By TABITHA MAE
Last January, mere hours after the Trump regime’s Operation Absolute Resolve—the capturing of Venezuelan President Maduro—Katie Miller took to X with a shining example of the callously imperialist mindset propelling U.S. foreign policy. The now-deleted post was simple. The right-wing podcaster, former White House adviser, and wife of Stephen Miller uploaded a picture of a map of Greenland with the U.S. flag edited atop it. There was a brief caption: “SOON.”
For months now, Donald Trump has made it very clear that his administration continues to set its sights on Greenland. His recent comments are the culmination of years of intent. The topic of outright purchasing the Danish territory has been maintained by Trump since his first term, and he resumed publicly supporting the notion in the direct wake of the 2024 election. However, Danish policymakers and the people of Greenland have consistently retorted: Greenland is not for sale.
In the late winter of 2026, protests erupted in Nuuk, Greenland, where participants opposed Trump’s aims, refuting his repeated rants about purchasing the territory, and standing up against the threats of annexation of the land through military force.
Why imperialism looks to the north
With imperialist ventures being launched and planned by the Trump administration in various parts of the world, why is Trump so set on Greenland? One of the main points of supposed justification is U.S. national security and protection against a growth of Russian and Chinese military influence in the Arctic. This is not to ignore the mineral richness of the island. Of the 34 critical raw materials outlined by the EU, Greenland possesses 25.
Unfettered exploitation of these resources seeks to propel the major profits of some U.S. corporations. It is important to note, too, that passage through northern sea routes is being critically impacted by the changing climate. Control over the Northeast Passage plays a role in dominating power over Arctic regions and securing ease for maximization of profits for American industry.
A history of secrecy continued
On Sept. 22, 2026, the White House announced that a new Arctic security deal had been established. After months of threats of annexation and bids to buy Greenland, the U.S., Denmark, and lawmakers from Greenland came to an agreement over U.S. presence on the island. Basing rights had long been established, and many are unclear over what exactly is being changed.
The details of the new agreement between the U.S. and Denmark over Greenland are not obvious. This obfuscation is reminiscent of the deals made that enabled the past 70 years of U.S. imperialism in Greenland. In the 1950s, highly controversial decisions were made quietly between the U.S. and Denmark, and highlighted the vulnerability of Greenland’s state of semi-autonomy as a colony. This creates a fickle situation when it comes to establishing sovereignty, and this is not a fact that is lost on the big players behind foreign policy decisions.
The U.S. has a history, too, of grandiose endeavors that are rooted in Greenland. Cold War-era installations like Camp Century, a military installation that was referred to as a “city under the ice,” serves as proof. Camp Century was intended to be a leg of Project Iceworm, a below-the-ice framework intended to be enforced against nuclear attack and able to store, transfer, and launch nuclear weapons of its own.
The plan was not sustainable, and after shifting ice made this clear, Project Iceworm never reached fruition. Nonetheless, this northern Greenland military build-up was responsible for the forced displacement of numerous Indigenous people; despite its abandonment since the 1960s, it was significantly ecologically damaging.
From under the ice to in the sky
Just as obscure agreements being made between the United States and Denmark over Greenland are a continuation of historic patterns, the Trump administration is excelling at maintaining the sequence of grandiose U.S. military expansion out of Greenland. In fact, the Trump regime is far surpassing the perplexity of the plans for Project Iceworm.
Trump has not obscured his desire to use Greenland to help establish a massive, space-based, defense system coined the “Golden Dome.” The missile defense architecture that is planned is massive; Trump claims it will cost $185 billion, whereas most other sources are estimating trillions of dollars needed to complete such a task.
Twelve companies have already been handed buckets of money, competing against each other to create the best prototype for Trump’s “Golden Dome for America,” including Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics Missions Systems, and Space-X. The Lockheed Martin website boasts about their participation in the endeavor and states that the “Golden Dome for America is a revolutionary concept to further the goals of peace through strength … safeguarding the homeland and projecting American Strength” (Lockheed Martin Golden Dome for America).
What this company calls a revolutionary concept that would help further peace and project strength is for others a call for concern over a new arms race. The concept of the militarization of space is far from novel, and it can be argued that the U.S., Russia, and China have been in preparation for years now to take aggressive strides toward this. In 2018, the U.S. vowed at a disarmament conference to take action against Russian and Chinese desires for the militarization of space. Eight years later, the structures that U.S. officials had supposedly sought to protect in international space law are being directly impacted by Trump’s Golden Dome plan.
