Venezuela Today, Greenland Tomorrow?

Donald Trump’s capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, in defiance of international law and state sovereignty, comes on the back of almost 12 months of blatant threats and lethal military actions against Venezuelan shipping. With Maduro now on US soil, Trump has immediately turned his attention 4,000 miles northwards, to Greenland.

A long-running obsession for the president, off-the-cuff musings about buying the sparsely populated but mineral-rich and strategically positioned territory have turned into something more sinister. “We do need Greenland,” Trump has told the US press on Sunday, citing its mineral wealth and the threat posed by Chinese and Russian ships. 

Three powerful forces that will shape global politics over the next 12 months and beyond are all coming together in the Arctic, creating the potential for conflict and even military clashes. First, there’s the hard turn of the US away from its self-appointed role as global policeman, in favour of a focus on its so-called “hemispheric” interests and naked resource-grabs. Second, there’s the growing demand for critical minerals, as demand for electricity and electrical goods soars. And third – most fundamental of all – is that Arctic ice is melting, opening up new shipping lanes, revealing new sources for mineral wealth, and driving the militarisation of the far north.

Trump has the advantage of being extremely direct. Whereas George W Bush spent months attempting to construct a legal case for the invasion of Iraq, Trump has no qualms about disregarding longstanding norms in international affairs. He bluntly told his Mar-a-Lago press conference on Saturday that “Venezuela has oil”, and that the US wants it. He has, likewise, made no secret of his designs on Greenland. 

For the last year, the US has been running hybrid operations against Greenland, ignoring the protestations of both its government and of Nato member Denmark, which has sovereignty over the territory. This began in January 2025 ahead of Trump’s inauguration, with the arrival of Donald Trump Jr in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, to host a group of Maga-hat wearing locals for a slap-up lunch. The group was joined (via speakerphone) by Trump Sr, who apparently reassured them: “We’re going to treat you well”. 

In March, Trump told Congress that “one way or another” the US would “get” Greenland, offering it the option of becoming a 53rd state (though opinion polling suggests that 85% of Greenland’s 57,000 are opposed to this.) By August, the Danish press was reporting on US “influence operations” in Greenland, including “at least three American men with ties to the US president and the White House [who have been] active in Greenland for a long time through various networks and contacts”. One was reportedly drawing up a list of potential supporters of a pro-Trump secessionist movement, along with another of known opponents. Denmark was concerned enough to summon the US ambassador to explain. Then, before Christmas, Trump appointed a “special envoy” to Greenland – the Republican governor of Louisiana Jeff Landry – who said it would be an “honor to serve” in a “volunteer position to make Greenland part of the US”. Denmark, once again, demanded answers. 

This ramping-up of pressure against Greenland fits perfectly with the White House’s new national security strategy, released in November. The short document details Washington’s turn against the so-called “rules-based order”. Reviving the Monroe Doctrine, first formulated by President James Monroe in 1823 as a demand for non-interference by European powers across the Americas, the new strategy proposes a “Trump corollary” to the original doctrine: to restore what it calls “American pre-eminence in the western hemisphere,” and to deny “non-hemispheric competitors [like China] the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets”. On this basis, Greenland, still claimed by Denmark, would fall well inside the US’ new definition of its own interests and strategic posture. 

Then there’s the growing conflict for raw materials worldwide. Rising demand for electricity is provoking rising demands for minerals like lithium for batteries, copper for wires, and critical minerals essential for building electronic components for products from phones to weapons systems. This is a deep shift in capitalism’s energy use – from overwhelming reliance on fossil fuels, notably oil, to a rapidly growing share of renewables, and of electricity (whether renewably generated or not) as a power source. China is leading the way here: dominant supplier of 19 out of 20 critical minerals surveyed by the International Energy Agency, it has also developed a commanding position in key technologies like electric vehicles (EVs), with China’s BYD recently overtaking Tesla as the world’s biggest EV manufacturer. 

The US, beneficiary of the “shale revolution” in drilling for oil and gas that saw the country become, under Biden, a net exporter of fossil fuels for the first time in decades, remains locked in to high-carbon energy sources, with Trump doubling down on fossil fuels. This may explain his preference for talking up Greenland’s strategic location over its mineral wealth. But an EU survey found that 25 of the bloc’s 34 named critical minerals were present on the island, and a rush of investment has seen major new mines open in recent years. Greenland is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet, and as the ice melts, the cost of mining (or drilling for its oil and gas reserves – currently banned by the government) begins to drop. 

And as the ice retreats, the geography of the Arctic is changing rapidly. China’s first containership to take the new, ice-free Northern Sea Route on a commercial run docked in Felixstowe in October, halving the usual journey time via the Suez Canal. The build-up of military hardware has also picked up: in 2022, Nato forces undertook their biggest Arctic exercises since the Cold War, UK troops and ships joining 27,000 others in the far north for “Exercise Cold Response”. Last year, Russia’s Zapad-2025 exercises saw cruise missile launches beyond the Arctic Circle and the enforcement of a huge exclusion zone off Norwegian coastlines. The far north is rapidly becoming a new military faultline.

In September, shortly after the news of US influence operations broke, Denmark led a Nato force in the largest military exercises in Greenland’s modern history – without, pointedly, inviting the US. The country was worst affected by the outbreak of drone nuisance attacks across Europe at the end of 2025, for which no culprit has been named. Even Keir Starmer has finally been moved to squeak some disquiet about the prospect of Washington’s seizure of Greenland – although the mealy-mouthed response from him and other European leaders at Trump’s adventurism in Latin America is virtually guaranteed to have emboldened the US. The apparent success of the kidnapping of Maduro will goad Trump and those around him into trying to repeat the trick; they are spoiling for a fight over Greenland, and will likely ratchet-up the mix of direct threats and hybrid warfare we’ve seen over the last year.