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TRUMP’S GREENLAND THREATS AND THE PLUNDER OF THE ARCTIC  
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Adam Federman
January 14, 2026
The New Republic
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_ The far north has long been a region of exceptional international
cooperation. It has been replaced by an emerging era of competition
over resources-rare earth metals and control of shipping lanes.
Trump’s designs on Greenland come at such a time. _

Donald Trump Jr.’s plane landed in Nuuk, Greenland, in January
2025, weeks after President Trump suggested that Washington annex the
autonomous Danish territory., Photo: Emil Stach/Ritzau Scanpix/Agence
France-Presse (AFP) // The New Republic

 

Not so long ago, the Arctic—a remote and thinly populated region
stretching from Alaska to Siberia—seemed immune to the kind of
conflicts that beset so many other parts of the world. Scholars even
had a phrase for it: Arctic exceptionalism. Territorial disputes were
virtually nonexistent. Until recently, Finland and Sweden still served
as buffers between an expanding NATO alliance and the Russian
federation, which takes up more than half of the Arctic coastline.
Over the last couple of decades, the member states of the Arctic
Council reached international agreements on polar bear conservation,
commercial fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean, and the rights of
Indigenous peoples. The Norwegian phrase “High North, low
tension,” came to serve as a kind of mantra and point of pride. 

But that cooperative spirit is now a thing of the past. It has been
replaced by an emerging era of competition over resources,
particularly rare earth metals and control of shipping lanes,
increasingly accessible as sea ice melts, and the potential for
outright conflict as the United States, Russia, and China all seek to
project power in the region. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022
has fractured the Arctic Council and stripped it of much of the
legitimacy and influence it once had. Since then, diplomatic relations
between Russia and the so-called Arctic 7—Canada, Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S.—have deteriorated badly.
Russia has officially banned all data sharing with its Western
counterparts, and indefinitely suspended scientific collaboration with
the U.S. and the EU. Meanwhile, China has declared itself a
“near-Arctic state” and is leveraging Russia’s relative
isolation on the world stage to advance its own vision of a polar Silk
Road. And the U.S. has become the most openly belligerent actor in the
region amid Donald Trump’s renewed threats
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an autonomous territory that is still part of Denmark.

As Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds argue in _Unfrozen: The Fight for the
Future of the Arctic_ [[link removed]],_
_the_ _sense of shared responsibility that once defined the region has
all but vanished. The focus is now on security and the military
buildup that goes along with it, as well as resource extraction and
territorial expansion, including claims to the lucrative metals
believed to lie at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The effects of
climate change and questions related to Indigenous sovereignty have
largely been placed on the back burner. And even if some sort of
agreement or ceasefire is reached in Ukraine, which at this stage
seems unlikely, it will not as Bennett and Dodds write, “repair the
now hard-wired distrust within the Arctic state community. The damage
has been well and truly done.” 

THE SENSE OF SHARED RESPONSIBILITY THAT ONCE DEFINED THE REGION HAS
ALL BUT VANISHED. THE FOCUS IS NOW ON SECURITY, MILITARY BUILDUP, AND
RESOURCE EXTRACTION.

The plundering of resources in the Arctic is an old story, from furs
and whale oil to metals and fossil fuels, and one that has often been
wrapped in depictions of the region as an empty wasteland (most
famously, perhaps, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens once held up a blank
piece of paper to represent the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s
coastal plain). Its fate today is inextricably tied to the whims of
its two most powerful actors—the U.S. and Russia—whose current
leaders are driven by a kind of nineteenth-century vision of
hemispheric consolidation and expansion. But increasingly they must
also contend with a third actor, a rapidly warming climate, which is,
perversely, opening up new commercial opportunities on land and sea,
even as it threatens to radically upend a way of life and natural
order that has existed for thousands of years.  

