The negotiations over Greenland’s future center around building up a larger NATO presence, thwarting adversaries and giving the United States sovereign claim to bits of the island — a deal remarkably similar to an agreement that already exists.
The hurried, initial plan — discussed this week between President Donald Trump and NATO officials at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — has helped pull Trump back from his threat to either buy the Danish territory or take it by force. While neither Denmark nor Greenland has signed off on any proposal, it could represent the early contours of a deal, according to two European officials who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
But officials and allies question what has changed. The U.S. and Denmark already have a framework for Greenland: a 1951 treaty that permits some of what the new deal would likely include. That defense agreement allows the Pentagon to establish bases and send as many troops as it needs to the island after Copenhagen approves — which it has almost always done.
“The treaty gives an enormous amount of flexibility to the United States to identify the security interests it thinks are necessary and to have a green light to go execute upon them,” said Iris Ferguson, who served as the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for Arctic and global resilience under the Biden administration. “So on paper, the authorities are there.”
