...sorry it isn’t scratch-n-sniff...
...and there you go. President Donald J. Trump signs the Greenland security deal with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.
We have kept up reasonably steady reporting the last couple of years on Greenland. I was never quite sure where it would come out, but I was confident that it would be — non-inclusive — in between the two extremes we heard coming out of the overly excitable and narrowly sourced commentariat of the U.S. invading or the U.S. being kicked out...and it did.
I have to give a nod to our Australian friend Liz Buchanan who gave some great observations on the issue on the Midrats Podcast back in September of 2025 and January of this year.
The full text of the agreement can be found at the White House website if you want to read it in detail, but let's stick to the big pixels, as it is really a good news story for everyone...especially NATO.
Rod Martin created a great executive summary:
Bravo Zulu to the team that kept working this issue. From a national security point of view, everyone got the most important things they wanted — that's what matters.
As we like to do here, let's go to the chartroom. We should start with something posted five days ago on X:
Where were we in Greenland before the agreement compared to the Cold War?
Well...we are not getting that much...but more, in a fashion. Looking just at the military aspects of the agreement (which is only a part).
In addition to old Thule (now Pituffik), we will add/return to Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland, which was the site of the former US Bluie West One air base. It was used in World War II and the early Cold War before closing in the 1950s. Ashore, it has an existing airport with a runway that operates year-round and at sea, access to a deep-water port.
The other is Mestersvig in northeast Greenland, which currently serves as a base for Denmark's Sirius Dog Sled Patrol (an elite special forces unit) and has a 1,800-meter gravel airstrip. It is isolated, with a very small permanent presence, but it offers access to the east coast and adjacent waters.
This is where it scratches the old Cold War itch while addressing the very real fact that regardless of what happens in the Russo-Ukrainian War and with the demographics of those nations in the coming decades, the geography is not changing. Russia is not going to disappear.
Here are the three bases in context:
More commentary from me here would just be a selfish imposition on your time. The maps tell the story.
A final note about maps. The map at the top with my great circle routes gives a pretty solid view of the relative size of Greenland. One of the more tiresome things one hears in this discussion — on par with a 13-year-old-boy explaining the nuances of sex to a barbershop full of married men — is the, "Greenland is not that big...it just looks that way on Mercator projections..."
OK, fine, yes...but, Shipmate, that ain't small. Greenland is ~147% as large as Alaska. Doesn't matter if it is 80% covered with ice.
Our three bases will be VERY spread out. It would be as if we were defending the East Coast of the U.S. from NAS Key West to the old NAS Brunswick in Maine and then to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.
However, three beats one...and keeping the Chinese and Russians away...priceless.
Take the "W".
Originally published at CDR Salamander on Substack.
