How Trump Should Think About the Arctic

The drama over how far U.S. President Donald Trump would go to acquire Greenland seems to have come and gone. But it’s still worth discussing a longer-term issue: What is the ideal Arctic policy for the United States, and how serious is the challenge posed by China and Russia?

On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with a leading Arctic expert, Heather Conley, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush and led the German Marshall Fund for nearly three years. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or download the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: So, why does Greenland matter so much?

Heather Conley: Location, location, location. It is strategically positioned in the North Atlantic and is a gateway to the Arctic. As the Cold War began, that strategic location became very critical to detect Soviet missiles, now Russian missiles. It’s also a key location to detect Russian submarines, playing a critical role in the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap to detect those submarines before they got too close to the eastern coast.

RA: And, of course, the melting Arctic ice makes Greenland’s location even more salient. How much of a threat do Russia and China actually pose to Greenland?

HC: Russia has begun to shift its military posture in the Russian Arctic, building new military installations in their far archipelago Franz Josef Land, modernizing their nuclear submarines, strike capabilities, and their new hypersonic missiles. So, Russia is attempting to recreate that Soviet-like threat, with both missile and nuclear submarine capabilities. We’re also seeing a real uptick in hybrid activities, though not in Greenland per se. They’ve been concentrated in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago on the Svalbard region. We’re seeing dual-use capabilities on their shadow tankers.

China’s role is different and needs to be watched very, very closely. We’re seeing China’s presence in the Arctic right now in science and commercial matters. But similar to the Russians, there’s a lot of dual-use work. China is using manned submersibles as the research vessels in the Arctic. They are doing a lot of scientific research on the seabed floor, which could be used in future seabed mining, acoustic use potentially for a future submarine fleet that could come that far, and potentially disrupting communication. It’s a longer-term play.

And right now, Russia and China are working together in very new and different ways. But that activity is not in the North Atlantic Arctic. It’s actually in the North Pacific Arctic near Alaska.

RA: Talk about the 1951 pact between the United States and Denmark. What has that agreement actually enabled the U.S. military to do, and how much of that capacity has been utilized so far?

HC: The history here is super important. In 1946, the Truman administration did make a very quiet offer to purchase Greenland, because of the vital role that Greenland played during the Second World War. So again, there’s always a kernel of truth in saying past presidents had expressed interest. The Greenlandic and Danish governments said politely, quietly, “No, thank you.” And then, three years later, in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded. So you had this multilateral NATO-ization concentrating on protecting the North Atlantic.

Then two years after the NATO founding was this bilateral instrument, which has been updated over time. That bilateral instrument allowed the U.S. to have a really significant posture on Greenland—upward of 16 military installations, 10,000 U.S. forces performing a variety of tasks such as long-range bombers, refueling, and then being very vigilant about protecting the North Atlantic. All because of that location. Over time, and certainly at the end of the Cold War, it really atrophied. And now today we have one base, the Pituffik Space Base on the northwestern coast of Greenland, which is about 150 U.S. forces and several more hundred contractors. And that’s really our early-warning radar for detection as part of our missile defense architecture. So we had a massive presence. And now we have a very small presence. But that agreement still allows us, through a bilateral negotiation, to increase our military presence, if the U.S. wishes.

RA: So, Heather, I’ve tried here to avoid the political drama around this, but from President Trump’s perspective, at least, does the United States need to own Greenland? Does it give the United States [more] necessary leverage than this 1951 instrument allows it to have?

HC: President Trump’s views of foreign policy and national security are very much through the lens of a real estate professional. Treaties or leases or arrangements, they can be broken. He believes that ownership is the only qualifier where you can exercise control. And that’s very, very important in his framing of this because—and this is to the frustration of the Danish and Greenlandic governments—in our current agreements, before all of this intensification of ownership talk, the door was open. Both had been saying, “We would welcome you, but we have to start in a negotiation.” That was never started.

