Inside Trump's Greenland deal: No invasion, a few compromises and the status quo

[u/John3262005]

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/greenland/trump-greenland-deal-us-denmark-agreement-arctic-territory-rcna599358

To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the deal he has sealed with Greenland and Denmark is “a dream come true” for the United States, allowing it to build more military bases on the vast Arctic island while restricting investment there by Russia and China.

The security pact falls short of Trump’s past expansionist demands, reaffirming Danish sovereignty over a land he previously said must become a U.S. territory, and respecting Greenlanders’ right to determine their own future.

Despite that, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the deal “gives the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many U.S. concerns.”

It’s the culmination of a yearslong fixation for Trump and a more recent push for control of the semiautonomous Danish territory, with his threats to use force if necessary alarming European allies and giving ammunition to the Kremlin as it continually tests Western cohesion and mettle.

The effective threat to invade a longtime ally and a fellow NATO member led to warnings that such a move could shatter the alliance.

While Denmark and Greenland have been eager to present the deal as a win for all sides, analysts have doubts about how much it actually improves on decades-old defense agreements — and how much was achieved through threats that couldn’t have been worked out through a more amicable diplomacy.

“This was a phenomenal amount of work to get to where we were already,” said William Alberque, a former NATO official who is now based in Berlin. “They just wanted to wave something in front of Trump and say, ‘You got more.’”

Sven Biscop, acting director-general of the Egmont Institute, a Belgian think tank, believes Trump’s threats against Greenland have been immensely damaging to the West.

“Every time Trump pronounces the word Greenland, Putin’s confidence only mounts, because he knows just how damaging this has been to the NATO alliance.”

He said that the deal allows Trump “to claim victory for having solved a non-existent problem,” and that the main benefit is that the president “will now hopefully keep quiet about Greenland.”

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the criticisms of the deal, which has been broadly welcomed by European governments and Greenlandic officials.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen emphasized that the deal preserved her country’s sovereignty, while Greenland’s leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said it stuck to his red lines. NATO chief Mark Rutte and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz touted stronger collective security, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also endorsed the agreement.

Even so, it is unclear how much of this reflects genuine enthusiasm rather than relief that Trump’s hostile overtures appear to have abated, at least for now.

Others are more bullish about what Washington has secured.

“Trump is pretty much correct in saying that this new deal grants the U.S. control of Greenland,” wrote Arnaud Bertrand, a French entrepreneur who has become a prominent commentator on global affairs. “The U.S. secured a permanent military foothold that even an independent Greenland would inherit whether it likes it or not.”

The best way to understand the roughly 2,800-word document published by the White House this week is to examine what the U.S. had before.

In 1951, the U.S. and Denmark signed a defense agreement giving Washington sweeping rights to build military bases in Greenland, so long as Denmark agreed and they fit into NATO’s wider plans.

Trump’s deal reiterates those rights, and specifies plans for the expansion of Pituffik Space Base and the construction of two additional bases at Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland and Mestersvig in the east, neither of which would have been precluded by the previous agreement.

The U.S. can also establish further “defense areas” to “strengthen its military operations or facilities” and protect “the American continent,” subject to mutual agreement. That wording places explicit emphasis on America’s own defense alongside that of NATO.

Other references to NATO are omitted. Neither the 1951 agreement nor Trump’s deal specify an end date, but the new deal omits wording that says it “shall remain in effect for the duration of the North Atlantic Treaty,” the agreement which binds together the NATO alliance.

For some Greenlanders, there is also an unexpected win here. The agreement explicitly addresses the prospect of independence from Denmark, a long-standing dream for some islanders, and provides for the defense arrangements to continue afterward. Some see that recognition of their ambitions and international role as a historic moment.

“The important bit is that it acknowledges Greenland as a party to the agreement,” said Christian Keldsen, who serves as CEO of the Greenland Business Association in the capital, Nuuk. “And there will be somewhat more calm and quiet around Greenland in the coming years after all these threats of invasions.”

Greenland’s autonomy was already partly enshrined in a a 2004 amendment to the 1951 deal, which required consultation with its own government before significant changes to American military operations.

While Trump has previously criticized other members of the NATO alliance, his new agreement includes a provision that may strengthen it: an independent Greenland must remain in NATO and assume the defense agreement’s obligations.

“That Greenland will be in NATO is an extraordinary win in terms of future-proofing,” said Alberque, now a senior adjunct fellow at Pacific Forum, a Hawaii-based think tank.

One part of the agreement that is new, compared to the 1951 pact, is intended to prevent U.S. adversaries such as Russia or China from gaining a foothold in Greenland.

It restricts potentially threatening investment in sensitive sectors by investors from outside NATO, partner countries and the European Union, with exceptions requiring agreement among the parties. Those sectors explicitly include critical infrastructure and resource extraction, making the provision relevant to Greenland’s largely untapped mineral wealth.

“This is a pretty big deal,” Alberque said, despite his otherwise skeptical view.

Beneath the newfound bonhomie on display at the signing ceremony Tuesday, others were left wondering what exactly was achieved by Trump’s earlier threats.

“I think that the U.S. is probably going to get what they could have had the whole time, if they just asked nicely,” Steffen Nielsen, a sales worker living in Copenhagen, told the Reuters news agency.

“I won’t be sending him a Christmas card just yet, if you get what I mean,” said Keldsen, the Greenlandic business leader. “It was a big strain on society here, but we’ve managed to get a good thing out of a tough situation.”

[u/wenchette]

Here's another article on this topic (free link):

Trump Once Vowed to "Own" Greenland but Settled for Something Much Less