An iceberg floats in Disko Bay behind houses during unseasonably warm weather on July 30, 2019 in Ilulissat, Greenland. Climate change is having a profound effect in Greenland, where over the last several decades summers have become longer and the rate that glaciers and the Greenland ice cap are retreating has accelerated.
President Donald Trump has reiterated his desire to buy Greenland, and refused to rule out using military or economic coercion to achieve his goal of controlling the autonomous territory of Denmark. .
However, the United States isn't the only country with an eye on the region. In 2018, a Chinese state-owned company bid roughly $550 million to expand two airports in Greenland, but the bid was ultimately withdrawn.
Meanwhile, Russia has been reopening old Soviet military bases across the Arctic since 2015, including Nagurskoye, located just 600 miles off the northern coast of Greenland.
"Greenland is almost a kind of ground zero for how the Arctic has become more and more geopolitically and strategically significant," according to Kalus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London.
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As China and Russia expand their influence in the Arctic, Greenland's location has become vital to America's ballistic missile warning system.
"With China's rise and its tripling the size of its ICBM ballistic missile arsenal, Greenland plays a national defense role because of its geography," said Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Greenland's location also presents a unique economic opportunity, thanks to its proximity to Arctic shipping routes. Shipping over Arctic routes saw a 37% increase between 2013 and 2023, according to the Arctic Council.
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In 2018, China also announced its intent to construct a "Polar Silk Road" linking China and Europe through the Arctic Ocean.
"As the Arctic ice flow has changed in the recent past, and is projected to continue changing, opening up Arctic shipping routes, you have several lucrative potentials there," said Sadler.
Watch the video above to find out why Greenland is so important in gepolitics.
