Trump’s Greenland deal seeks sovereign US bases, no drilling for Russia

Discussions to resolve the future of Greenland have focused in recent days on proposals to increase Nato’s presence in the Arctic, give America a sovereign claim to pockets of Greenland’s territory and block potentially hostile adversaries from mining the island’s minerals.Those elements, described by eight senior Western security and diplomatic officials, offer the fullest picture yet of the contours of a potential Greenland compromise that President Trump announced Wednesday without details. His move appeared to at least temporarily defuse an American-made trans-Atlantic crisis over the Danish territory.Critically, the proposals under discussion would stop short of Trump’s goal of transferring ownership of all of Greenland to the US from Denmark, according to the officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

The officials cautioned that many details have yet to be finalised.It is unclear if these discussions will ultimately yield agreement over the territory. Denmark, which publicly opposes ceding ownership of any Greenlandic land, may not agree to the plans on the table. Still, the officials said they were hopeful that they could simultaneously address Trump’s stated concerns about securing the Arctic against possible threats from Russia and China while holding to Europe’s “red line” that Greenland was not for sale.

To do that, the proposals would: Create a significant new Nato mission in the Arctic. Multiple officials have dubbed this mission “Arctic Sentry,” in a nod to similarly named Nato missions in the Baltic Sea and Eastern Europe that are meant to counter an increasingly aggressive Russia Update a pact signed between Denmark and the US in 1951. The pact gives the US military wide access to Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, for operations including the construction and operation of military bases.

US officials have said they are concerned that this access could be curbed or ended if Greenland were to obtain independence. Nato officials have discussed expanding the 1951 pact with a new agreement that would effectively create pockets of American soil in the territory. Such an agreement would likely be modelled on a “sovereign base area” agreement in Cyprus, where Britain’s military bases are regarded as British territory.

That would give the US greater control over the land than it currently exerts over US embassy sites. Trump and other officials have said that territory in Greenland could prove important for his plans to build a so-called Golden Dome missile defence system for the US, which could include components stationed in Greenland. Restrict non-Nato member countries, particularly Russia and China, from obtaining rights to mine the rare-earth minerals that lie deep under Greenland’s ice sheet.All of those plans have been under discussion inside Nato over the last year, as a direct response to Trump’s stated ambitions.