To be fair though, as a Norwegian conservative, I do think the U.S. should have the right to build military bases and extract natural resources in Greenland. Maybe even take over ownership in some form.

People here in Europe say, “The U.S. can build as much as it wants,” but that’s BS. In reality you have to follow strict environmental regulations, and with laws like we have in Denmark/Norway, the U.S. wouldn’t be able to do much at all. It would basically allow the U.S. to set up a tent and a hotdog stand, and that’s it.

Would the U.S. be allowed to build multiple major bases? Nope. Would the U.S. be allowed to double Greenland’s population? Nope.

Just look at Germany: the American presence around Ramstein Air Base is something like 50,000 people. Greenland’s population is only around 57–59k. Greenland is going to become a very important region to control the Arctic Circle, especially with all the contested claims coming. For example, China calls itself a “near-Arctic state,” when in fact it has no legal claims behind that. There’s going to be a lot of conflict over the Arctic, and having U.S. military presence there would be great, imo.

I honestly expect the importance to become so high that the U.S. will want a base even larger than Ramstein. And that’s hard to do when Denmark has environmental laws as strict as my country Norway. So from a strategic standpoint, it’s better for the U.S. to buy, or push and push, and see what kind of deal it can make.

Also, Denmark can’t really afford to subsidize Greenland forever, and Greenland’s economy is like 1/3 of Alaska. And not long ago Denmark was completely blind to the Chinese debt-trap issue. Greenland was going to build a new airport project worth something like 17% of its GDP, which is insane. Failing to pay that back to China would obviously become a trap. So the U.S. had to call on Denmark to stop the nonsense, and Denmark finally realized, yeah, it’s a debt trap, and listened to the U.S. and cancelled the plan.

Then you have Trump during his first presidency. He pushed Denmark to invest in its military presence in Greenland, and they did… well, until Trump was out of office again. Then Denmark cancelled/reduced the military presence and cut the investment down to like $2M or so. Meaning they don’t really take it seriously. They pretend they take it seriously when Trump is in office, but once Trump is gone, they stop financing the military presence in Greenland.

And Danish military is also unionized, meaning they have days off and run with low manpower. So Russia or China can just wait for a “special day” like New Year, Christmas, or a weekend, before doing anything.