Bennett, a geographer at the University of Washington, and Dodds, a
professor of geopolitics at the University of London, have traveled
widely across the Arctic for well over a decade, and the book benefits
from a mix of on-the-ground reporting, much of which first appeared on
Bennett’s blog, Cryopolitics [[link removed]], and an
intimate grasp of the ecological and political changes reshaping the
region.

The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on earth. Sea ice is
disappearing and, according to some projections, the Arctic Ocean
could see its first ice-free summers as soon as 2030. Warming waters
are destabilizing marine ecosystems—Alaska’s snow crab population
was wiped out
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in 2022, likely a result of increasing temperatures—and salmon runs
along the state’s major rivers have crashed
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And as prized species such as pollock and cod migrate northward in
search of colder waters, it is only a matter of time before the
Central Arctic Ocean, currently protected by an international treaty,
is opened to commercial exploitation.

Back on land, permafrost is thawing, raising questions about the
viability of northern settlements—about half of the Arctic’s four
million people live in Russia—and the thousands of miles of oil and
gas infrastructure that stretch across the tundra. Storms, fires, and
landscape-scale ecological transformation threaten the
subsistence-based way of life that continues to sustain northern
communities (some villages in Alaska are in the process of being
relocated
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at enormous cost). Aging pipelines and oil wells are also vulnerable,
posing new risks to the environment and public health.

The changes, however, have also been viewed as a commercial bonanza.
In a 2019 speech in Finland, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described
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the Arctic as a land of “abundance and opportunity,” with vast
mineral stores and “fisheries galore.” Diminishing sea
ice—rather than a cataclysm for local hunters and the species they
depend on and a contributor to rising sea levels—was heralded as
opening up a new golden age of trade and shipping.

Diminishing sea ice—rather than a cataclysm for local hunters and a
contributor to rising sea levels—was heralded as opening up a new
golden age of trade and shipping.

The United States has also continued to expand oil and gas development
on Alaska’s North Slope, and the Trump administration recently
announced
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that it would resume leasing and development in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge, and vastly increase the acreage available in the
National Petroleum Reserve. Russia is forging ahead with massive
development projects along its Arctic coastline (Vostok and Yamal LNG,
to name two) and banking on new shipping routes to send crude oil to
Asia.

Meanwhile, new frontiers are being pursued. In 2024, Norway—a
pioneer in offshore oil and gas development in the far north—became
the first country to approve exploration licenses for deep sea mining
in the Arctic Ocean, though it subsequently imposed a year-long
moratorium after pushback from environmental organizations and other
EU nations. But the race is on. The U.S., Russia, Canada, Norway, and
Denmark (via Greenland) have all made claims, some of which overlap,
to the seabed territory beyond their exclusive economic zones. This
would give these countries exclusive access to the minerals or fossil
fuels at the bottom of the ocean. 

The search for rare earth metals and other highly prized
minerals—copper, zinc, and titanium for example—needed to sustain
our digital lives (and, incidentally, our advanced weaponry) also
extends to land. Greenland, which is believed to possess enormous
quantities of mineral wealth, has been coveted for this very reason,
though very little mining is actually taking place there. In yet
another ominous twist, cold climate locales are seen as an ideal place
to build data centers, which are used to power the internet industrial
complex and consume such vast amounts of energy that they are
susceptible to overheating.

Bennett and Dodds also speculate that the Arctic may be considered
fertile ground for another risky endeavor: geoengineering. Scientists
are already working on ways to deflect solar radiation from reaching
the poles by injecting sulfur into the atmosphere and to preserve
glaciers and sea ice. One experiment, advanced by a Silicon Valley
nonprofit that has since folded, involved dispersing glass beads
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the surface of a frozen lake in northern Alaska in the hope that it
would reflect the sunlight. Ultimately, Bennett and Dodds see
geoengineering as a sign of desperation—not to mention another
colonial misadventure—and one that has the potential to do enormous
damage. “In pursuit of a great refreeze,” the authors conclude,
“capable actors may intervene in ways unimaginable just decades ago,
destabilizing the environmental and international order alike.” 

