European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, Germany & Netherlands – ECCI
Europe is still unprepared to defend Greenland
euractiv – Relief in European capitals after Donald Trump ruled out using force over Greenland has quickly given way to a more uncomfortable question: could Europe actually defend the island if it had to? The episode has laid bare years of underinvestment and complacency in Europe’s Arctic posture.
Now that US President Donald Trump has said that he does not plan to seize Greenland by force, European leaders appear to be breathing a sigh of relief. Another major crisis has been narrowly averted.
Still, Trump continues to argue that Washington should have a stake in the Arctic island to bolster NATO and US security. He notably said that Greenland is “surrounded” by Russian and Chinese ships – a claim that two people briefed on the latest intelligence have suggested is false, and that NATO maritime command won’t confirm.
But even if the island isn’t immediately under threat from Washington or Moscow, Trump’s comments have raised serious questions about how Europe could defend it, particularly given its harsh environment.
“Europe’s problem is not that Washington sees Greenland as a strategic asset. It is that Europe has largely failed to do so itself,” wrote Justina Budginaite-Froehly, a non-resident senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Council. “That complacency is now dangerous.”
Historically, Denmark has organised the defence of the island to fight environmental threats such as oil spills or illegal fishing, with military imperatives not visibly high on the priority list.
The defence investment packages that Denmark announced in recent years have shown that Copenhagen has started to take the island’s defence seriously, several diplomats and military officers at NATO told Euractiv in the past months.
Dressed for the weather
As recent tensions ratcheted up, Denmark and Greenland called for opening a NATO-led mission on the island. A few dozen troops were recently deployed to Greenland to assess the infrastructure needed to establish a more permanent presence.
Still, any international military presence would need to include troops trained to resist the rough, icy conditions on and around the island.
Few countries have trained troops for such a hostile environment, and tanks and other land-based systems are useless on Greenlandic ice. Given the terrain’s complexity, the Danes have long relied on dog sledges rather than battle tanks.
Only a handful of NATO allies are trained to operate in extremely cold environments. Norway, Sweden, and Finland have some experience with terrain similar to that of Greenland. France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom also have experienced mountain troops.
“You’d need a couple hundred fighting troops,” said Siemon Wezeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). But such troops would most likely come from Western countries, since the Nordics have borders with Russia to defend.
Anchors away
The maritime presence around Greenland would also need to be ramped up if there is a threat from ships around the island.
NATO already has several naval groups patrolling the high north and the Arctic, as well as the Baltic and the Mediterranean. These rely on assets from several European countries, such as Norway, Germany and Denmark.
But not all ships are equal, especially against ice. Picking a ship to send to Arctic waters is not easy. The hull of the ship must be hard enough to be resistant to floating ice to avoid breakage. In NATO, only Denmark and Canada own such hardware.
European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, Germany & Netherlands – ECCI
