ANALYSIS: Trump shuts Greenland to Beijing and Moscow, and opens it to his planes up to Canada’s border

A gully across a rock

Kennedy Channel, eighteen kilometres

A gully runs across Tartupaluk from north to south, and the agreement signed on June 14, 2022, made it the land border between Canada and Greenland.

The island Canadians call Hans covers just 1.3 square kilometres. Bare sandstone. Nobody lives there.

Not a tree. Not a house. Wind.

It sits in the middle of the Kennedy Channel, exactly 18 kilometres from Ellesmere Island and from Greenland, according to the Arctic Yearbook.

Three coordinates are enough to draw the line. Denmark and Greenland got slightly more land than Canada.

It was the last land sovereignty dispute in the Arctic, the Arctic Yearbook notes. It was settled amicably.

Hunters from both shores

The 2022 agreement guarantees the Inuit of Avanersuaq, Greenland and Nunavut access to the whole island. For hunting. For fishing. For traditional activities, and future ones.

A hunter who crosses the gully does not change countries in his boots. He changes countries on the map. The snow crunches the same on either side.

That is where Canada begins. It is also where the territory covered by the defence agreement signed on September 22 in New York ends.

Same snow on either side, not the same regime.

New York, September 22

A text finally published

On September 22, 2026, in New York, three leaders signed the agreement. Donald Trump. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.

It happened on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The partners are strengthening their common security, Mette Frederiksen said, according to The Well News. Greenland remains a loyal friend of the United States, Jens-Frederik Nielsen assured.

The White House published the text. That is valuable. At last we can read instead of listen.

The agreement amends and supplements the one of April 27, 1951, on the defence of Greenland. It will only take effect after parliamentary procedures in Denmark and Greenland.

Two new areas

The text provides for the modernization and expansion of Pituffik Space Base.

The text provides for an additional defence area at Narsarsuaq and at Mestersvig.

The text provides for other areas, if the parties agree. Without agreement within 90 days at the permanent committee, the discussion moves up to deputy ministers, then to ministers.

The text provides for a fast-track procedure for unmanned military installations.

Finally, the text provides for contracts reserved, as far as possible, for Greenlandic companies.

Narsarsuaq is the old Bluie West One of the Second World War, The Well News recalls. The North is rearming on old runways.

Reading a treaty beats listening to ten speeches.

Beijing and Moscow shut out

Articles IX and X

Let us start with what is good.

No state outside NATO will be able to establish a military installation in Greenland, staffed or unstaffed. No state outside NATO will be able to maintain a permanent military presence there, unless the parties agree.

Article X goes further. It targets states and investors from a country that is neither a NATO member, nor a NATO partner, nor a member of the European Union.

Those will be able neither to control, nor to significantly influence, nor to access non-public information in particularly sensitive sectors. The text cites critical infrastructure and resource extraction.

A State Department official said it bluntly, according to Al Jazeera. China and Russia will be able neither to have bases there nor to send troops.

A point for the West

That is a good move. A closed door. A real one.

Beijing and Moscow are seeking more economic, political and strategic influence in the Arctic, The Well News writes. In Greenland, the answer is now in writing.

The agreement strengthens collective security, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, according to The Well News.

In Ottawa, Defence Minister David McGuinty called it “encouraging” as early as September 19, according to The Canadian Press.

Here is my reading. The September 22 agreement is first of all a good move against Beijing and Moscow. It is paid for by those who were not at the table.

No end date. No Canada.

The door is shut to Beijing. Who holds the key is another matter.

Fly over, land, dive

Article VI

Article VI is the shortest to read and the longest to measure.

American aircraft will be able to fly over all of Greenland’s territory. American aircraft will be able to land there, territorial waters included, “without restriction except as mutually agreed upon by the Parties.”

American public vessels will be able to move beneath the sea in those territorial waters. Same regime.

Under the sea, nothing shows from the coast. You hear the wind. You do not hear the propeller.

American forces will move freely between the defence areas. By land. By air. By sea.

Fly over. Land. Dive. Three verbs for a whole territory.

Hunting and fishing, if possible

The text adds a caveat. These rights must respect Greenlandic society and its way of life, including hunting and fishing.

“To the maximum extent possible,” it specifies.

And yet the 2022 wording on Tartupaluk was clearer: continued access and freedom of movement across the whole island for the Inuit.

To the maximum extent possible. Five words that weigh more than the rest of the article.

