Four ways the US could take Greenland — and what it means for China and Russia

At Greenland’s Pituffik Space Base — still known to many Americans by its old name, Thule — the US runs something far more consequential than an Arctic outpost. It is a forward node in the system that buys Washington minutes in a nuclear crisis: sensors that look over the polar approaches, feeding warning and tracking into North American defence.

Geography does not negotiate. The shortest routes between Russian launch areas and American cities arc across the top of the world, and Greenland sits like a frozen bracket around that corridor. That is Greenland’s strategic truth: an elevated platform for early warning, space tracking and North Atlantic control.

Which is why the recurring US attempts of “acquiring” Greenland matter — even if it never happens. When President Donald Trump talks about getting Greenland, the point is not a single act of annexation. It is a spectrum of legal and strategic arrangements that can be marketed domestically as a win: wider basing rights, bundled investment deals, treaty-level association, or — at the extreme — territorial absorption.

Each scenario changes the same three calculations in different ways: how the US projects power northward, how Russia plans for survivable nuclear forces and undersea movement, and how China evaluates whether any Arctic economic foothold can be converted into strategic leverage.

The first unneglectable factor for acquisition is the existing legal arrangements, as it is the law that makes some scenarios plausible and most others political theatre. Greenland is self-governing, but it remains within the Kingdom of Denmark, which retains formal authority over foreign and security policy. Crucially, Greenland’s 2009 Self-Government Act recognises the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination and sketches a pathway to independence — one that requires negotiated arrangements with Denmark and political ratification on both sides. 

Independence, in other words, is a door Greenland can open, but it does not open directly into the US. And public opinion matters: Greenlanders can favour more autonomy without wanting to swap Copenhagen for Washington. Any strategy premised on a quick referendum-to-join-America shortcut runs headlong into democratic legitimacy.

Washington’s interests are more concrete than the talk-radio mapmaking suggests. Pituffik underwrites capabilities that sit at the foundation of deterrence and defence: missile warning, tracking and space-domain awareness. Greenland also anchors the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, the North Atlantic’s critical choke point for monitoring Russian naval movement — especially submarines, the backbone of Moscow’s second-strike deterrent. This is especially urgent as Russia has demonstrated its nuclear-powered cruise missile, Burevestnik, and nuclear-powered torpedo, Poseidon, both of which are likely un-interceptable even by the potential Golden Dome. 

Meanwhile, the Arctic is no longer treated as an empty buffer. Russia has invested heavily in its northern posture, and China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state”, probing for influence through research, infrastructure, and minerals. In that context, “getting Greenland” is not about planting a flag; it is about controlling access, timelines and denial.

With Washington pressing to get Greenland — and given how the US territorial system is structured — there are several potential scenarios ahead. 

This is the most realistic outcome — and the one that can be most easily labelled as “we got Greenland”. It blends expanded military access with strategic economic investment, operating under what might be termed the “Okinawa Model”. This approach, akin to the US presence in Japan, is defined by securing profound, long-term strategic benefits without altering sovereignty.

Without altering Danish sovereignty, the US would secure upgraded defence arrangements — broader areas, streamlined approvals, and persistent logistics for Arctic sensors and forces — and couple this with a major package financing ports, connectivity, and critical mineral extraction.

This model lets Washington claim a strategic win on two fronts: a hardened Arctic defence posture against Russia, tightening the sensor and anti-submarine net around its Northern Fleet, and a more secure supply chain for critical resources, structurally limiting China’s commercial and strategic inroads. It does not make Greenland American; it makes Greenland aligned and unavailable to the US’s strategic competitors, much like Okinawa functions as a pivotal, sovereign Japanese territory hosting indispensable US forward-deployed forces.

For Russia, expanded US access compounds military pressure, tightening the sensor and anti-submarine net around its northern bastion and challenging its undersea deterrent. For China, the deal triggers structural exclusion: hardened investment screens block strategic commercial projects, while locked-in mineral rights and dual-use infrastructure deny future footholds.

Greenland conducts self-determination and becomes fully sovereign, then signs an association agreement with the US that outsources defence in exchange for economic support and basing rights — similar in structure (though not necessarily identical in terms) to US compacts with freely associated states in the Pacific, Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau (known as the Compacts of Free Association (COFA)). For Washington, this offers maximum flexibility short of annexation: deep access with fewer alliance-management constraints. 

For Russia, it would look like a permanent US strategic embedment in the Arctic under the cleaner legal cover of a bilateral pact. For China, it likely means formal “strategic denial” clauses: tighter limits on third-country infrastructure projects and a shift toward US-standard investment screening. The political obstacle is obvious: it is hard to sell independence as a prelude to a new, asymmetric dependency.

This is the dramatic version: Greenland first obtains independence from the Danish realm, then chooses to join the US as an unincorporated territory. It is also the least likely. Greenland would need to reverse deep public scepticism, and Washington would need to absorb the domestic political burden of integrating a new territory: citizenship questions, representation debates, fiscal transfers, and constitutional friction. 

The geopolitical shock would be severe. Russia would treat it as a sovereignty-level forward shift — an Arctic analogue to a new permanent platform for sensors and, potentially, future defence architecture. China would be nearly excluded in practice, gaining mainly propaganda ammunition about American “neo-imperialism” while losing strategic optionality.

This means a direct, cash-for-sovereignty transaction, a method deeply embedded in American history. The US vastly expanded through such acquisitions in the 19th century: the Louisiana Purchase from France (1803), Florida from Spain (1819), the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico (1853), Alaska from Russia (1867), and even the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands) from Denmark in 1917. However, applying this antiquated playbook to modern Greenland is a political fantasy.

A sovereign transfer is unanimously rejected by Copenhagen, Nuuk, and the EU as a non-negotiable violation of the post-1945 order. The catastrophic blowback would far exceed any strategic gain, significantly eroding the very alliance cohesion that makes Arctic defence credible.

The notion of direct “money-for-referendum” payouts to sway Greenlanders to join the US, reportedly discussed in Trump circles, misunderstands this landscape. Cash might stir controversy, but it cannot shortcut the negotiated independence process with Denmark or manufacture a democratic mandate for joining the US against overwhelming public opinion.

Regardless of which form any potential US acquisition of Greenland ultimately takes — be it the plausible “Okinawa Model” or the far-fetched territorial purchase — the very pursuit of this objective will leave an indelible mark on the international landscape. Its repercussions will extend far beyond the island’s icy shores, fundamentally recalibrating three critical arenas: transatlantic alliance, Arctic security, and the triangulated great-power contest between Washington, Moscow and Beijing.

At its core, this push tests the resilience of the post-war Western alliance. Even the most sovereignty-respecting scenario of expanded access requires pressuring a NATO ally, Denmark, and its autonomous region, Greenland. This process injects transactional friction and suspicions of coercion into the alliance, eroding the shared values and consensus that underpin collective defence. A more aggressive approach could fracture this unity outright. 

In the Arctic, any significant enhancement of the US military and economic footprint will be perceived not as a neutral adjustment but as an offensive move, accelerating militarisation. Russia will respond with reinforced bastion defences and more assertive patrols, locking in a classic action-reaction spiral that transforms the region from a zone of cooperative governance into a frontline. For China, the strategic lesson is one of exclusion and consolidation. Its avenues for commercial and scientific engagement will narrow, compelling it to double down on other Arctic partners like Russia or Finland, whose prime minister just visited China with cooperation intentions expressed, while simultaneously decrying US “containment”. 

Thus, the quest for Greenland’s strategic minutes ultimately costs diplomatic capital and strategic stability. In the high-stakes, compressed timeline of polar deterrence, lasting security relies not merely on controlling geography, but on the fragile pillars of alliance cohesion and predictable state behaviour — both of which this pursuit inherently jeopardises.

Related: The Greenland myth: Why invasion talk misleads | Wanting Greenland: When the strong stop pretending | The US leads the West in tearing down the world order