9 January 2026, Geneva

Situation Overview

Greenland has returned to the center of U.S. and allied strategic debate, not due to novelty or opportunism, but because long-standing assumptions about Arctic stability and guaranteed access no longer hold. Public discussion about the United States “acquiring” Greenland has unsettled European allies and obscured the underlying strategic issue.

The core concern is not sovereignty, but whether the United States and its allies can ensure durable, long-term strategic access to Greenland under conditions of renewed great-power competition. Greenland’s geographic position and existing infrastructure remain central to missile warning, space domain awareness, and North Atlantic security. What has changed is the surrounding strategic environment.

Russia is reasserting itself militarily in the Arctic. China is pursuing influence through commercial, research, and infrastructure channels. At the same time, Greenland’s trajectory toward greater autonomy introduces long-term political uncertainty. Together, these dynamics elevate access risk from a background assumption to a live strategic concern.

ISRS Perspective

“The strategic question is not whether the United States can operate in Greenland today, but whether access and denial rights can be guaranteed decades into the future, under far less forgiving conditions.”
— Brigham McCown, Board Member, ISRS

Why Greenland Matters

Greenland’s strategic relevance flows from enduring physical and geographic realities.

Early Warning and Space Security

Facilities at Pituffik Space Base remain integral to missile early warning and space surveillance. Its high-latitude position enables persistent coverage of polar trajectories and space activity that cannot be replicated elsewhere without loss of capability or significant delay.

Arctic and North Atlantic Positioning

Greenland sits astride the Arctic approaches to North America and adjacent to the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) maritime corridor. As Arctic navigation becomes more viable and Russian undersea activity increases, this geography regains operational significance.

Undersea Infrastructure and Seabed Risk

The North Atlantic hosts critical communications cables and emerging seabed infrastructure. Disruption risks, whether accidental or deliberate, are now treated as national security concerns. Greenland’s proximity to these routes places it squarely within this vulnerability envelope.

Natural Resources and Strategic Context

Greenland’s natural resources are often overstated as a strategic driver. While mineral deposits exist, their near-term significance is limited. The primary risk is not extraction, but how resource projects can create long-term political or infrastructure leverage. China already has a limited mining presence in Greenland, underscoring the need for governance and transparency rather than exclusionary rhetoric.

What Has Changed

The United States already enjoys substantial access to Greenland through long-standing agreements with Denmark and cooperative relations with Greenlandic authorities. However, access is inherently political and therefore conditional. Three developments have altered the risk calculus:

1. Great-Power Competition Has Returned
   Russian Arctic militarization and China’s expanding polar ambitions reintroduce denial and disruption risks that were largely dormant after the Cold War.
   
   

2. Greenland’s Autonomy Trajectory Matters
   While current leadership remains cooperative, increased self-governance introduces uncertainty regarding future defense arrangements, investment policy, and infrastructure priorities.
   
   

3. Strategic Leverage Now Arrives Through Civilian Channels
   Ports, airports, telecommunications, research partnerships, and critical mineral projects can create long-term influence without overt military presence.

This is most visible in the critical minerals sector. Greenland’s Tanbreez and Black Angel projects are no longer merely commercial ventures; they are strategic offsets to adversarial monopolies. With recent confirmations of high-grade Gallium and Germanium deposits, minerals subject to recent retaliatory export controls elsewhere, Greenland represents a vital opportunity for Western supply chain resilience. Preventing adversarial "equity-access" in these projects is now as important as traditional military basing.

From a strategic risk perspective, the concern is not imminent loss of access, but gradual erosion of strategic optionality over time.

Sovereignty vs. Access: The Core Strategic Question

Public debate often frames Greenland as a question of territorial acquisition. This misstates the problem. Strategically, Greenland functions as access control for northern transit, sensing, and response pathways, analogous to chokepoint logic applied in the Arctic (this has been referred to as "Panama Canal North").  

The central objective for the United States and its allies is access certainty paired with denial capability, not sovereignty transfer. Strategic planners seek the ability to operate, modernize, and respond rapidly in Greenland while preventing adversaries from establishing footholds that could compromise early warning, maritime awareness, or infrastructure security.

Practical mechanisms include:

• Long-duration defense and basing agreements

• Pre-authorized modernization of sensors and facilities

• Coordinated investment screening and allied financing alternatives

• Clear limits on dual-use infrastructure and sensitive research activity

These approaches preserve sovereignty while addressing access risk directly.

ISRS Perspective: Governance and Risk

“In the Arctic, access is not just a military issue. It is a governance issue, an infrastructure issue, and ultimately a legitimacy issue among allies.”
— Dave Venable, Chairman, ISRS

China, Infrastructure, and Denial of Footholds

Calls to “remove China” from Greenland oversimplify the challenge. The realistic objective is to prevent strategic dependency before it forms.

Risk management should focus on limiting adversarial leverage in:

• Port and airport development

• Telecommunications and data infrastructure

• Research partnerships with dual-use potential

• Resource projects where financing and processing chains create long-term influence
  
  

This requires sustained coordination among Greenlandic authorities, Denmark, the United States, and European partners, paired with credible economic alternatives rather than rhetorical escalation.

Why Coercive Rhetoric Undermines Strategic Objectives

Speculation about coercive acquisition or the use of force is strategically counterproductive. Such rhetoric unsettles allies, complicates Greenlandic domestic politics, and weakens the legitimacy of otherwise reasonable access-security objectives.

From a risk perspective, it transforms a manageable governance challenge into an avoidable political crisis. A cooperative approach anchored in long-term agreements and allied coordination is both more effective and more credible.

Strategic Implications

The Greenland debate highlights several broader lessons relevant beyond the Arctic:

• Access assurance is now a core element of deterrence

• Undersea infrastructure protection is inseparable from national security

The vulnerability of the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) corridor has transitioned from a monitoring challenge to an active defense requirement. Following the hybrid disruptions of Baltic connectors in late 2024 and 2025, the protection of Greenland’s primary subsea telecommunications links, and the emergence of allied initiatives like the UK’s 'Atlantic Bastion' program underscores that seabed security is now a non-negotiable component of North Atlantic stability.

• Strategic geography matters more as competition intensifies

• Alliance legitimacy is a strategic asset, not a constraint
  
  

Greenland is not a test of territorial ambition. It is a test of whether democratic allies can adapt access frameworks to a more contested world without undermining the alliances that sustain security.

Conclusion

Greenland’s renewed strategic relevance does not stem from a sudden shift in geography, but from the erosion of assumptions that once made access seem permanent and uncontested. As competition intensifies in the Arctic and North Atlantic, access assurance can no longer be treated as an inherited condition. It must be actively governed, renewed, and defended through legitimate, cooperative frameworks.

For the United States and its allies, the challenge is not whether Greenland remains formally aligned today, but whether future political, economic, and infrastructure decisions preserve strategic optionality decades from now. Managing that risk requires discipline: separating access from sovereignty, deterrence from coercion, and long-term governance from short-term rhetoric.

Handled correctly, Greenland can remain a pillar of allied early warning, space security, and North Atlantic stability. Mishandled, it risks becoming an unnecessary fault line, one created not by adversaries but by avoidable political missteps. The test is not territorial ambition, but whether democratic allies can secure access, deny hostile footholds, and sustain legitimacy in an increasingly contested Arctic order.