No restriction for the planes, whatever is possible for the hunters.

Up to the gully

All of the territory

Back to the rock in the Kennedy Channel.

The Greenlandic half of Tartupaluk is Greenlandic territory. That is the whole point of the 2022 agreement.

Read literally, Article VI would therefore let American aircraft land there. A few steps from the gully. A few steps from Canada.

Nobody is announcing a landing on a 1.3-square-kilometre rock. That is not the point.

The point is reach. Once the agreement takes effect, the American military regime in Greenland will touch a Canadian land border.

This is not a threat. It is geography.

No chair for Ottawa

Canada is not a party to the agreement. It did not have to be. It is an agreement among the United States, Denmark and Greenland.

And yet the map does not stop at the signatories. Ellesmere Island is 18 kilometres from Tartupaluk.

No end date. No Canada. And a gully for the only seam.

A border of three coordinates now carries a continental weight.

No end date

Article XI

The agreement has no end date. It can only be amended by mutual agreement, Article XI specifies.

No expiry. No scheduled review. Only the consent of all three parties can change it.

If Greenland becomes independent, it will have to stay in NATO, even if that means reapplying for membership.

If Greenland becomes independent, it will have to take over, from day one, all of Denmark’s rights and obligations under the agreement.

Greenland has 56,000 inhabitants, Al Jazeera recalls. In January 2025, a poll showed 85% opposed to becoming American.

A future state already bound

Yet the preamble recognizes the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination.

In other words, Greenland will be able to choose independence. It will not be able to choose its alliance.

A country that would be born with a treaty already signed for it.

A people of 56,000. A commitment with no date.

The detail is legal. The consequence is human. Young people in Nuuk who will one day vote for their country will inherit a clause they did not negotiate.

Independence is allowed. Choosing sides is not.

The word and the paper

All other needs

Donald Trump presented the agreement as giving the United States “permanent control” over Greenland’s security. And over “all other needs.”

The text, for its part, reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark.

Before the signing, a State Department official claimed Washington could build new sites without the consent of Greenland or Denmark, Al Jazeera reports.

The signed text says otherwise. Any new area goes through the permanent committee and is decided by mutual agreement.

Free, with a cost

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke of a deal reached “at zero cost to the U.S. taxpayer,” according to The Well News.

The White House did not detail future construction, operating and maintenance costs, the same outlet notes.

Free, says the minister. No estimate, says the file.

One last detail, at the end of the text. The agreement is written in English, Danish and Greenlandic. In case of ambiguity, the English version prevails.

Three languages. Only one counts.

Between the word and the text lies the gap an ally must always measure.

The president talks about control. The paper talks about consent.

What the Danes already wanted

Mikkel Olesen, Copenhagen

The best argument against this good move comes from Copenhagen.

Mikkel Olesen is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. He doubts that excluding China and Russia is much of a concession.

The Danes and Greenlanders never wanted those bases, he tells Al Jazeera. Nothing new, then.

Imran Bayoumi, a former Pentagon official, told Reuters that Washington could have obtained most of it through diplomacy, without damaging the relationship with NATO.

In Copenhagen, a 49-year-old salesman summed it up for the same agency. The United States will get what it could have had by asking politely.

The money, not the bases

That is fair for the bases. It is less fair for the money.

Article X does not talk about soldiers. It talks about control, influence and access in critical infrastructure and resource extraction.

And China holds 60% of the known rare earth deposits and restricts their export, Al Jazeera recalls.

Closing Greenland’s mines and infrastructure to Beijing’s capital was not a given. It is now in writing.

The bases were already refused. The money was not.

Ottawa applauds, from afar

McGuinty’s word

Canada, for its part, applauded.

Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill, David McGuinty called it encouraging that the United States and Greenland had found a way forward together. Arctic nations are coming together, he added.

He also welcomed the fact that NATO allies understand the Arctic is part of their responsibilities.

Encouraging. The word is right. It is also short.

Ottawa is right on substance. A Greenland closed to Beijing and Moscow also protects the Canadian North.

The centre closed in 2023

And yet I have to write what unsettles this reading. Canada’s absence also stems from its own choices.

In 2023, the Trudeau government closed the Canadian International Arctic Centre, housed at the embassy in Oslo since 2009. Global Affairs Canada expected to save $550,000 a year, according to a briefing note obtained by The Canadian Press.

