A Massive Arctic Military Buildup Will Center On Greenland

The US has been trying to acquire Greenland since 1867 when, fresh from buying Alaska from Russia, Secrtary of State William Seward unsuccessfully raised the idea of purchasing Greenland and Iceland from Denmark.

Harry Truman offered US$100 million for Greenland in 1946, but Denmark refused. Instead the two countries agreed to a treaty in 1951 giving the US considerable latitude to deploy thousands of US troops and install the weather stations and early warning systems that characterized Cold War politics.

But when the Soviet Union collapsed, heralding an end to the Cold War, Greenland was relegated in importance. The US presence in Greenland went from more than 10,000 personnel on 50 bases to a single settlement at Pituffik space base (formerly Thule air base) with about 150-200 people.

But several factors – the Ukraine war, increased assertiveness from Russia and China in the region and the steady melt caused by climate change – have reinvigorated US interest in the Arctic region. In the US president's view, Greenland is a strategic vulnerability.

Greenland sits at the western perimeter of what is called the GIUK (Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom) gap, which is vital to NATO defense of Europe. From here, submarines from Russia's Northern Fleet in Murmansk can traverse into the North Atlantic, threatening targets on America's east coast. In a crisis, Russian naval forces would move into both the GIUK gap and Norwegian waters, deterring American vessels from pushing north and effectively isolating NATO allies in the region.

Many of Russia's missile sites and nuclear air bases in the region are sited on the Kola peninsula, on the eastern edge of Scandinavia, which is also home to its Northern Fleet surface vessels and submarines. From the Kola peninsula, the shortest direct flight route from Russia to targets on the American east coast lies across Greenland.

Russia's Arctic facilities have been significantly upgraded over the past decade, even as the bulk of its defense budget has been directed towards its war in Ukraine. Seasonal air bases have been coverted for all-year-round operations and extended to allow the use of even the heaviest of its nuclear bomber fleet at locations in the Far North such as Nagurskoye in Alexandra Land which is part of the Franz Josef Land and Temp on Kotelny Island in the New Siberian Islands.

At present, Russian combat aircraft and strategic bombers, such as the Mikoyan Mig-31, Sukhoi Su-35, and the Tupolev Tu-95, can operate from these bases and potentially neutralize Pituffik. The space base is at present the key US defence establishment in the region, able to detect enemy ballistic missiles as soon as they take off.

Joint Russian and Chinese air patrols now regularly operate in the region, raising concerns about the defence readiness of Alaska. Many of their weapons are what is called “stand-off”, which means they can operate out of the range of the defensive weapons arrayed against them.