The president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced this Wednesday an agreement with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Greenland, which will be “very good for the United States and all NATO countries.” As a consequence of this agreement, Trump decided to suspend his threat of tariffs starting February 1 against eight European countries. For his part, Rutte described his talk with the president as a “very good discussion,” which dealt with how to guarantee the defense of the Arctic among allies and how to keep Russia and China “away.”
The pre-agreement reached within the framework of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and in whose negotiations the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, also participated, consists of four pillars, among which are the renegotiation of the agreement to station US troops on the Arctic island to create the ‘Golden Dome’ anti-missile shield and US control of investments in the Danish autonomous territory.
The four basic points of the agreement are:
Threat to impose new tariffs withdrawn
Trump has already announced that he will desist from imposing new tariffs on the eight European countries that sent soldiers to Greenland starting February 1 to participate in military maneuvers led by Denmark.
In turn, the leaders of the European Union (EU) planned to discuss at an extraordinary summit different possibilities to respond to this trade threat, including the most forceful, the so-called anti-coercion instrument – nicknamed “trade bazooka” and the introduction of tariffs worth some 93 billion euros on US imports.
Anti-missile shield ‘Golden Dome’
An agreement on the stationing of troops in Greenland dating back to 1951, which was already amended once in 2004 and titled “Defence: Greenland”, will be renegotiated. In that document, article 1 states that the Thule or Pituffik air base in the north of the Arctic island “is the only defense zone in Greenland.”
The goal is to amend it again to include a clause on the ‘Golden Dome’, the anti-missile shield that Trump wants to establish and that will cost about $175 billion. Trump wants the shield, inspired by that of Israel, to be operational until the end of his current term in 2029 and to protect – mainly from a possible threat from China and Russia – not only the US, but also Canada.
Investments in Greenland
The United States Government may intervene in the control of investments in Greenland. In this way, it could prevent competing countries such as China or Russia from securing resources on the island. Trump already announced the day before on CNBC that the pre-agreement will include rights to rare earth minerals on the island.
Stronger commitment to security in the Arctic region
European NATO states are more firmly committed to security in the Arctic region. This is a demand from Trump, who used the alleged presence of Chinese and Russian ships and submarines around Greenland as an argument to affirm that he wanted to acquire the island (with title) for reasons of national security and that only the United States was capable of guaranteeing the security of that “mass of ice” to protect its country and the world.
The pre-agreement does not include, as far as is known, any mention of the sovereignty of the island and its territorial integrity, which Denmark and Greenland have always refused to hand over to Trump.
