[Goose]

Yep, and mining in Greenland doesn't seem like a walk in the park either.  The purported need to claim Greenland for natural resources seems specious at best.  The need to establish military presence to monitor Arctic waterways is a bit more believable.

Yes, it is true that monitoring Arctic waterways is necessary. However, in order to do that, one needs ships, some of which must be ice capable. We don't really have ships that can do that. We are attempting (with very limited success) to build a pitiful few. Even if we had such ships, Greenland could only provide refueling facilities and limited emergency repairs. Greenland already does that at its commercial ports. The weather is too bad most of the year to do more than that. It also allows US maritime surveillance aircraft to land and refuel, although the weather often make it very risky. So far, Greenland has always provided our military forces all the support they have requested. This goes back to the end of WW II. There is no reason to expect they would refuse to allow the US a larger military presence in Greenland than it now has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base AFAIK there are no outstanding requests for that. In any case NOBODY wants to be "home ported" in Greenland.

[Goose]

Yep, and mining in Greenland doesn't seem like a walk in the park either.  The purported need to claim Greenland for natural resources seems specious at best.  The need to establish military presence to monitor Arctic waterways is a bit more believable.

Yes, it is true that monitoring Arctic waterways is necessary. However, in order to do that, one needs ships, some of which must be ice capable. We don't really have ships that can do that. We are attempting (with very limited success) to build a pitiful few. Even if we had such ships, Greenland could only provide refueling facilities and limited emergency repairs. Greenland already does that at its commercial ports. The weather is too bad most of the year to do more than that. It also allows US maritime surveillance aircraft to land and refuel, although the weather often make it very risky. So far, Greenland has always provided our military forces all the support they have requested. This goes back to the end of WW II. There is no reason to expect they would refuse to allow the US a larger military presence in Greenland than it now has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base AFAIK there are no outstanding requests for that. In any case NOBODY wants to be "home ported" in Greenland.