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A Cold War ghost surfaced in a NASA radar image in 2024: Camp Century, the subterranean U.S. Army base entombed beneath Greenland’s ice sheet. Scientists stumbled onto the buried base on a research flight and then stitched together the outlines of a secret project whose traces are now at the mercy of a warming Arctic. That rediscovery—a reminder of how deeply the United States is already embedded on the island—landed a year before Washington revived an even eerier idea: "owning" Greenland.
In the past week, President Donald Trump tied his demand for "Complete and Total Control of Greenland" to a strange grievance over the Nobel Peace Prize and threatened tariffs on European nations that object, prompting headlines about trade war and NATO rupture. The paradox is that America already possesses sweeping rights in Greenland, including the right to build and operate bases under a 1951 defense treaty with Denmark. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's most urgent Greenland project looks prosaic: fixing the runway at Pituffik Space Base (Thule), a job budgeted in the mere tens of millions. The bill for a trade war, by contrast, would be paid by American households, and it would cost billions.
Common Knowledge
On the right, some argue the grandiosity is justified by strategy. "Greenland coming closer to the United States has solid precedents in both international law and our own constitutional system," wrote Thomas D. Grant in a piece praising Trump’s "out-of-the-box" thinking in The Federalist.
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Others on the right urge restraint, warning that the wrangling over Greenland risks pushing American allies closer to China, or even Russia.
Among Trump critics, the reaction is blunt. Anne Applebaum described Trump’s Norway missive as being from "a different reality," warning that what follows is a "damaging trade war" or worse.
Others say that browbeating an ally undermines the very minerals policy the White House says it wants. Europe is not amused: Brussels is preparing retaliation, and Nordic leaders are treating the tariff threat—10 percent on eight countries—as diplomatic blackmail toward longstanding allies.
Uncommon Knowledge
Under the 1951 U.S.–Denmark defense agreement on Greenland, Washington already holds the right—"without compensation"—to build and operate defense facilities, including airfields and runways, and to "improve and deepen harbors" for allied use. The 2004 Igaliku accord modernized that framework and gave Greenland a formal consultative role. In other words, the United States can expand runways, deepen ports and add early-warning radar under agreements it already has—no purchase required.
Once you know that, the cost comparison becomes startling. The U.S. already operates the Pituffik base, the northernmost American installation, whose most urgent needs are unglamorous: runway and airfield upgrades that the Pentagon pegs at about $25 million—pocket change by defense standards.
Would deeper infrastructure run to "a few billion"? That seems reasonable. The Army Corps has finally awarded a $399 million Phase-1 contract toward the Port of Nome expansion in Alaska, a template for an Arctic deep-water port, after earlier estimates pegged the full effort near $660 million. A Greenland port would vary by site, but the Nome figures give a sense of scale.
Arctic-grade runways are not cheap, but Greenland has been building them: Nuuk’s new 2,200-meter strip opened recently to handle larger aircraft, and other projects at Ilulissat and Qaqortoq have been budgeted in the hundreds of millions—again, serious money but not sovereignty-changing sums.
For radar, there's a Canadian example. Its new over-the-horizon radar is expected to cost around $4 billion, a ballpark marker for other projects in polar latitudes. A U.S. radar in Greenland might be more than that, but the point stands: even a shopping list of a port, extended runways, and new sensors can be had for single-digit billions via agreements the U.S. already holds.
Now set that against the price of tariffs. A new study by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, analyzed 25.6 million U.S. import shipments (worth nearly $4 trillion) from January 2024 to November 2025. It found 96 percent of the tariff burden was borne by U.S. importers and consumers. The authors estimate customs revenue rose by roughly $200 billion in 2025, but it's a tax paid almost entirely by Americans themselves. Tests of sharp tariff shocks on Brazil and India show exporters didn’t cut prices; instead, volumes fell. In other words, the policy acts like a consumption tax on Americans rather than a levy on foreigners.
America's footprint in Greenland is thick with precedent, from World War II airfields to Camp Century. The problem now is not access but maintenance, and the price tag for that is real but manageable, especially compared with the costs of alienating NATO and taxing American consumers. The question isn’t whether the U.S. can get more from Greenland; it’s whether it remembers how to unlock it.
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