Trump’s threats toward Greenland present a heavy-handed challenge to
one of the more promising recent developments in Arctic politics: the
assertion of Indigenous sovereignty as a potential counterweight to
the zero-sum scramble for resources driven by the world’s
superpowers. Greenland is more than 80 percent Inuit, and, over the
last couple of decades, has sought to gain greater autonomy from
Denmark, which ruled the island as a colony until 1953. Greenland
manages its own domestic affairs, but relies on a block grant from the
Danes to fund the government. Denmark also has control of foreign
policy and security.

Under this arrangement, Greenland’s government has banned offshore
oil and gas leasing and, in 2021, stymied
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a massive rare-earth metals mine near the southern tip of the island
because of concerns over environmental contamination. Even on matters
of foreign policy, it is now widely assumed that Greenland should have
a seat at the table. As Múte Egede, Greenland’s prime minister from
2021 to 2025, put it in a speech
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in 2022 in Nuuk, “You are welcome to have an opinion about
geopolitics and Greenland, but decisions concerning Greenland must be
made here. Nothing about us—without us.”

Not surprisingly, Trump’s imperial designs on the country have not
been warmly received there. In December 2024, before taking office, he
began musing
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about his desire to acquire Greenland, a strategic landmass that has
been at the center of U.S. policy in the Arctic since World War II.
This proclamation was followed by a semiofficial visit
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Jr., during which YouTube influencers distributed $100 bills
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to random people in the capital, Nuuk. At the State of the Union
address, Trump reiterated his intent to “get” Greenland to make
its people rich and most of all to advance the cause of
“international world security,” whatever that is. In March, JD
Vance, along with his wife, Usha, and then-national security adviser
Mike Waltz, traveled
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to the U.S. military base in far northwestern Greenland. Earlier plans
to attend a dog sled race and visit some of the tourist sites in Nuuk
were abandoned after it became clear that residents were planning to
snub the vice president.

And in the wake of the CIA’s ousting of Venezuelan leader Nicolás
Maduro, Trump, his top aide Stephen Miller, and Vance have all doubled
down on threats to use force to take over Greenland. Denmark’s prime
minister has said any such action would spell the end of NATO, and
Greenland’s leaders have flatly refused to entertain the possibility
of becoming a vassal of the United States. In Trump’s eyes,
according to reporting by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker
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Greenland is a nice chunk of real estate with a lot of minerals and
he’d like to add it to his portfolio.

As Dodds and Bennett make clear, the fight for the future of the
Arctic will be waged not only in Moscow and D.C., but also in Nuuk,
Utqiagvik, Karasjok, and beyond. Greenland may only have a population
of 56,000, but they’ve been waiting 300 years for independence. And
if the U.S. hope was to drive a wedge between Greenland and Denmark,
perhaps accelerating the push for independence, it seems to have
failed. If anything, the two countries have forged closer ties since
Trump started making noise about annexing the island. Which leaves us
facing the very real possibility that Trump, who last Friday in a
meeting in the White House with oil executives to discuss Venezuela
said the U.S. would take Greenland “whether they like it or not,
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will do the unthinkable.

Even if diplomacy prevails, and some sort of trilateral agreement is
reached (Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled
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to meet with his Danish and Greenlandic counterparts this week),
Trump’s scorched-earth approach has already done a great deal of
damage. We need Greenland for national security and “world peace
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Trump has said. In reality, his actions have done more to destabilize
the region than anything Russia or China could have dreamed of.

_[__ADAM FEDERMAN_ [[link removed]]_ is
a reporting fellow with __Type Investigations_
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and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray_
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* Greenland
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* Denmark
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* Europe
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* Donald Trump
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* U.S. foreign policy
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* U.S. military policy
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* Artic
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* rare earth minerals
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* shipping
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* ocean shipping
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* Russia
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* China
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* foreign trade
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* NATO
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