George Beglan holds an LLM (Distinction) from Durham and read Jurisprudence at Oxford; he has published on law reform in the Cambridge Law Review
Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly at the end of last month that the new Greenland agreement gives America ‘‘ on the island. Copenhagen says the deal respects Danish sovereignty.
The text, signed in New York on 22 September, supports in full.
The agreement transfers no territory and grants no mining rights; resource extraction appears only to screen out certain external investors. America may expand Pituffik, and may open defence areas at Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig on terms still to be agreed. Any further base goes to a joint committee to be settled by mutual agreement. If Copenhagen and Nuuk refuse, the text offers no way to make them agree (realities aside).
Then the substance. The 1951 defence agreement ran for as long as the North Atlantic Treaty; as Ole Wæver of the University of Copenhagen told TIME, the old deal could have ended with NATO.
The new one has no end date and no exit clause, and its preamble speaks of reinforcing the arrangement’s permanent nature. If Greenland becomes independent, Denmark and Greenland must ensure the new state stays in NATO, or applies to join, and assumes Denmark’s obligations. No state outside NATO may base forces on the island unless all three governments agree. Investors from outside NATO, its partners and the EU may not take control of sensitive sectors on the same condition. American submarines may move submerged through Greenland’s territorial sea, where the law of the sea would ordinarily require them to surface.
The succession clause deserves a second reading. Base rights do not reliably pass to a new state: the 1978 Vienna Convention on state succession, a codification with few parties, expressly excludes foreign military bases from the rule that territorial arrangements survive a change of sovereign. Washington has contracted for what general international law would not reliably give it.
In January Mr Trump explained why he wanted to buy the island: ‘You defend ownership. You don’t defend leases.
‘Having failed (perhaps deliberately; The Art of the Deal) to buy it, his administration has written the most durable lease it could.
History sharpens this point. The first Greenland agreement was signed in April 1941 by a Danish envoy acting without the sanction of his occupied government. It justified American bases by the defence of ‘the American Continent’, and either side could end it on twelve months’ notice once the danger had passed; in 1947 Denmark asked for consultations to do exactly that.
The 1951 agreement tied the arrangement to NATO instead. The 2026 text restores the American continent as a purpose, alongside NATO and Greenland, and leaves the exit out.
This is an approach adopted by a government which has stopped relying on the future conduct of its friends. It does not assume that NATO will last, what an independent Greenland would choose, or that investment screening can be left to the Danes.
Recall that in January, Washington threatened Britain and seven other allies with tariffs of 10 per cent, rising to 25 per cent in June, until a deal was done for the ‘Complete and Total purchase of Greenland’
Their offence was sending personnel to the island. Keir Starmer told Mr Trump that tariffs on allies for pursuing NATO’s collective security were wrong, and the threat was dropped after Davos.
Trust between states is a forecast about behaviour. Washington has just recorded, in treaty language, that it no longer makes that forecast about its allies. Britain should stop making it about Washington.
Defenders of the deal will say, fairly, that more American radars and submarines in the North Atlantic serve Britain too. They do; the question is the terms on which that help now comes, and Britain is closer to Greenland’s position than we like to admit. RAF Fylingdales and the radar atPituffik belong to the same set of upgraded American early-warning radars. Washington asked in 2002 to upgrade Fylingdales for missile defence, and Golden Dome may bring further requests.
Our deterrent relies on Trident missiles drawn from a stock shared with the US Navy and maintained in Georgia. The Greenland text shows what Washington now asks of places that host its infrastructure: permanence, exclusivity and a say over who else comes in.
We must assume these requests will reach us.
The answer is rearmament aimed at reducing leverage. On NATO’s measure Britain spent 2.3 per cent of GDP on defence last year and expects 2.6 per cent this year. The Defence Investment Plan published in June takes the budget to about £79 billion by 2029/30. John Healey’s resignation letter complained that the settlement was backloaded and reached only 2.68 per cent of GDP in 2030.
The formal commitment is 3.5 per cent by 2035.
Start instead with what we cannot operate, sustain or replace without American consent, and work outwards: munitions we can make and replenish ourselves, air and missile defence we control, and a deterrent that does not rest on a single supply line. The plan’s emphasis on sovereign munitions is the right instinct; the timetable is too slow to match it.
Washington secured what it wanted in Greenland by permanently securing what it would otherwise have had to keep asking allies for. Britain can no longer draft treaties on those terms.
It can make sure there is less to ask for.