An internal audit in May 2025 concluded that the closure had deprived the Global Arctic Leadership Initiative of “key contacts in the Arctic.”

Former ambassador to Oslo Artur Wilczynski calls the closure incoherent. Those ties are not built over a video call, he says.

That is true, and it does not change this. A neighbour who stepped back does not give anyone the right to decide in its place.

You cannot claim a chair you put away yourself.

One employee in Nuuk

A consulate inside Iceland’s

In February, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand opened Canada’s first consulate in Nuuk.

With no building available, it is housed in Iceland’s consulate.

It was supposed to employ three full-time equivalents. It has only one employee, The Canadian Press reported on September 27.

Its operating cost is estimated at $8.76 million over five years, or about $1.75 million a year.

Those figures were for planning, Global Affairs Canada replied. They could exceed actual costs, in part because the consulate employs fewer people than planned.

Fewer people. That is the whole story.

The department did not say when the promised consulate in Alaska will open. Or how many people will work there.

Two areas against one office

Let us put them side by side.

Washington gets two new defence sites, overflight of all of Greenland and undersea access to its waters.

Ottawa has one employee in a borrowed office.

One.

“The Arctic is a geopolitical hot spot,” says Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. In his view, the department lacks depth in Arctic diplomacy.

I admit it: that number worries me more than the agreement itself. An agreement can be read. An absence cannot.

Two sites on one side, one employee on the other.

Tromsø, Nuuk, Reykjavik

Marc Lanteigne’s words

Marc Lanteigne is a political scientist from Montreal. He teaches at the Arctic University of Norway, in Tromsø, and at the University of Greenland.

In Greenland and Norway, he says, people are troubled by a very sudden international interest in the Arctic.

He attributes it to new shipping routes. And to Donald Trump’s talk of annexing Greenland, Canada and Iceland.

Questions of sovereignty and of the livelihoods of Arctic peoples sometimes get lost in the crush, he says.

Para-diplomacy

He still sees an opening. Trump’s threats have raised Canada’s standing as a partner in economic cooperation and education.

Canada does not need a crowd of diplomats in Nuuk, he believes. It needs people who build ties for Indigenous communities, businesses and researchers.

Even with Anchorage, he says, the capitals are at odds. The concerns are alike.

This month, Iceland summoned the American ambassador over a map posted by Trump, with the American flag covering North America, Greenland and Iceland, CBC reports.

Three territories on one map. Only one signed an agreement.

Showing up counts more than talking loud.

Who pays for the agreement

The good move and its price

Here is where I land. The good move is real. The price has been shifted.

Who pays? Tomorrow’s Greenlanders, bound to NATO and to this text even if they become independent.

Who pays? Hunters and fishers, whose way of life will be respected to the maximum extent possible.

Who pays? Canada, which will see an American military regime reach a gully on Tartupaluk.

The method

And there is the method. Months of threats, peaking in January, preceded the signing and shook NATO, according to Reuters.

The threat produced an agreement. That is the bad move. It teaches Washington that pressure on an ally pays.

Canada has heard the same words, Marc Lanteigne points out. Annexation. Maps. A flag over the whole continent.

A good move against Beijing. A bad move against allies. Both fit in the same text.

A good move paid for by those who did not sign.

The neighbour without a chair

The gully, again

The gully on Tartupaluk has not moved.

Hunters from Nunavut and Avanersuaq will be able to cross it, as the 2022 agreement provides.

And yet on the other side, the regime has changed. It is more American than yesterday, and it has no end date.

What Ottawa accepts

What place will Canada hold in a North being negotiated without it?

Canada has had an Arctic policy since December 2024. It has an Arctic ambassador, Virginia Mearns. It has a consulate in Nuuk.

The answer does not fit in an encouraging statement.

It fits in an office in Nuuk, and in the number of people who work there.

Two sites. One employee. One gully.

Shut to Beijing, open without end, and Canada on the sidelines.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• White House — text of the Greenland defence agreement, September 22, 2026
• The Canadian Press — McGuinty calls the Greenland deal encouraging, September 19, 2026
• The Canadian Press — the Nuuk consulate and Arctic diplomats, September 27, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• The Well News — the signing and Narsarsuaq, September 23, 2026
• Al Jazeera — Trump’s claim of permanent control, tested, September 19, 2026
• Arctic Yearbook — the Tartupaluk settlement, background, 2022