> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Trump’s Greenland Deal Is Real After All - URL: https://goodoil.news/trumps-greenland-deal-is-real-after-all/ - Published: 2026-09-24T22:00:45.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-24T22:00:44.000Z - Description: Copenhagen and Washington quietly agree on more bases, a closed door to Beijing and Moscow and a Danish flag that isn’t going anywhere. - Author: Lushington Brady - Tags: USA Politics, World Politics As [I wrote some time ago](https://goodoil.news/greenland-and-trump-its-complicated/), if we’re to believe the legacy media, President **Donald Trump**’s goal of US ‘control’ of Greenland is yet another instance of the crazed dictator’s delusional approach to world affairs. The only problem with that narrative is that, Trump’s goal makes strategic sense: Greenland’s location and resources make it a North Atlantic prize that’s been fought over for centuries: a prize that China and Russia are both eyeing just as covetously. The other problem with the narrative is that, for all the haw-haw-haw crappy AI animations about the crazy Bad Orange Man, Denmark and the US are in fact on the cusp of an *entente*, if not exactly *cordiale*, at least *rationnel*. So what actually happened? After months of threatening to seize a semi-autonomous territory belonging to a NATO ally, Trump announced on Friday a deal that bolsters the American military presence on Greenland while leaving the island under Danish control. The signing is slated for next week at the UN General Assembly, with parliamentary approvals still required in Copenhagen and Nuuk. Officials from all three governments had been negotiating quietly for months, hunting for something that would settle Trump's security anxieties without him ending up owning a country. Trump, naturally, described it in a way that suggests he’d won the whole thing outright. > [Trump said Friday](https://afn.net/ap/world/denmarks-leaders-are-cautiously-optimistic-about-trumps-announcement-of-a-greenland-deal?ref=goodoil.news) that the agreement would give the US “permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many US concerns.” Strip out the capital letters and what you have is more American bases, more American concrete and a Danish flag still fluttering over the place. There’s a word for that and it isn’t conquest. > “I think it’s obvious that we can expect more bases in Greenland. But it’s important to say that if we look in the past, especially during the Cold War, the US had immense military presence in Greenland,” said **Marc Jacobsen**, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defense College and the head of research at the Center for Arctic Security Studies. > > He said it was a win for Trump. “It’s important for him to show that he’s a good businessman, that he kind of forced the pressure on Denmark and Greenland into something new.” Jacobson nails the politics of it: it lets Trump pose as the dealmaker who squeezed a small ally into something new. Fair enough. Posing is most of the job. Here’s the substance, as leaked by a State Department official who wasn’t authorised to speak on the record. The agreement bans any non-NATO base on the island, restricts adversaries from making investments there and guarantees China and Russia can’t park a base of their own. Denmark and Greenland pointedly declined to confirm any of those specifics, which is the diplomatic equivalent of nodding politely while quietly checking the fine print. Danish Foreign Minister **Lars Løkke Rasmussen** was cautiously chirpy on Instagram, saying a period of uncertainty should now give way to a binding agreement that strengthens Arctic and North Atlantic security. Greenland’s leader, **Jens-Frederik Nielsen**, reckoned it served both collective security and the island’s own development. His foreign minister, **Múte B Egede**, put it more economically: “It’s about time.” As Trump has said many times, *The Art of the Deal* is seeing that both sides walk away with something they wanted. This deal is no different. > Greenland grassroots pro-sovereignty activist **Orla Joelsen** wrote on X that “our fight against Trump’s ambition to take over Greenland has been won.” > > “The new agreement explicitly recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination,” the activist added. > > **Ulrik Pram Gad**, a senior researcher and Arctic security expert at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said that Trump tries to sell it as a win. “He obviously didn’t get in this agreement what he originally set out to have – that is sovereign control over all of Greenland as a part of the United States.” Correct. He didn't. He got something considerably less dramatic and considerably more useful. Ordinary Danes seem to have worked that out faster than most of the commentariat. A Copenhagen telecommunications worker said he’d been worried Trump would simply take the island by force, and was pleased it could be settled diplomatically. A high school teacher called it the most realistic solution available to a small nation. That’s not surrender, but adulthood. Even the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, Admiral **Giuseppe Cavo Dragone**, standing in Copenhagen, called the deal very, very welcome and then sensibly said nothing else at all. That brings us back to the haw-haw-haw. The US had an immense military presence on Greenland through the Cold War, before drawing down and leaving behind the Pituffik Space Base, built under a 1951 treaty and still supporting missile warning and space surveillance for the US and NATO. What's being negotiated now is a return to a familiar posture, dressed up by one side as a triumph and by the other as a relief. Both sides get to claim victory. The media get a cartoon. The Chinese and the Russians get a closed door. And the legacy outlets that spent months predicting a military seizure of a NATO ally’s territory will now quietly pretend they never said it. That’s what a deal actually looks like. Untidy, transactional and nothing like a cartoon. --- 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.**