US President Donald Trump has brought the region of Greenland to the focal point of international geopolitics once again after associating the Arctic island nation with the homeland security of America and the ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense project. This has immediately elicited a sharp reaction from Russia and raised concerns for the Chinese government.
Greenland is basically ecologically closer to Canada, geologically to Iceland, and geographically to Europe, he continued. “It is vital to the national security of the United States. It is, therefore, an integral part of the Golden Dome, the multi-level missile defence shield, the objective of which is to detect, track, and intercept ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, and cruise missiles.” In another posting in the Truth Social, he added: “If Greenland were ours, NATO would be FAR MORE FEARLESS. Anything less than that is UNACCEPTABLE.
The Importance of Greenland
What gives Greenland value does not have anything to do with its resources but has everything to do with its geography. Greenland is strategically placed between North America and Eurasia and lies along the shortest paths from Russia to the US. This path of any intercontinental ballistic missile fired from Russia towards the US will probably pass through the Arctic area and hence early warning in this area is of utmost necessity.
For US military strategists, Greenland has been an indispensable early warning station since the 1940s. Under a 1951 defense agreement with Denmark, the US administers a Pituffik Space Base in northern Greenland. Equipped with sophisticated missile warning and space surveillance radar, the facility is already integrated into the US missile defense system through such features as the AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar.
The reasoning underlying Trump’s proposal could hardly be simpler: by extending the range of missile defense from Greenland, it will enhance the golden dome’s capabilities in detecting and tracking any possible threats targeting the United States mainland, specifically Alaska.
What is a Golden Dome?
The “Golden Dome” is a vision, not a functioning scheme. It has an integrated missile defence architecture that will include ranges of sensors in space and on the ground and in the sea, as well as differing levels of interception, possibly in space as well.
While the US missile defenses are currently designed to deal with threats thrown out by so-called ‘rogue states, the development of Golden Dome is targeted at dealing with threats emanating from the use of advanced weapons in the arsenal of ‘great powers.’ It has been termed as the ‘spiritual successor’ to President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative which will cost an astonishing $175 billion according to the estimates put forward by President-elect Donald Trump, but many believe that the real cost could well exceed that amount.
The goal is also part of the problem. Arms control experts have debated that nuclear near-invulnerability undermines nuclear deterrence because it incentivizes others to build up their arsenal, or develop weapons capable of evading the defenses.
The sharp reaction of Russia
But Russian officials and analysts have been more forthcoming with public criticism. Alexander Stepanov, a military expert at the Russian Presidential Academy, told the state agency TASS that any Golden Dome infrastructure deployed to Greenland would be “directed primarily against Russian hypersonic weapons.”
Russia currently deploys several systems capable of traveling above Mach 5, in unpredictable paths: Kinzhal, Tsirkon and Avangard. Moscow believes that expanded radar coverage and tracking stations in Greenland might weaken its second-strike capability.
Former head of the Russian space agency Dmitry Rogozin was more forthright, saying Greenland’s Arctic position makes it “perfect” to monitor northern missile trajectories. He said the Golden Dome risks taking apart the strategic balance that has kept the world from nuclear war since 1945.
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China’s silent concern
The reaction of China has been cautious too, but no less sceptical: “This so-called ‘Golden Dome’ system embodies an unrestrained missile defence concept, which might contravene the provisions set out in the Outer Space Treaty, leading to the militarization of space,” said the spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
It is considered that this step distances itself from the policy of limited deterrence inasmuch as it aims, for the first time, at large nuclear-weapon states. The success of Golden Dome is feared to make it easier for them to threaten the US homeland.
The Trump Greenland initiative epitomizes his approach to the world: dominance through territory and technology rather than through arms control and strategic restraint. If there is one thing on which everyone can agree, it’s that doubts abound over an imminent Russian or Chinese threat to Greenland, and there’s little dispute over the justification for Arctic missile defense.
Will the Golden Dome do anything more than talk, of course, remains to be seen. One thing is certain, however: Greenland has once again found itself at the forefront of the great-power rivalry – not for what may lie beneath its ice sheets, but for what its geography allows observers to view.
In the Arctic, geography really is destiny. It seems Greenland might be the key to the “Golden Dome” in Trump’s strategic vision.
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