With little official information on what Trump earlier called “a framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland”, which prompted the president to call off tariff threats that he had issued in an effort to secure American ownership of Greenland, and sparked a massive market rally (just as JPMorgan’s trading desk said would happen), the NYT reports that the announcement followed a NATO meeting on Wednesday “where top military officers from the alliance’s member states discussed a compromise in which Denmark would give the United States sovereignty over small pockets of Greenlandic land where the United States could build military bases.”
The NYT goes on to note that according to two of the officials, who attended the meeting, the deal compares “to the United Kingdom’s bases in Cyprus, which are regarded as British territory.”
What wasn’t reported is that the US already has a military base in Greenland, namely Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), where about 150 United States service members are permanently stationed as of 2025, after the United States significantly reduced its presence from 6,000 personnel during the Cold War.
The US has had a military presence on Greenland since the second world war, when the island was left undefended during the Nazi occupation of its then colonial ruler, Denmark. The US moved in, setting up airfields, weather stations and defences and watched for German submarines in the North Atlantic. Ten years later, the arrangement was formalised via a defence treaty with Denmark, which is part of Nato, that allowed the US the right to operate military facilities there. During the cold war, Pituffik again became an important Arctic base for the US.
Under the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement, the United States was allowed to operate the base under a NATO framework, as long as both Denmark and the United States remain NATO members. Under the agreement, the Danish national flag must be flown at the base to recognize that the base is on Danish territory, but the United States is allowed to fly its own flag alongside the Danish flag on the facilities it operates.
The 1951 agreement was modified in 2004, giving the USA unrestricted access to the Pituffik base. Sure enough, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has referred to this recently. If the Americans want to expand their military presence beyond that, they only must consult and inform the authorities in Nuuk and Copenhagen.