It was this sole focus on acquisition and ownership, which is, of course, the red line that both the Greenlandic and Danish governments drew. I thought when Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary [of State] Marco Rubio met with the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, we found a way forward with a high-level working group. And then the next day, of course, the White House spokeswoman went straight to, “This is a technical group to get acquisition.” So we have to get off acquisition and ownership. We can have a lot of additional U.S. presence, but I’m not sure exactly what we are seeking right now.

RA: If we broaden out from Greenland, what is the current U.S. Arctic policy? The National Security Strategy that was released in December, for instance, didn’t really mention the Arctic, though it does talk at length about the Western Hemisphere.

HC: The Arctic is implicit in Western Hemispheric defense. And of course, the Arctic is America’s northern front line of defense from missiles, from submarine attack. But it’s not talked about more broadly, except very specifically when it comes to Greenland. There’s not an overarching policy.

You have to be a sort of policy detective. First and foremost, where the administration has been most successful is in accelerating the building of icebreakers, which Trump began in his first term. And now we’re seeing a very significant increase of Polar Security Cutter and Arctic Security Cutter programs with our allies and friends such as Canada and Finland. This icebreaker pact is the centerpiece, honestly, of Arctic policy writ large. And then, unfortunately, the focus on Canada and Greenland, but about control. It’s incorporation and annexation rather than what we’re doing together.

RA: What should a sensible Arctic policy look like for the United States, keeping in mind all the other threats and concerns the White House needs to attend to globally?

HC: The challenge with the Arctic is that it’s a long-term security issue. You have a window of opportunity to begin to prepare. But because this is a theater of operation that no one wants to divert their precious budget resources to support, what has happened over the last 20 years is that we write strategy after strategy, but don’t put forward a clear budget or approach it as a multiyear security package. There’s just been sort of a long-standing reluctance. So we’re already behind.

We have two vectors of approach to the Arctic. We have the North Pacific and the North Atlantic. Of course, we’ve totally concentrated on the importance of the North Atlantic, which I don’t want to downplay, but we have the other theater, which is where we’re seeing Russia and China exercising together. We’re not prepared for that in the defense of the third island chain. So we don’t have a deep-water port yet in Alaska—we’re working on one in Nome. We don’t have the hangar space, the runways, the capabilities needed for a persistent presence near Alaska. So my recommendation to any administration: Dedicate a multiyear Arctic security budget to this. It involves, obviously, the military and the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security. Building icebreakers is an important part. But it’s also satellites, sensors, uncrewed systems, exercises, and that persistent presence. It’s also about working closely with allies because that’s how we get there together and we amplify our power. We need to think about new command-and-control issues related to this because it’s the Arctic. You have a European Arctic and a North American Arctic. They’re very different. And this does require a more concerted effort. So I hope that this conversation brings us to another level of focus, prioritization, and most importantly, execution of an effective Arctic security package.

RA: Let me ask you the same question, but with a European point of view. Obviously, the U.S. and Europe are connected through NATO. But separately, how should Europe be thinking about the Arctic? Does it need to be taking it more seriously than it currently is?

HC: One of the benefits, and I put that in quotes, of this Greenland issue is that you see a very purposeful increase in NATO presence near and around Greenland. You see a more sustainable Arctic policy. Obviously, it’s now part of NATO’s regional defense plans because every Arctic nation, minus Russia, is a member of NATO. But this will put a much more persistent presence there. The European NATO members—Norway, Finland, Sweden—are showing us the way on cold-weather warfare. It’s a skill that atrophied in the United States and that we need to increase. So in March, we’ll see a really significant exercise, Cold Response, in northern Norway and northern Finland. Twenty-five thousand NATO forces, including 3,000 Marines, will participate in that. That’s exactly what we need to do. We need to practice together with our allies and increase our cold-weather fighting capabilities.

