Opinion: Look to outer space for Trump’s Greenland playbook ambitions amid Russia, China Arctic advances
Last week, President Donald Trump doubled down on his ambitions to purchase Greenland despite the fact that the idea was outright rejected by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a recent call between the two.
‘I think we’re going to have it,’ insisted our bombastic commander in chief when speaking with journalists on Air Force One last week.
Trump even insinuated in early January that he might be forced to compel Denmark to let the United States take possession of the autonomous island.
Last week, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) deployed two Air Force F-16s to Greenland from Alaska, ‘exercising its standard agreement with the Kingdom of Denmark to forward posture NORAD presence in the Arctic.’
Trump’s justification for wanting to make Greenland part of America is ‘the protection of the free world.’ The United States is ‘the one that can provide the freedom.’
‘They [Greenland and Denmark] can’t,’ stressed Trump on board the presidential aircraft last week.
The rationale for The Donald’s insistence lies in space.
Greenland’s strategic significance to the United States and Europe lies in the fact that it houses an important U.S. military base, Pituffik, operated by the Space Force, a whole new branch of service Trump established in 2019.
With Greenland providing the shortest route between North America and Europe and geographically sitting at the top of the world in the Arctic, the Pituffik Space Base carries out the critical function of enabling space superiority, which is the centerpiece of the U.S. war-fighting doctrine. Due to its unique geographic position on the world map, the base is a vital hub for early threat detection achieved through missile warning and space surveillance during peacetime and satellite command and control during both peace and war.
During my service in the Defense Intelligence Agency, I specialized in space warfare and participated in war games simulating an armed conflict in space. Space already underpins every aspect of our way of war as our satellites – 8,530 space birds in orbit at the unclassified level, the most of any country – enable communications among the troops, synchronizing operations, missile warning, navigation, intelligence collection, targeting of our weapons and precision strikes.
Space is undoubtedly the next frontier of any future armed conflict, and both Russia and China are gearing up for space warfare. Recognizing Greenland and the Arctic’s geostrategic value, America’s top two opponents have conducted joint military drills in the Arctic. Russia and China plan to disrupt or destroy our satellites in wartime or in the run-up to a conflict in order to disable our ‘kill chain,’ preventing our weapons from reaching their targets. Both Moscow and Beijing are beefing up their commercial and military presence in the Arctic. Russia already has more military bases in the Arctic than the U.S. and NATO combined. Russia has 57, while NATO has 32 among Canada, Denmark, Norway and the U.S.
By acquiring Greenland, President Trump likely seeks to establish the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, to keep U.S. adversaries farther away from the U.S. sphere of strategic interests and to beef up our space superiority. Denmark is not investing in Greenland’s security, as admitted by Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen in early January.
Trump likely wants to have autonomy over this strategic island so he doesn’t have to depend on Danish authorities for national security decisions in which space forces and the space base figure prominently due to their mission. Much of this mission is related to U.S. counter-space operations against our adversaries and is highly classified. Fast operational decision-making is critical during wartime, especially because some of our adversaries have preemptive doctrines when it comes to space warfare. It would give U.S. forces the strategic initiative and increase their ability to deter or win wars.
During World War II, after Germany’s invasion of Denmark in 1940, the United States secured Greenland under the Monroe Doctrine by signing a ‘Defense of Greenland’ agreement with the Danish ambassador.
It is hardly surprising that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t pleased with Trump’s efforts to strong-arm Denmark into letting the U.S. own Greenland.
‘We are watching the rather dramatic development of the situation very closely, but so far, thank God, at the level of statements,’ said Putin’s press secretary, Dmitriy Peskov, in early January. Peskov declared that the Arctic was in Russia’s ‘sphere of national and strategic interests, and it is interested in peace and stability there.’
President Trump has excellent geostrategic and geopolitical instincts, which will likely have a positive impact on U.S. military strategy. Trump is the first president to recognize the strategic value of space as a war-fighting domain and to prioritize America’s superiority in space. To that end, Trump established the U.S. Space Force in 2019, 18 years after Putin established Russia’s. He was mocked for it by Jen Psaki, a former State Department spokesperson, and many other former Obama-era officials.
It is my assessment as a former intelligence officer specializing in space warfare that Trump’s goal to acquire Greenland is a smart move from a national security standpoint.