DIGNITY, NOT A DEAL

Greenland seeks respect and self-rule as Washington and Copenhagen vie over bases and resources

-  BY KENNETH R. ROSEN

GREENLAND IS NOT SEEKING TO BE BOUGHT. NOR IS IT LOOKING TO BE RESCUED. IT IS SEEKING DIGNITY, COOPERATION AND RESPECT.

GREENLAND HAS EMERGED AS ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST STRATEGICALLY CONTESTED territories. The Arctic island's vast rare-earth mineral reserves and location amidst newly opened polar shipping lanes are reasons U.S. President Donald Trump has long said that owning it is key for American security and economic interests. At the January World Eco- nomic Forum in Davos, after early threats of taking the territory by force and levying tariffs on European countries who stood in his way, Trump walked back those threats, but announced that talks were underway on a possible framework. In this exclusive excerpt from Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic (Simon & Schuster), award-winning journalist Kenneth R. Rosen traces how a little-known 1941 agreement continues to shape Greenland's sovereignty and how Greenlanders' struggle for identity, autonomy and dignity is unfolding amid mounting global pressure from Washington, Copenhagen and Beijing.

GREENLAND’S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE IS not only cultural or economic, it is strategic. In 2025, when President Trump declared that “we need Greenland for national security purposes,” he echoed a lineage of imperial designs. But Greenland is already integral to U.S. defense—through Denmark, a NATO partner, and Pituffik Space Base, the American outpost at the northern edge of the island, which was enabled in part by one renegade diplomat.