Denmark Says Greenland Security Pact Puts NATO at Center of Arctic Defense
By Stine Jacobsen and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen
COPENHAGEN, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Denmark, Greenland and the United States are due to sign a security agreement for Greenland on Tuesday, a deal Copenhagen says will bring Arctic security under NATO’s umbrella instead of leaving it solely to Washington and Copenhagen.
The agreement is scheduled to be signed at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. It has not been made public. President Donald Trump has said it gives the United States “permanent control.” Denmark and Greenland have not directly responded to that assertion, but both have said the deal will benefit the Arctic island and respect its sovereignty.
A White House official said Trump will meet Tuesday in New York with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen for a trilateral signing ceremony.
“The three leaders will formalize their new agreement that will secure and defend the security of Greenland and the United States,” the official said.
The pact follows months of pressure from Trump, who has argued that the United States should control Greenland and at times declined to rule out military or economic force to acquire the semi-autonomous Danish territory. The threats, which peaked in January, set off a diplomatic crisis inside NATO and pushed Denmark and Greenland into negotiations with Washington aimed at easing the pressure.
“It will be in a form where responsibility for security in the Arctic is not only Danish or American,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told national broadcaster TV2 on Sunday. He added that to a large extent “it would be NATO that looks after the Arctic.”
Boosting NATO’s ‘cohesion’
It was still unclear whether the deal would amend an existing 1951 defense agreement that serves as the legal basis for the U.S. military presence in Greenland.
“It appears that we are now using this crisis to try to strengthen NATO’s cohesion through Greenland,” said Ulrik Pram Gad, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, or DIIS.
Washington’s strategic interest in Greenland dates back to World War Two. In 1941, the United States signed a deal with Danish envoy Henrik Kauffmann, who acted without authorization from his government while Denmark was under German occupation.
The United States sought the arrangement to keep Greenland out of German hands and to secure the North Atlantic supply route between North America and Europe. Under the agreement, the U.S. built airfields, naval facilities and weather stations across the island, with roughly 5,500 military personnel stationed there by 1943, according to DIIS.
In 1946, President Harry Truman sought to buy the island as a strategic asset for $100 million in gold, but Copenhagen refused to sell. A new agreement signed in 1951 instead gave the U.S. military extensive rights in Greenland, tied to the existence of NATO.
“I don’t think Denmark and Greenland will sign if the same NATO clause isn’t included,” Gad said.
Promoting ‘security, stability and cooperation’
During the Cold War, the United States maintained 17 military installations and more than 10,000 personnel in Greenland. Today, only Pituffik Space Base remains, with about 150 U.S. military personnel.
A NATO spokesperson said Saturday that the alliance welcomed the new agreement, which would “help advance security, stability and cooperation in this vital region.”
Rasmussen, who traveled to New York overnight, declined to discuss the contents of the agreement.
“But we have said from the start that we are open to accommodating the United States’ legitimate security interests,” he told Danish news agency Ritzau on Monday.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Friday that the agreement gave the United States “permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland,” and that no U.S. adversary could have a base or military presence there without Washington’s written approval.
Denmark has not responded to Trump’s assertion. Copenhagen has earlier acknowledged that it underinvested in Greenland’s defense for decades and has pledged to expand its military presence on the island, including by adding more NATO troops.
Greenland’s government has sought to reassure the public about the deal.
Erik Jensen, an opposition lawmaker in Greenland, wrote on Facebook that he had read the draft agreement. “I feel reassured and am not worried,” he said, adding that the island’s foreign minister was handling the work well.
The agreement’s broader significance lies in its attempt to move the Arctic security debate from a bilateral dispute over Greenland into a multilateral NATO framework. For Copenhagen and Nuuk, that may offer political cover by embedding any expanded U.S. role in an alliance structure, while Washington can still press its security priorities in the Arctic. The dispute over Trump’s “permanent control” language, however, underscores how sensitive questions of sovereignty remain.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington; editing by Gareth Jones and Rosalba O’Brien)