Neil Melvin Hello, welcome to Roosie in London. I'm Neil Melvin and this is Global Security Briefing, the podcast devoted to providing insights on contemporary regional security developments around the world and on how the UK can best navigate the fast-changing international environment. For this edition of Global Security Briefing, we're releasing a special, concise edition of the podcast to cover the evolving crisis in transatlantic relations based on the dispute over Greenland. The Greenland crisis has damaged goodwill and trust between the United States and Europe and has undermined perceptions of US reliability and trustworthiness. Following the 2026 World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Europe now has a series of questions about how it should pursue its relations with the United States and the degree to which it should seek independence or greater autonomy in its defence and security relationship, as well as a question about what it should do about Greenland and wider Arctic security. In this episode of Global Security Briefing, RUSI's Director General, Rachel Elihus, discusses the state of the US-Greenland-Denmark discussions and the potential lasting impact of the crisis on transatlantic relations and on NATO. This episode includes Rachel's remarks recorded in a RUSI webinar on Friday the 23rd of January 2026. The full hour-long discussion, including comments by Rachel, but joining her Awana Longescu, a RUSI Distinguished Fellow and former long-serving NATO spokesperson, and Ed Arnold, Senior Research Fellow for European Security at RUSI, is available on the RUSI website and is also included in the show notes. I'd start by saying three things. First, while we're all breathing a sigh of relief today, we're really not past this crisis over Greenland. It's back in the correct channels for now, which is working through existing agreements, working through NATO, and we've got the tariffs off the table and the threat of an imminent US military intervention to take over the iron off the table, but coming to an agreement that's satisfactory to all parties is really a long way away. And I would imagine that when we get into conversations about sovereignty, we could see escalation again. So we're not past the crisis. My second point would be that, in fact, the way that President Trump handled his desire to have control over Greenland will actually make it harder to strike a deal going forward. There was a real openness, I think, both in terms of the Danes and the Greenlanders, to having a conversation around how we enhance security, how we enhance U.S. access to the island, and how we enhance economic access and cooperation. But the tactic of strong-arming allies and working outside established channels has really hurt the goodwill on both sides and the appetite and trust for going forward. Thirdly, I think that the incident will have a really lasting effect on the transatlantic relationship and NATO. There's a lot of uncertainty now about the reliability and trustworthiness of the United States. It's become, in fact, sort of an undercurrent of transatlantic relations these days. I think nobody was really surprised about Trump's style. I mean he known for being sort of you know driving a hard deal being unpredictable mercurial In fact that part of his style I think onlookers were just more disappointed by the fact that when he did start to cross some established lines and push forward with some disinformation and even bullying with regard to Denmark and Greenland there weren really as many people as you would expect in the United States who pushed back Yes, we had public opinion against it. Yes, we had important members of Congress speaking out. And finally, we had a reaction from the markets. But there were a lot of people who stayed silent. And in Trump's inner circle, there were even people who tried to rationalize or normalize this behavior. I think the language that's being used in the Danish press today is that he's surrounded by flatterers and sycophants and people who will not tell him the truth. And there are parallels now being drawn to how Putin surrounds himself with an inner circle who kind of reinforced his views about the Ukraine war. So to your question, Neil, where this takes us on the U.S. relationship between Denmark and Greenland, in order to answer that question, you almost need to understand where we came from. I would argue that the Danish-U.S. relationship was one of the strongest across the alliance. They weren't one of the countries who were sort of reacting to Trump or really putting the U.S. on the hot seat. They sort of accept that the president had won a mandate in the election and had a different way of doing things in foreign policy. But if you look back at that relationship, whether it was political, military or economic, the Danes had been with us side by side. Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq, you name it. Again, just to give you an illustrative example from the ground, in Denmark, there is a protest plan for later this month outside the U.S. embassy there, and it's called No Words. And it will be made up of Danish and Greenlandic veterans who fought alongside the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom lost either lives or limbs. And again, they have no words for what's going on here. And so that just tells you the mood in this uniquely close relationship. And as far as the Greenlanders concerned, I think it's important for listeners to understand that there's a history there as well. The basing agreement between the U.S. and the Kingdom of Denmark over access to Greenland goes back to the 1950s and the Cold War period. And there's a really sort of sour and negative history of how the U.S. has treated its access to the island. It operated bases in secrecy. There was prohibition on any sort of nuclear activities there. which the Americans ignored for a period of time. And the Danish government was not really tracking in the level of detail where they could respond to that. And then finally, a really sad history of shoddy environmental cleanup. And so I think going forward, Greenlanders will have that history in mind. And as I said, the U.S. already had this legal framework and this strong bilateral relationship to negotiate that expanded base access, use of new territory, economic cooperation, Trump is right about one thing. Greenland is strategic. For those who may not know, the 1951 agreement and the radar specifically at Pitufuck Air Base does things like space domain awareness, early missile warning that really adds minutes to the defense, the ability to defend the United States homeland from missile attack. There's a deep water port, there's an airfield. So yes, it's strategic, but there are other means by which to get more access to that other than