“Maybe climate change is not so bad in such a cold country as ours?” Vladimir Putin mused two decades ago, speculating that a few degrees of warming might cut fur-coat bills and boost harvests. The line, tossed off in 2003, reads today like an early draft of the world’s newest geopolitical script: As the Arctic thaws, the map of power is being redrawn — and it now runs straight through Greenland.
That is the backdrop to a rupture between the United States and parts of NATO and the European Union that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sketched in stark terms at Davos. The immediate controversy — Washington’s drive for far greater control in Greenland and Europe’s resistance — is not a sideshow. It is a direct consequence of climate change colliding with strategy, economics and alliance politics.
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After a sharp public escalation, the U.S. president signaled a turn at Davos, saying he would seek a deal with Denmark and Greenland that all sides can accept and that strengthens security for Europe, Canada and the United States. Copenhagen’s position has been clear for nearly a year: Anything is negotiable so long as Danish sovereignty over Greenland and Greenlanders’ right to self-determination remain red lines.
One proposed off-ramp — floated by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — borrows from Cyprus, where the U.K. retains sovereign base areas. For Denmark, that option is politically sensitive. Europeans have long memories of awkward arrangements: Cypriots’ scratchy relationship with Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Ireland’s wariness of the old Treaty Ports. The history lesson is simple: Sovereignty, once ceded, is hard to reclaim.
Why Greenland — and why now? Because the Arctic is no longer a blank space. Melting sea ice has turned previously theoretical passages into profitable routes. Chinese container ships, tucked behind Russian icebreakers, have shaved two to three weeks off voyages from Shenzhen to Rotterdam via the Northern Sea Route. In September 2023, Russia escorted an oil tanker through without icebreaker support — a milestone that hints at what’s ahead as warming accelerates.
With shipping come mines, fisheries and even polar tourism, followed inevitably by security interests. The Arctic “high north” now hums with military activity. Seven of the eight Arctic states belong to NATO. The eighth, Russia, commands by far the longest Arctic coastline and has steadily built out bases, radar and air defenses since the mid-2000s, while asserting legal claims over new sea lanes.
The war in Ukraine ended a period of low-tension Arctic engagement. Incidents have multiplied: unannounced exercises, aircraft “buzzing” and GPS jamming. A Washington-based think tank, the Center for European Policy Analysis, has urged an Arctic Military Code of Conduct to reduce risks of miscalculation, with Russia and any country able to sustain forces in the region — including China — at the table.
The United States has belatedly shifted from watchful to active. A 2022 National Strategy for the Arctic Region, a 2023 implementation plan and the 2024 Arctic Strategy from the then Department of Defense — now Department of War — underscore capability gaps: too few icebreakers, limited ice-strengthened vessels, and shortfalls in air defense, radar and undersea sensing. Washington has since inked a multibillion-dollar deal for Finnish-built icebreakers, expanded rotational access in Norway and new NATO allies Sweden and Finland, and leaned on a NATO command center in Norfolk, Virginia, to coordinate with Canada and European partners. The U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force has trained for high-end warfighting in Arctic conditions.
Greenland has long figured in this architecture. The U.S. maintains bases there under longstanding arrangements with Denmark. The island now sits at the nexus of two urgent American priorities: control over emerging Arctic trade corridors and forward-positioned sensors for advanced missile defense.
The president’s personal enthusiasm for missile defense is no secret. Inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome, he has spoken of building a “Golden Dome” for the continental United States — a vastly larger and costlier undertaking. Greenland’s geography makes it prime real estate for radar and interceptors that watch the polar approaches. Europe is traveling a parallel path with its proposed European Sky Shield, split between those arguing to buy mature U.S. systems for speed and those pushing for a longer-haul, European-built alternative to avoid dependence on Washington.
Into this already crowded agenda, the White House dropped maximalist opening bids: renewed interest in ownership of Greenland — an idea last floated publicly in 2019 — alongside deliberately provocative rhetoric about Canada’s status and its leadership. The “madman theory” approach, say allies, jolted Arctic planning from committee rooms into leaders’ schedules, but at a cost: trust.
Supporters in Washington see method in the performance. They cast it as a modern “Donroe Doctrine” — a hemispheric rule that no outside power will control strategic nodes, bases or critical routes anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, whether Russia, China or the EU. From this vantage point, pushing hard on Greenland forced overdue decisions on icebreakers, basing and sensor networks, and rallied attention to the Arctic’s changing facts.
Europeans don’t dispute the facts. Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo and Helsinki have all warned that the Arctic is turning from a peripheral space into a primary theater. Denmark sits at the heart of the issue as Greenland’s sovereign. It is also home to Maersk, the world’s second-largest container line. New lanes through the Arctic will reshape European commerce as surely as they reshape security.
The disagreements are over instruments and optics. Does the United States need to own Greenland to secure the polar approaches or merely guarantee access? Can Denmark preserve full sovereignty while granting the United States the capabilities it seeks? Would sovereign base areas stabilize the region or seed enduring political resentment? And how will industrial politics — European Sky Shield vs. U.S. systems — intersect with strategy?
Those choices will shape the alliance for a generation. They will also test whether NATO can coordinate in a theater where climate change is not a future variable but the current operating environment. An Arctic Code of Conduct would help. So would clarity about Greenland’s self-determination — not as a slogan but as a principle embedded in any security deal.
What is certain is that the Arctic is no longer a strategic backwater. The ice is thinning, the ships are sailing, and the submarines and drones are following. For Russia, the melt replaces a natural barrier with an opportunity. For China, the Arctic is a research zone that doubles as a corridor to Europe. For the United States and its allies, it is an exposed flank that demands sensors, bases and rules.
The president’s Davos pivot suggests a negotiated path remains open. Denmark has a deal on the table: deep cooperation without ceding sovereignty and with Greenlanders in control of their future. If Washington can accept that framework — and if Europe can match words with capabilities — the alliance can translate a climate shock into a security plan.
That won’t make climate change “not so bad,” in Russia or anywhere else. It will, however, acknowledge the link that now binds warming seas to hard power. The real debate is no longer whether the Arctic matters. It’s who will set the rules, who will pay for the hardware and whether allies can manage their differences quickly enough to keep the peace.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
