Greenland Agreement: From Military Control to Economic Control

Signed on 22 September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the security agreement between the United States, Denmark and Greenland removes the threat of a forced annexation. It does not, however, settle the question of Greenlandic sovereignty: military control has been set aside, only to make way for economic control.

What the 22 September agreement provides

Washington secures two major concessions:

• an expanded and permanent military presence, independent of NATO’s fate;
• a right of veto over foreign investments deemed sensitive in Greenland’s mines, ports and infrastructure.

Interpretations differ. For Mette Frederiksen, the text recognises the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark. For Marco Rubio, it addresses US security concerns “definitively and completely”.

The text is not yet in force, however. It must be ratified by the parliaments concerned: under Article XII, it will enter into force on the date of the diplomatic note informing the United States that the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland have completed their parliamentary procedures.

The agreement brings to a close a standoff that began in January 2026: a threat to use “all means”, a demand for “immediate negotiations” in Davos, and then, at the NATO summit in Ankara in July 2026, the assertion that Greenland should be controlled by the United States rather than by Denmark.

The safeguards of international law have held

The prohibition on the use of force. Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of any State. The International Court of Justice has consistently refused to allow strategic interests to override this rule. As early as its 1986 judgment in the Nicaragua case, it held that the United States could not be the sole judge of its own security needs at the expense of another State’s sovereignty. In 2004, in its Advisory Opinion on the construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, it ruled out security considerations as a justification for de facto territorial annexation.

By abandoning both the military option and a forced purchase of Greenland, Washington confirms the resilience of these principles, even in the face of the power that did more than any other to shape them after 1945.

The right to self-determination. The Danish Act of 21 June 2009 recognises Greenlanders as a distinct people, with their own self-government and the right to self-determination. According to the Chagos Advisory Opinion delivered by the International Court of Justice in 2019, no transfer of sovereignty is possible without the free and genuine will of the people concerned, and consent obtained under duress is void. By refusing any cession, Nuuk and Copenhagen held a red line that the law made impassable.

The agreement’s blind spots

A military presence outside the NATO framework. Grounded in the 1951 Defense Agreement rather than in the Alliance, the US presence becomes permanent and is insulated from the vicissitudes of the Atlantic Alliance.

Conditional economic sovereignty. The US veto no longer concerns the military use of the territory, but Greenland’s freedom to choose its industrial and financial partners. It applies to countries that are neither NATO members or partners nor EU Member States, a scope that extends well beyond Russia and China (Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, etc.). This is the agreement’s most far-reaching measure, yet it is absent from the Danish account.

The Chagos precedent, which called for the return to Mauritius of the islands hosting the Anglo-American air base, does not readily capture this gradual subordination achieved through contract and the screening of foreign investors. Yet Article 3 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) includes, within self-determination, the freedom to pursue economic development. An external veto, even a negotiated one, must be assessed in that light.

Key takeaways

The law of the strongest has been held in check. But when military pressure runs up against the law, coercion shifts to more diffuse instruments whose cumulative effect may create structural dependence. In any event, the Agreement will only enter into force once approved by the parliaments of the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland.