Increasing international tensions, global warming and the changing world economy have put Greenland at the heart of the debate over global trade and security.
US President Donald Trump has made it known he wants his country to control the mineral-rich island that guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America.
Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, a longtime US ally and Nato member that has rejected Trump’s threats. Greenland’s own government also opposes US designs on the island, saying the people will decide their own future.
Trump has said he can take the territory “the easy way or the hard way”. As the threat of a US takeover becomes clearer, vice president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio will host the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland for a crucial summit at the White House.
Greenland’s prime minister showed no signs of yielding in the build up to the summit, saying on Tuesday that the island would not be owned or governed by Washington.
Here’s why Greenland is strategically important to Arctic security:
Greenland sits off the northeastern coast of Canada, with more than two-thirds of its territory lying within the Arctic Circle. That has made it crucial to the defence of North America since World War II, when the US occupied Greenland to ensure it didn’t fall into the hands of Nazi Germany and to protect crucial North Atlantic shipping lanes.
Following the Cold War, the Arctic was largely an area of international cooperation. But climate change is thinning the Arctic ice, promising to create a northwest passage for international trade and reigniting competition with Russia, China and other countries over access to the region’s mineral resources.
The Trump administration charges Denmark with not doing enough to shore up security in the region – something European allies are desperately looking to improve as the US weighs taking the territory by force.
Greenland is also a rich source of the so-called rare earth minerals that are a key component of mobile phones, computers, batteries and other hi-tech gadgets that are expected to power the world’s economy in the coming decades.
That has attracted the interest of the US and other Western powers as they try to ease China’s dominance of the market for these critical minerals.
Development of Greenland’s mineral resources is challenging because of the island’s harsh climate, while strict environmental controls have proved an additional hurdle for potential investors.
The US Department of Defence operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, which was built after the U.S. and Denmark signed the Defence of Greenland Treaty in 1951.
It supports missile warning, missile defence and space surveillance operations for the US and NATO.
