. PESCO, established in 2017, was designed to alter this dependency. As it expands, it has the potential to develop into a major EU defence and intelligence structure, reducing US influence over European policymaking, and can over time render NATO redundant.

From this perspective, the US focus on annexing Greenland appears central to its long-term strategic interests, and connects decades of efforts to prevent Eurasian integration. This includes armed conflicts in Central and West Asia to US-led NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, and control over the Arctic area.

Greenland During the Cold War

In 1941, the US established a military presence in Greenland to prevent German control. After the war, Denmark rejected a US offer to purchase Greenland. Instead, a defence agreement was signed in 1951, granting Washington effective control over Greenland’s strategic position in the Arctic and the North Atlantic, while formal sovereignty remained with Denmark.

Because the Arctic provided the shortest routes between North America and the Soviet Union, Greenland became a core component of US nuclear strategy, early-warning systems, and maritime control during the Cold War.

The US developed an extensive network of military facilities across Greenland, including Thule Air Base in the north (now Pituffik Space Base), which served as a central hub for early-warning radar, missile defence, and strategic bomber operations.

Greenland was also critical to naval and submarine warfare. Its surrounding waters formed part of the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, a key chokepoint for submarine movements between the Arctic and the North Atlantic. Monitoring this corridor was essential for detecting and tracking Soviet ballistic-missile submarines.

Greenland also hosted space surveillance, communications, and command-and-control infrastructure. Its isolation allowed sensitive military systems to operate with minimal political or civilian oversight, reinforcing its status as a closed US strategic zone.

The deal with Denmark was good for the US. In practice, there were few limits to what the US could do in Greenland, including the deployment of nuclear weapons, while Denmark covered substantial costs related to infrastructure and the cleanup of abandoned or failed American military projects. No other major military powers could enter Greenland.

Post-Cold War and US Division of Eurasia

After the Cold War, Greenland’s strategic importance declined, as no major powers challenged US global dominance. Consequently, US operations in Greenland were significantly reduced.

Instead, the US expanded NATO and its intelligence reach into Eastern Europe. Cognitive warfare programmes, often framed around human rights and democracy promotion, proved highly effective in shaping European public opinion. This contributed to broad political, academic, and media support for US-led military interventions, even when these violated international law, such as in Kosovo (1999), Iraq (2003), Syria (2014), Iran (2025), and Venezuela (2026).

Most European politicians, academics, and journalists presented and analysed these wars as isolated cases, rather than as elements of a broader US strategy to preserve global dominance. This can be seen as representing a major analytical failure, as many senior US policymakers in the 1990s explicitly argued that maintaining US dominance in the 21st century required a divided Eurasia.

This logic is reflected in Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy (1994), where he argues that American security depends on preventing any single power from dominating Eurasia, as such an outcome would reduce the US to “a peripheral power.”

More explicitly, Zbigniew Brzezinski argues in The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997) that US Eurasian policy follows a classical strategy of “divide and rule.” He stresses that the United States must prevent major Eurasian powers from forming a strategic community capable of challenging American influence. Referring to earlier imperial strategies, he formulates three core principles: “to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributary states compliant and protected, and to prevent the barbarians from uniting.”

From this perspective, US wars and interventions since the 1990s appear rational within a long-term strategic framework, and it is in this context that Greenland should be analysed.

The Establishment of PESCO  

In the 1990s, concern grew in Europe over US military and economic dominance, particularly in larger states such as France and Germany. This revived the idea of European defence cooperation outside NATO’s shadow and US control.

The United Kingdom, however, acted in line with US interests and opposed EU defence initiatives from within. This echoed the view of former French President Charles de Gaulle, who described the UK as “a satellite of the United States” and warned that it would serve as “the Trojan horse of the Americans” in the EU.

Nevertheless, the Lisbon Treaty established the framework for PESCO in 2009. The UK continued to oppose its implementation, leaving PESCO dormant and often described by EU policymakers as a “sleeping beauty.” This changed with the Brexit referendum in June 2016.

Although the UK remained a formal EU member until January 2020, its political influence on defence-related proceedings declined. In December 2017, EU defence ministers formally launched PESCO, initiating 17 joint projects ranging from military mobility to a European Medical Command.

PESCO was presented as complementary to NATO, but it was widely viewed by US policymakers as a challenge to NATO and broader US strategic interests. Senior US officials warned that EU defence initiatives could duplicate NATO structures, divert defence resources, and restrict access for US defence companies.

