Sovereignty Not for Sale

US President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte have announced a framework of a future agreement on Greenland and, more broadly, the entire Arctic. The “breakthrough” came after the president refused to engage with the Denmark and Greenland leaders, who stood strong and refused to compromise on the sovereignty of the world’s largest island. They repeated their redlines as often as Trump repeated his demands.

So Trump turned instead to Rutte, who has little to no power over the issues at hand. Still, agreement was quickly reached. The president consequently called off his threat of higher tariffs on European products, but what follows remains unclear. Equally uncertain is what the United States gained from its aggressive moves to acquire and control Greenland.

Washington’s interest in Greenland is not new. The United States and Denmark signed in 1951 an agreement (amended in 2004, adding Greenland as a signatory) that provides American and NATO forces expansive access to Greenland while respecting local sovereignty.

But sovereignty over US military bases in Greenland remains a critical issue, and Trump has said that he must “own” and have the “title” to the entire island for security reasons. Denmark and Greenland have held firm, with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen stating that NATO is aware of Copenhagen’s position and that Rutte did not discuss the island’s sovereignty in his negotiations with Trump. “Of course, only Denmark and Greenland themselves can make decisions on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” she said.

Any real negotiations on these Greenland-specific issues means the United States must work with Copenhagen and Nuuk directly. Ideas being floated include a long-term lease, like what the United States has for Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which could be a compromise. This would go beyond the 1951 agreement but align with Greenland’s local property rights, which stipulate that land is communally owned in accordance with Inuit cultural traditions. Non-Danish ownership of property or land-use rights are allowed only if buyers have been permanent residents and paid taxes for two years.

Memories of Washington’s exceeding the 1951 agreement’s provisions and building military facilities without permission will also weigh on talks for a new deal. Camp Century was a secret project to build missile silos and an underground town in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Denmark was unaware of the plan and the intention to deploy nuclear weapons in the siloes. The United States abandoned the project in 1967, leaving the camp and a small nuclear reactor buried under Greenland’s ice.

Trump has indicated that critical minerals would be included in a deal. Greenland has long sought American investment to help it develop its natural resources, but the United States will also have to negotiate mining rights bilaterally with the island’s officials. NATO could work with its members to provide guaranteed offtake agreements, providing price and demand certainty that could allow investors to recoup the high costs of mining.

On another point of contention, countering China and Russia, Greenland proposed in October 2025 legislation to screen foreign investment, possibly preventing non-Danish entities from investing in eight critical sectors, including the raw materials industry.

If the United States, NATO, Denmark, and Greenland reach a broader agreement, substantial benefits achieved by Washington’s recent actions are likely to be hard to discern. Denmark and Greenland, after all, already had policies in place that met US demands.

In the meantime, Trump’s approach is likely to perpetuate tension and distrust between once-close allies. Danish pension funds have already sold US treasuries as a sign of displeasure. Danish officials boycotted the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos. For all the attention and energy that the US president spent on this issue, he seems so far to have gained little but a stronger alliance among European nations.

The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.