intimidation and disinformation I mean the disinformation was questioning Denmark commitment to the island It was questioning their defensive capabilities and it was actively trying to foment division between the Danes and the Greenlanders Funny enough it had almost the opposite effect It united the Danish public, it united the Europeans to some extent, and talks of independence, which 56% of Greenlanders still support, were kind of taken off the table for now. And there was a joint presser in advance of the meetings in Washington with the Greenlandic prime minister actively saying that he and his country choose Denmark, the EU and NATO over the United States now. Just just to close with a few points. First, around the economic relationship, I believe we saw Scott Besson saying that Denmark was irrelevant. But I think it's important to keep in mind that as we go forward, Denmark has some strong economic cards to play, either on its own or with the EU. exports in technology, advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, energy logistics. I think I'd go even so far to say that there are some supply chain choke points here, most markedly in the provision of insulin. 74% of insulin comes from Novo Nordisk. Eli Lilly, I think, is number two, but third in line is a French company, Sanofi. And so if Denmark or Denmark in cooperation with France and others in the EU really wanted to put the screws on that, that is a really tough choke point, I think, in the supply chain. Equally, Maersk Logistics operates things like Pier 400 in Los Angeles. They provide 50 percent of the transport for the U.S. military. And I think I've seen analysts saying that there would be a logistical trade collapse if Marisk were to turn off the taps in terms of executing those contracts. Just maybe two words on the transatlantic relationship. A lot of people are pointing to Secretary General Mark Ruda as the kingmaker here. And he does have a way with Trump. You know, he I think the terminology that's been used is he has a way of always finding the goat path. Like what's the narrow path through that allows us to get to the other side of this? But let's keep in mind that he only has authority to negotiate on behalf of NATO and to talk about the expanded presence in the high north or the Arctic. He does not have any authority over expanding that bilateral basing agreement or talking about any changes to sovereignty of the island. And I think you can see pushback on suggestions, false suggestions, frankly, in the press that he had gone too far in negotiating away sovereignty. I think he had very clear parameters and had consulted very closely with the Danes and the Greenlanders in advance of that meeting. What Europeans will do in Canada for that measure, I think we'll see an acceleration of the moves to de-risk and reduce dependencies on the United States, whether that's in terms of NATO planning, making lists of alternatives to U.S. defense and tech options. The question, though, and I'll close here, is whether Europeans will follow through. Often there's shock, there's strong language, there's frantic European conversations in Brussels. And then at the end of the day, Europeans are quite divided. And we already see signs of that. I think we saw Prime Minister Maloney trying to create carve-outs for Italian luxury goods when she thought tariffs were on the table. I think Poland is extremely closely tied to the U in terms of the defense relationship and continuing to support Ukraine So we have to kind of as Europeans really try to push to stay united and to come up with a common strategy Thank you, that was great. Just a very quick follow-up. I mean, you highlighted, I think, that there is no agreement and clearly in Denmark, there is remains, and in Greenland, of course, an adamant commitment to sovereignty. But do you think there is a basis for an agreement there? I mean, we have some elements, We haven't seen the proposal, but there's some elements are dribbled out. This is that NATO will step up the Arctic century sort of engagement, that there might be an expanded U.S. authority over the bases, a kind of sovereignty light on that. And that this may extend to economic issues and that the U.S. may have a kind of perpetual leasing arrangement for those that might satisfy Trump to some degree. Do you think that we do see a pathway there or are we still sort of there's too many different obstacles to that? There is a pathway. There's the easiest pathway is through NATO and stepping up Arctic security writ large. And I expect others will speak to that. That was already happening in a NATO context. There was more of an awareness and an openness to what was going on in the region in terms of security challenges. And that was something that the Arctic nations also often wanted to handle outside of NATO. I think now they're coming to the realization that what happens in the North Atlantic is linked to what happens in the Arctic, is linked to what happens in the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap in the North Atlantic. So that, I think, is on a firm footing. And that's in Roots' wheelhouse. And the Allies are pretty much aligned on that. In terms of the path for greater U.S. access to bases in Greenland for what they want to achieve, I think there's a path to that as well. I was rereading the 1951 agreement and some of its updates this morning. And among other things, it requires the base to fly all three flags at once. So it just shows you the spirit of cooperation with which, you know, the United States, Greenland and Denmark have worked together for for, you know, almost more than 70 years. And so I think if we can just get away from this conversation about sovereignty and talk about things like assured access, that is definitely something that's on the table. And the agreements and pathways absolutely exist. This brings us to the end of today's special global security briefing discussion on the Greenland crisis and the future of the transatlantic alliance. I'd like to thank this week's guest Rachel Elihus for sharing her views with us. Global Security Briefing is available on all major podcast platforms. Please like and subscribe. For further information about the work of the international security team at RUSI please follow us on X, formerly Twitter, at ISS underscore RUSI and on LinkedIn at International Security RUSI and also find out more about the IS team's research on regional security issues around the world on the RUSI website. Please join me for the next edition of Global Security Briefing, when I'll be discussing the key takeaways from RUSI's 2026 Latin American Security Conference, as the region comes to terms with a new US policy following its intervention in Venezuela. But for now, it's goodbye from me, Neil Melvin, at RUSI in London. you
