Highlights

• Greenland's strategic value stems from two fronts:
  • Its Arctic military position at Pituffik Space Base
  • Mineral reserves critical to global supply chains
• Challenges to mining in Greenland:
  • Massive infrastructure challenges
  • Social license challenges
• Owning minerals doesn't equal security:
  • China dominates rare earth processing and refining
  • Even Greenlandic ore could flow back through Beijing unless the West builds independent midstream capacity
• Greenland isn't a prize to seize but a sovereign partner to convince:
  • Local consent acts as a veto
  • Any strategy ignoring environmental and cultural concerns will fail regardless of Washington's security arguments

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Greenland has suddenly become everyone’s favorite map again.

Think tanks invoke national security. Cable news debates conquest. Politicians talk about minerals as if they were Monopoly deeds. And somewhere beneath the noise lies a quieter truth: Greenland matters—but not for the reasons most people are shouting about.

The U.S. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) gets one thing very right in a report (opens in a new tab) today. Greenland is a two-front story. First, it is a military and surveillance outpost in a warming Arctic. Second, it is a mineral-rich territory sitting inside a global supply chain struggle—one where China has learned how to turn materials into leverage.

As Rare Earth Exchanges™ has reported, the United States already operates from Pituffik Space Base (once called Thule), watching missiles and satellites at the top of the world. That alone makes Greenland strategically relevant. Add rare earth elements—essential for EVs, fighter jets, and precision weapons—and the island suddenly looks like a missing chess piece.

CSIS, in its report today, is also correct about something far less glamorous: mining in Greenland is hard. The obstacles are not geological. They are roads that don’t exist, ports that can’t handle volume, power grids that barely reach towns, and communities that are deeply skeptical of what mining might cost them. Greenland can be rich on paper and poor in reality at the same time.

So far, so good.

Where the story starts to wobble is where policy fantasies usually creep in.

The Ice Is Melting—but So Is the Ground

There is a tempting idea floating around Arctic policy circles: as the ice melts, opportunity opens. More land. Longer seasons. Easier access.

That’s only half true.

Melting ice also means unstable ground, collapsing coastlines, unpredictable weather, and soaring costs to reinforce infrastructure. The Arctic doesn’t slowly turn into Texas. It turns into a moving target. Treating climate change as a net “unlock” risks underestimating just how expensive—and fragile—Arctic mining really is.

The Ore Fallacy

Here is the mistake even serious analysts still make: they confuse owning minerals with controlling supply.  Remember, rare earth power is not exercised at the mine. It is exercised after the rock leaves the ground—during separation, refining, alloying, and magnet production. This is the “midstream,” and China dominates it.

So even if Greenland ships rare earth concentrate tomorrow, the real question is simple and uncomfortable: Where does it get processed? If the answer is “back through China,” then nothing strategic has changed.

This is where Rare Earth Exchanges exposes the truth. The hard truth is this: ore does not equal security. Throughput does. Until the West builds non-Chinese processing at scale (and this requires far more intensive industrial policy if we seek acceleration), new mines risk becoming symbolic victories that still end in potentially being in Beijing’s hands.

China Didn’t Fail. It Adapted.

CSIS suggests China’s Arctic ambitions have largely failed. That framing is too neat.

China didn’t build Greenland’s airports. It didn’t plant a flag. But it didn’t need to. By controlling processing and offtake, China can benefit from Arctic minerals without owning Arctic land. Being blocked from infrastructure didn’t end its influence—it reshaped it.

Power doesn’t always arrive with cranes and concrete. Sometimes it arrives with contracts.

Greenland Is Not a Hurdle. It Is the Decision-Maker.

Perhaps the biggest blind spot in many Washington DC material of late is political.

Greenland’s resistance to projects like Kvanefjeld isn’t a technical delay. It’s a statement. Mining there is tied to identity, environment, fishing, tourism, and sovereignty—especially when uranium enters the conversation.

Social license in Greenland is not a box to check. It is a veto. Any strategy that treats local consent as secondary will fail, no matter how strong the security argument sounds in Washington.

The Media’s Mirror

Popular media has its own distortion. Commentary portraying Greenland as a 19th-century land grab, like what happened during the Spanish-American War, makes for great headlines, but it oversimplifies the stakes. The Arctic didn’t become important because of one politician. It became important because climate, commerce, and conflict are converging there—slowly, then all at once.

The Thought That Should Change the Debate

Ask one question, and the fog clears:

If Greenland produced rare earths at scale tomorrow, who would turn them into magnets? Until that question has a Western answer, talk of ownership, acquisition, or mineral dominance is theater.

Greenland is not a prize to be taken. It is a partner, part of the Kingdom of Denmark (a great American ally) to be convinced. And the future of mineral security will not be decided by who owns the ground—but by who controls the pipes that turn stone into power.

That is the story beneath the headlines.

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