Spectral Threats: China, Russia and Trump’s Greenland Rationale

The Trump administration’s mania about Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, is something to behold. Its untutored thuggery, its brash assertiveness, and the increasingly strident threats to either use force, bully Denmark into a sale of the island, or simply annex the territory, have officials and commentators scrambling for theories and precedents. The Europeans are terrified that the NATO alliance is under threat from another NATO member. The Greenlanders are anxious and confused. But the ground for further action by Washington is being readied by finding threats barely real and hardly plausible.

The concerns about China and Russia seizing Greenland retells the same nonsense President Donald Trump promoted in kidnapping the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Looking past the spurious narcoterrorism claims against the former leader, it fell to the issue of who would control the natural resources of the country. If we don’t get Venezuelan oil now and secure it for American companies, the Chinese or the Russians will. The gangster’s rationale is crudely reductionist, seeing all in a similar vein.

The obsession with Beijing and Moscow runs like a forced thread through a dotty, insular rationale that repels evidence and cavorts with myth: “We need that [territory],” reasons the President, “because if you take a look outside Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and, bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place. We are not gonna have Russia or China occupy Greenland, and that’s what they’re going to do if we don’t.” On Denmark’s military capabilities in holding the island against any potential aggressor, Trump could only snort with macho dismissiveness. “You know what their defence is? Two dog sleds.”

This scratchy logic is unsustainable for one obvious point. Were Russia or China to attempt an occupation of Greenland through military means, Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty would come into play, obliging NATO member states, including the United States, to collectively repel the effort. With delicious perversity, any US effort to forcibly acquire the territory through use of force would be an attack on its own security, given its obligations under the Treaty. In such cases, it becomes sound to assume, as the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen does, that the alliance would cease to exist.

Such matters are utterly missed by the rabidly hawkish Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who declared that, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” It was up to the US “to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests” in incorporating Greenland. To take territory from a NATO ally was essentially doing it good.

Given that the United States already has a military presence on the island at the Pituffik Space Base, and rights under the 1951 agreement that would permit an increase in the number of bases should circumstances require it, along with the Defence Cooperation Agreement finalised with Copenhagen in June 2025, much of Miller’s airings are not merely farcical but redundant. Yet, Trump has made it clear that signatures and understandings reflected in documents are no substitute for physically taking something, the thrill of possession that, by its act, deprives someone else of it. “I think ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty,” he told the New York Times. “Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”

What, then, of these phantom forces from Moscow and Beijing, supposedly lying in wait to seize the frozen prize? “There are no Russian and Chinese ships all over the place around Greenland,” states the very convinced research director of the Oslo-based Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Andreas Østhagen. “Russia and/or China has no capacity to occupy Greenland or to take control over Greenland.”

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen is similarly inclined. “The image that’s being painted of Russian and Chinese ships right inside the Nuuk fjord and massive Chinese investments being made is not correct.” Senior “Nordic diplomats” quoted in the Financial Times add to that version, even if the paper is not decent enough to mention which Nordic country they come from. “It is simply not true that the Chinese and Russians are there,” said one. “I have seen the intelligence. There are no ships, no submarines.” Vessel tracking data from Marine Traffic and LSEG have so far failed to disclose the presence of Chinese and Russian ships near the island.

Heating engineer Lars Vintner, based in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, wondered where these swarming, spectral Chinese were based. “The only Chinese I see,” he told Associated Press,“ is when I go to the fast food market.” This sparse presence extends to the broader security footprint of China in the Arctic, which remains modest despite a growing collaboration with Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. These have included Arctic and coast guard operations, while the Chinese military uses satellites and icebreakers equipped with deep-sea mini submarines, potentially for mapping the seabed.  

However negligible and piffling the imaginary threat, analysts, ever ready with a larding quote or a research brief, are always on hand to show concern with such projects as Beijing’s Polar Silk Road, announced in 2018, which is intended as the Arctic extension of its transnational Belt and Road initiative. The subtext: Trump should not seize Greenland, but he might have a point. “China has clear ambitions to expand its footprint and influence in the region, which it considers… an emerging arena for geopolitical competition.” Or so says Helena Legarda of the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.

The ludicrous nature of Trump’s claims and acquisitive urges supply fertile material for sarcasm. A prominent political figure from one of the alleged conquerors-to-be made an effort almost verging on satire. “Trump needs to hurry up,” mocked the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council and former President Dmitry Medvedev. “According to unverified information, within a few days, there could be a sudden referendum where all 55,000 residents of Greenland might vote to join Russia. And that’s it!” With Trump, “that’s it” never quite covers it.

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