While the prototype for the space-based missile-defense system is still in the works, it is important to note that critical parts of the Golden Dome are already operational, and have been this entire year. After the Cold War, U.S. presence in Greenland diminished greatly—but not entirely. In Trump’s first presidency, a USAF base in Greenland was transitioned into becoming the Pituffik Space Base, and placed in the responsibility of the Space Force.
The Golden Dome program relies on Pituffik, and Pituffik has been operational throughout 2026, equipped with AN/FPS-132 UEWR radar, and serving as a crucial posture point for U.S. military presence in the Arctic. The timeline for the realization of the Golden Dome may be unknown and could possibly not occur, but key parts are already in motion.
Not spared from the AI explosion
The Golden Dome is not the only massive planning that has been underway for the exploitation of Greenland’s resources. Drew Horn, a former Trump administration Energy Department official and CEO/part-owner of GreenMet, is no stranger to public declarations of the pursuit of Greenland—in his case, particularly the pursuit of mineral mining. But this is far from the extent of Horn’s desires for the land.
Horn and GreenMet have filed proposals for the construction of a data center in the remote area of Kangerlussuaq—Greenland’s area of highest terrestrial fauna diversity. The massive, multi-billion-dollar center that they propose is projected to have 1.5 GW capacity in two years time.
What is critical about critical mineral mining?
It is no secret that mining in Greenland is desired for the economic advantage of U.S. industry; governments and major corporations internationally are vested in the acquisition of critical minerals. There is a large misconception, though, that these minerals are essential to the transition into green energy sources. In reality, over 70% of the demand for these minerals comes from sectors entirely separate from energy transition. It should be made clear that, especially in the ever-growing reliance and emphasis on AI in warfare, the U.S. military industrial complex has vested interests in the exploitation of these minerals, while being a leader in the control of them.
While sights may be set northward, it must be understood that the tactics employed and reasonings behind them extend far past Greenland. Fortifying U.S. military presence in the Arctic is aligned with the strategy of keeping China locked in the Pacific. Greenland—where residents struggle for self determination of the island—is caught as one of the numerous locations where the inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China is being played out.
Self determination and Greenland’s future
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen claims that this new Arctic deal is one that could last forever, and that it emphasizes the strength and importance of NATO. Frederiksen says too that the deal respects self-determination for Greenlanders. The prime minister of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, sings a similar tune, advocating for the supposed importance of protecting and strengthening NATO.
But what role does NATO really play in the struggle for the self-determination of Greenlanders? Particularly, for the Indigenous Inuit Greenlanders, who have been struggling to secure true self-determination for hundreds of years? Settler colonialism has been an issue on the island since the 18th century, and forced contraceptive practices took place until the 1990s. While official apologies and compensatory implementations were handed out by the Danish government, the traumatic impacts individually and community-wide remain.
Officials from Greenland and Denmark alike claim that somehow the further cementation of U.S. imperialism in Greenland will support reparations and the restoration of self-determination that has been ripped away from the Inuit communities in Greenland for hundreds of years. But as M.A. Al Gharib aptly wrote in an article from Workers’ Voice earlier this year, “Trump’s utterly despicable threats show in all its ignominy the racism and setter colonial mentality that infuses every fiber of the man and which he and his followers glorify.”
Officials for the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland also maintain that to obtain self-determination, the strengthening of NATO is necessary. But we know this to not be true. The staunchly anti-communist alliance of imperialist powers can only serve to further the interests of imperialism. These interests have never and will never serve the workers of the world, especially Indigenous communities—who have fought for hundreds of years for the right to exist, let alone to gain the right to true political self-determination.
The Trump administration made clear in speeches to the United Nations that there will be at least two major military base build-outs occurring in Greenland as a result of this deal, which amends the defense treaty from 1951. Not only does this enable a U.S. military monopoly on the island, but through its territorial waters, and further restricts foreign investment in Greenland outside of NATO powers.
What comes next for the nearly 60,000 Greenlanders, who “have been turned into a bargaining chip, a pawn to be moved at will on the great chessboard of U.S. imperialism” (Rørtoft-Madsen, Peoples Dispatch)? Despite the claims of lawmakers from Greenland, it is unlikely that their goals of self-determination and sovereignty will be achieved through support from the new deal between the U.S. and Denmark. What has been made clear throughout 2026 is that there is a real fighting spirit amongst the people of Greenland against Trump’s threats.
Greenlanders should not shy away from pushing back against the variety of harmful U.S. imperialist developments. Since Trump may have succeeded in pushing for increased American influence on happenings within Greenland, the threats he has shared throughout interviews, official reports, and on social media may be on pause. The real dangers, however, are growing.
Photo: The New York Times