By Tom Sharpe*
Here we go again with Greenland. Normal daily business has once again been interrupted by a mid-afternoon Truth Social bomb, this time the president of the United States announcing tariffs on eight European nations opposing US control of the Arctic territory.
Let’s take a look at the history. At the height of the Cold War, the US maintained significant military assets in Greenland to counter the Soviet threat. Depending on what you classify as a base, there were dozens of them running from top to bottom. Thule Air Base, established in 1951, housed radar installations, bomber fleets and even nuclear weapons under Project Iceworm – a secret plan for underground missile sites. These included early warning systems to detect incoming attacks.
The rationale was rooted in geography and technology. Ballistic missile defence relies on radars to track Soviet ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) via great circle routes – the shortest aerial route. Mercator projections distort this reality, exaggerating high-latitude distances and sizes (making Greenland appear continent-sized). Nevertheless, Greenland sits directly under the shortest route between superpowers, and the US deemed extensive presence there to be critical.
Nowadays the US retains Pituffik Space Base (the new name for Thule), upgraded for satellite tracking and missile warning. Under a 1951 defence agreement with Denmark, which oversees Greenland’s foreign affairs, the US operates with local consent, including environmental oversight. Greenland’s home rule allows for input, but ultimate authority rests in Copenhagen.
Russia’s capabilities have diminished since the Cold War. With far fewer ICBMs and a hugely-reduced submarine fleet (about 60 but the number of those that pose an actual threat is way less), and with economic strain caused by the Ukraine invasion, then it’s clear that the threat, although real, is far less than it was. And even if it wasn’t, every permission and agreement is already in place to reopen bases there, just as the Americans did with Keflavik, Iceland, in 2016 when they remembered the importance of being able to operate from there.
So if it’s not defence against Russia, what is it – China maybe? China has no military foothold or coastline in the Arctic but the Chinese are developing an icebreaker flotilla and they have the other kind of vessel that can operate effectively in the High North: nuclear submarines. As Denmark’s Defence Intelligence paper of last year notes: “China’s long-term goal is to deploy missile submarines beneath the ice … [and] has long-term economic interests in the Arctic, seeking access to both sea routes and natural resources.”
The retreat of the ice, whilst happening considerably slower than had been expected, is easing access to natural resources (mainly in Siberia so far) and very gradually opening the North Western Sea route along the Russian coast. Operations up there still require icebreakers for most of the year, however, and have to stop altogether in the deep winter.
So the Arctic is important: but it was just as important in the Cold War and the threat was much greater then. America felt no need to annex Greenland then and it has no military need to do so now. Yet here we are again, with allies, all of whom lost service members in recent US-led campaigns, being threatened with tariffs and with the implied threat of violence lurking just behind.
*Tom Sharpe OBE is a former Royal Navy frigate captain with live operational experience in contact with Russian nuclear submarines in the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap
This article first appeared in The Telegraph and is republished with permission of the author.
