Any U.S., NATO or European plan faces a harsh reality Greenland It’s ice. It chokes ports, buries minerals, and freezes coastlines into minefields of white and blue debris that threaten ships year-round.
The only way to break this are icebreakers: huge ships with strong engines, reinforced hulls and heavy bows that can crush and split the ice.
But the United States only has three such ships, one of which is so dilapidated that it is barely usable. It has signed deals to acquire 11 more, but can only procure more from rivals or allies it has recently rejected.
Arctic key technologies
Despite his softening of rhetoric, US President Donald Trump appears ready The United States owns Greenland for security and economic reasons: to keep what he calls “this beautiful big piece of ice” from falling into the hands of Moscow and Beijing, to secure the strategic location of U.S. assets in the Arctic, and to exploit the island’s mineral wealth, including rare earths.
“To get to this rare earth, you have to go through hundreds of feet of ice,” he told world leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, without specifying any plans.
However, without the critical ability of icebreakers to carve paths through the frozen ocean, there is no meaningful way to do this, or anything else in the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
Alberto Rizzi, a researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that even if they decided to flood Greenland with U.S. supplies tomorrow, “they would have a gap of two to three years during which they would not actually have access to the island for much of that time.”
“On the map, Greenland looks like it’s surrounded by sea, but the reality is the sea is filled with ice,” he said.
If the United States wants more icebreakers, it has only four options: shipyards at strategic rivals China and Russia, or at long-time allies Canada and Finland, both of which have recently withstood Trump’s harsh criticism and tariff threats over Greenland.
Northern expertise in ice vessels
Icebreakers are expensive to design, build, operate and maintain and require a skilled workforce that can only be found in certain places like Finland, whose expertise is developed in the cold Baltic Sea.
Rizzi said Finland built about 60% of the world’s icebreaker fleet (more than 240 ships) and designed the remaining half.
“It was a very niche capability that they developed as a necessity first, and then they were able to turn that into geoeconomic leverage,” he said.
Russia has the world’s largest fleet of about 100 ships, including giant vessels powered by nuclear reactors. Next is Canada, which plans to double its icebreaker fleet to about 50 ships, according to a 2024 report by Helsinki-based icebreaker design company Aker Arctic.
“Our design and engineering backlog is currently quite full and the near future looks very promising,” said Aker Arctic business manager Jari Hurttia, describing growing interest in the company’s “unparalleled special capabilities” that are not available anywhere else in the world.
Marc Lanteigne, a professor at the University of Tromso in Norway who often teaches at the University of Greenland in Nuuk, said China currently has five to the United States’ three and is rapidly building more as its Arctic ambitions expand.
“China now has the capability to develop indigenous icebreakers, so the United States believes it must do the same,” he said.
Sophie Artes, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund who focuses on Arctic security, said Washington must catch up quickly.
“President Trump does lament the lack of icebreakers, especially compared to Russia,” Artes said. The current U.S. icebreaker fleet is “essentially past its lifespan.”
So he turned to the undeniable expertise of the EU’s northernmost country and America’s northern neighbor.
“Both Canada and Finland are very, very important to this,” Artes said. “Cooperation makes this possible… There’s really no way the United States can do this on its own right now.”
During his first administration, Trump prioritized the U.S. military’s acquisition of icebreaking-capable ships, and the Biden administration has followed up on that strategy by signing an agreement with Helsinki and Ottawa, known as the Ice Agreement, to deliver 11 icebreakers built by two corporate consortiums and using Finnish designs.
Four of the ships will be built in Finland and seven at the Canadian-owned multi-billion-dollar American Icebreaker Works in Texas and a jointly owned U.S.-Canadian shipyard in Mississippi.
In Greenland’s harsh offshore and land conditions, the extraction of any critical minerals will be costly. Investments there will take years or even decades to pay off, Lentagne said.
Even if there were enough icebreakers, it would be costly to build and maintain mining or defense facilities – as envisaged in the $175 billion that has yet to be funded Golden Summit Missile Defense Network Connecting detectors and interceptors in space and on the ground will be huge.
That means U.S. allies in the Arctic may still welcome more investment from Washington in Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement that she was Strengthening Arctic security Including the U.S. Golden Dome plan “provided that our territorial integrity is respected.”
Market dominance and strategic leverage
While the United States and 27 European Union countries, including Denmark and Finland, have pledged to significantly increase investment in Greenland, it is currently clear who has the hard power to actually reach the vast frozen region roughly three times the size of Texas.
“It’s kind of ridiculous because I don’t think Finland would abandon its agreement with the United States just to threaten to invade Greenland,” Rizzi said. “But if Europe wanted to have significant influence over the United States, they might say ‘We’re not going to give you any icebreakers and good luck reaching the Arctic with the two old ships you have, or projecting power there.'”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reminded world leaders in Davos on Tuesday of the critical technological foundation the EU provides for any Arctic effort.
“Finland – one of NATO’s newest members – is selling its first icebreaker to the United States,” von der Leyen told the World Economic Forum.
“This shows that we are capable here, so to speak, on the ice, that our northern NATO members now have Arctic-ready forces and, most importantly, that Arctic security can only be achieved together.”
After an emergency summit of 27 EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday, she announced a significant increase in EU defense spending in Greenland, including an icebreaker.