Denmark had held a special reservation on EU defence cooperation since the 1992 Edinburgh Agreement. Once this reservation became the sole barrier to PESCO’s access to Greenland, the US floated a proposal to purchase Greenland in August 2019. Denmark rejected the proposal. The US instead opened a consulate in Greenland in June 2020 and began identifying individuals aligned with US interests, particularly among those advocating full secession from Denmark.

The war in Ukraine and the broader EU security situation led to a referendum in Denmark on the EU defence reservation. Denmark joined PESCO in 2022, and Greenland, which had been a closed US strategic zone for more than 70 years, can be seen as opened to PESCO.

In this context, PESCO’s access to Greenland can weaken US control over the Arctic-Atlantic region, an area of increasing importance for shipping routes, digital infrastructure, and access between Europe and Asia as climate change makes these routes more viable.

PESCO has expanded relatively rapidly over 10 years, from 17 joint projects to more than 70 joint projects, covering areas such as, military mobility, surveillance, command and control, cyber capabilities, and space-based systems. Several of these projects are directly relevant to the Arctic region, most notably the Arctic Command and Control Effector and Sensor System (ACCESS), indicating a dedicated focus on developing capabilities relevant to the Arctic theatre.

As the EU becomes less dependent on US security structures, it gains greater freedom to pursue independent policies that enable deeper cooperation and economic integration across Eurasia.

In this context, full US control over Greenland may be even more important than during the Cold War. At that time, the USSR was the single strategic rival capable of constraining USs dominance. In the near future there are three, namely the EU, China, and Russia.

This creates a different situation where the US can play Eurasian powers against each other, to prevent Eurasian integration. From this perspective, the overarching US strategy articulated by Kissinger and Brzezinski in the 1990s appears more relevant than ever.

US Possible Strategies to annex Greenland

If time and speed are critical, the US may seek to take Greenland by military force. This would constitute a de facto occupation of Greenland that could alter NATO’s structure and signal that Washington considers its long-standing strategy of keeping European security dependent on NATO and US intelligence outdated. Acting early against PESCO can therefore be seen as a policy choice, rather than waiting until PESCO becomes stronger.

This could accelerate the development of PESCO and EU security autonomy, rapidly weakening US influence over the EU and pushing it toward deeper Eurasian integration. In response, the US would likely pursue strategies aimed at intensifying divisions and conflicts across the theatre to prevent Eurasian integration.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative could become a primary target. The US could employ and accelerate a range of strategies, from containment and destabilisation to selective sanctions, control over maritime chokepoints, economic warfare, and the cultivation of proxy conflicts along Eurasia’s political and geographic fault lines.

If time is less critical, and the US seeks to preserve NATO’s structure as long as possible, while still achieving its objectives in Greenland, it may pursue a gradual annexation strategy over five to ten years.

This can involve accelerating the cultivation of pro-American actors in Greenland, supporting secessionist movements, and using media campaigns to frame Denmark as a colonial oppressor with a history of human rights violations and democratic suppression in Greenland.

Once public opinion shifts decisively toward independence, the US would support a referendum to remove Greenland from the Danish realm, followed by swift recognition, long-term defence agreements, and development loans.

Under such an arrangement, Greenland could assume a status similar to the US Virgin Islands, which is an unincorporated US territory with local self-government but no sovereignty, or Iceland, which is formally sovereign but embedded in a US security dependency. Both are former Danish territories.

Incorporating Greenland as a US state would require granting Greenlandic citizens representation in the US political system, including seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives. This would limit Washington’s ability to treat Greenland primarily as a strategic asset rather than a political constituency.

Under a slower strategy, the US could also use the implicit or explicit threat of military action, and of fracturing NATO, as leverage in negotiations over alternative international arrangements aimed at keeping Eurasia politically and strategically divided. The US has multiple options. Threats of military annexation can be calibrated, and withdrawn when negotiations favour US interests, and reapplied when leverage is needed.

Regardless of the strategy pursued, US annexation of Greenland would undermine national sovereignty and violate the UN Charter. However, this is not be fundamentally different from decades of US actions in the Global South, where sovereignty repeatedly has been subordinated to US strategic interests through political manipulation, civil destabilisation, cognitive and economic warfare, covert operations, and direct military intervention.

European leaders may condemn a US violation of international law in Greenland while forgetting their own participation in, or support for, illegal US-led interventions elsewhere. In this sense, US actions in Greenland can be seen as a continuation of a world system where military and economic power, rather than international law, ultimately determines outcomes. At the same time, this moment may open space for European leaders to pursue a more just system of global governance.

‍