Raphael Machado
Trump's interest in Greenland is not the result of a sudden outburst, mere hubris, or simply hatred of Europe.
Let's be honest: we have no idea how this "soap opera" of tensions between the U.S. and Europe over Greenland will end. Considering Trump's erratic history, it could all end up amounting to absolutely nothing, or the U.S. might simply end up using marines and paratroopers to occupy the great northern island. Or, more moderately, actually buying the place, or at least closing a deal granting the use of parts of the island.
What we can be sure of, however, is that Trump's interest in Greenland is not the result of a sudden outburst, mere hubris, or simply hatred of Europe. There is a clear geopolitical logic behind this interest, and it concerns one of the next potential scenarios for global conflict.
The most obvious dimension of the interest in Greenland is based precisely on the Trumpist update of the Monroe Doctrine. When the Monroe Doctrine was first developed, although abstractly it was a statement of intent to expel Europe from the Americas, its main target was Spain and its remaining possessions in the Western Hemisphere.
As the Monroe Doctrine was already being revived under the Biden administration, it seemed self-evident that it would be directed against the Russian-Chinese ties of various countries in the region. Clearly, however, it was not expected that the anti-European dimension of the Monroe Doctrine would still remain in force. The U.S., it is now obvious, intends to continue the removal of the European presence from the Americas. This was well noted by the Frenchman Jordan Bardella, current president of the Rassemblement National, who in a recent speech emphasized that if the U.S. took Greenland from Denmark, French territories (such as French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, and Saint Pierre & Miquelon) could be next.
But there is a specificity to Greenland that transcends the agenda of the Monroe Doctrine: its position near the Arctic.
The climatic flows that are currently leading to a partial thaw of the Arctic Zone are opening the potential for new alternative trade routes to traditional ones. We also know that the place supposedly harbors 13% of the world's undiscovered oil reserves, as well as 30% of its gas, plus gold, rubies, diamonds, zinc, iron, copper, rare earths, and a lot of uranium in the subsoil of the world's largest island. More underestimated, but no less important, is the fact that the warming of northern waters has been attracting schools of fish, which has implications for fishing.
Naturally, one cannot overlook the strategic interest of the Arctic as a potential area for missile trajectories aimed at other enemies located in the planet's Northern Hemisphere. The Arctic offers a shorter route for hypothetical intercontinental attacks.
The one who seems to have been the first to perceive the unexplored potential of the Arctic appears to have been Russia, which began a long process of revitalizing, reforming, updating, and building civil-commercial infrastructure in its northern areas closest to the region. Moscow also increased the activity of icebreaker ships, aiming to open a new maritime route alternative to that of the Black Sea, made more insecure by the regional context of the special military operation. Russia's first initiatives regarding the Arctic were, however, mostly civil and commercial in nature, and connect with the Chinese project of a Polar Silk Road, also involving North Korea.
The Western response came with the militarization of the Arctic Zone.
As early as 2020, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden signed the International Cooperative Polar Research Program agreement, which points to a multidisciplinary approach aimed at the full investigation and occupation of the entire Arctic. Some of these countries have also been making heavy investments in developing new technologies to facilitate the exploration of the region. In the year 2021, the Pentagon published its strategy for the Arctic, involving the training of specialized military units to operate in the region. In 2022, using the special military operation as justification, these countries abandoned the Arctic Council, a multilateral structure focused on cooperation in that region.
All of this has seen practical applications, such as the reactivation of the U.S. Navy's Second Fleet, dedicated to the North Atlantic and Arctic, as well as the revitalization of the U.S. base in Keflavik, Iceland. 4 billion dollars from the U.S. budget were dedicated to enhancing U.S. Arctic capabilities.
What is peculiar, however, is that all these past efforts were undertaken in coordination with analogous efforts from Canada and Scandinavian allies. Now, however, the U.S. is acting contrary to or even opposed to its old allies, apparently no longer believing in shared control of the Arctic.
More than interested in oil and gas, the U.S. seems to want to transform Greenland as a whole into a military platform, full of bases and aimed, in the long term, against Russia, which has already been responding to these Western efforts to militarize the Arctic with its own revitalization of old Soviet military assets, as well as with the reinforcement of the Northern Fleet.
Trump doesn't even really need to become the "owner" of the island to achieve this goal, so the Deep State's objective is fulfilled as long as Denmark simply agrees to cede parts of Greenlandic territory, especially in the north, to the U.S.
With events unfolding this way, it is plausible that the Arctic will become, in fact, one of the "hottest" zones in the world in the 2030s of this new century.