The European Union also plays a role. Again, it needs to move past policies and strategies, which are important, and really focus on that hybrid question. Of course, Norway and Iceland are not members of the EU, so NATO is the bridging institution for that. But I’d love to see much more focus and attention on hybrid actions by Russia and China, more transparency in the science, and more resilience.

RA: Of course, Finland and Sweden joining NATO allows NATO to be more active in the Arctic. What about the Arctic Council? What role does it play in governing and making rules about how to engage in the Arctic? And is the council still fit for purpose?

HC: In some ways, we treat the Arctic Council very unfairly. We dump a lot of activities on it and make it do things it was not designed to do in 1996. It focuses on sustainable developments, sustainable activities, and working groups. And while the geopolitical conditions have really changed in the Arctic, the Arctic Council is not allowed to deal with any security issues. Over time, different bodies have sprung up outside of the Arctic Council: Arctic Economic Council, the Arctic Coast Guard Forum, etc. And so there’s an ecosystem, but there isn’t coordination. And then following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Arctic Council basically shut down. It doesn’t really include Russia in formal issues. It’s really struggling. Like all institutions, you either reform and modernize, or become a victim of not being useful in this environment. But there has to be political will amongst the states.

What makes the Arctic Council really unique and important is that the Indigenous communities, the permanent participants, are at the center of it, as they should be. Four million people live in the Arctic, and they need to have a voice there. That makes the Arctic Council important and useful. But we need a way of dealing with the geoeconomics, the geopolitics, the security of it. And we just don’t have a forum yet that’s truly fit for this purpose of great-power competition.

RA: As Russia and China look at the past week of tensions between Europe and the United States, how does that change some of their calculations about the Arctic writ large?

HC: The language around spheres of influence certainly sounds familiar to voices in the Kremlin and in Beijing about their space—“this is ours, we will take it”—and works against territorial integrity and sovereignty. It’s music to their ears.

Americans don’t have a full appreciation of the comparative advantage that the United States has with this global alliance system. The country that will detect the Russian submarines will be Norway. They are our front line of protection, and our partnership with them is critical to the defense of the United States. Anything that we do that causes that alliance to rupture, there’s smiles abounding in Moscow and in Beijing because we are eroding our own unfair advantage.

RA: All of this is about defense and security, but it is also about economics. With the ice melting in that region, shipping routes are opening up, and mining is becoming a lot easier. And mining has become so central to geopolitics in 2026, especially with the rise of AI and the need for energy, critical minerals, and rare earths. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and 30 percent of undiscovered conventional gas resources are in the Arctic. Greenland alone has 1.5 million tons of reserves of rare earth. Heather, how much of a factor are these resources?

HC: Critical minerals and key resources exist across the Arctic, including Canada and Alaska. The numbers from the Geological Survey are impressive, but getting to those resources and then getting those resources to market is a different story. On Greenland, for example, the Canadians, the British, and others have mining licenses, but because there’s such limited infrastructure in Greenland, it’s extremely expensive. So commodity prices have to be high. You need to go into partnerships to bring these critical minerals to market. That’s going to take a decade or so. So that investment pattern has to be stable. And from an American perspective, I’d rather see us double down on investments in Alaska because they have similar findings, and we can do that today.

On energy, liquefied natural gas in the Russian Arctic, the Yamal Peninsula, is beginning to take hold. But Western sanctions against that have shifted that conversation so that the Chinese are investing more. And the maritime traffic going through the Northern Sea Route is mostly Chinese, to reduce shipping times and get that destinational traffic up to the Russian Arctic on the one hand and getting energy and mineral resources back to Asia on the other. So there is a play there, but it’s a long-term play.

An allied critical minerals initiative across the Arctic would make the most sense, but everyone needs to keep their time horizons in check. This is going to take, particularly for Greenland, a decade or so. And now I worry that the U.S. investments are looked at with such suspicion. So I think we’ve complicated what could have been a straightforward and mutually beneficial economic opportunity.