For years, the idea of the United States acquiring Greenland was treated in much of the press as an eccentric real estate fantasy — a punchline rather than a policy. This week, according to the American Thinker, it stopped being either. In a piece published September 20, 2026, columnist Clarice Feldman writes that the U.S. has entered into an agreement with both Denmark and Greenland that she describes as protecting American sovereignty, deterring Russian and Chinese aggression, encircling what she calls an “increasingly fey and unreliable Canada,” and making a U.S. exit from NATO more possible, if not more likely.
That is the case Feldman makes. Whether the deal delivers on those promises is a different question, and one that critics of the arrangement have only begun to litigate.
The 1951 Treaty and Why It Needed Replacing
Feldman first walks readers through an oft-forgotten bit of Cold War history. In 1951, the United States signed an agreement with Denmark permitting it to establish a base at Thule in Greenland — a Danish territory of roughly 56,000 inhabitants. As Feldman explains it, Article XIV of that treaty tied the arrangement’s duration to the North Atlantic Treaty itself. If the U.S. left NATO, or NATO ceased to exist, America would have no clear legal right to keep its defenses in place.
Nor, she argues, did the 1951 agreement give Washington exclusive authority to block foreign investments deemed security threats. Over time, she writes, the treaty became inadequate: Russia fielded ICBMs, Russian nuclear submarines began navigating Arctic waters, and Greenland’s small population began talking openly about independence. That last point matters most in her telling. The U.S. agreement was with Denmark, and Feldman suggests it is unclear whether it could bind an independent Greenland — raising the prospect of an independent Greenland under heavy Chinese influence sitting across the negotiating table from Washington.
In sum, she writes, a dated Cold War-era treaty needed to be supplanted by something better.
What the New Agreement Reportedly Does
According to Feldman, that better arrangement is what the U.S. got this week — and, she says, it cost nothing. In her account, the new deal guarantees permanently “the complete ability to do what is necessary in Greenland in order to secure and defend” American security and Greenland’s. She adds another clause she presents as the centerpiece: from now on, no U.S. adversary can have a base in Greenland, maintain a military presence there, or make sensitive investments there without express written American approval.
Feldman frames the outcome as a three-way win. Denmark retains its territory. Greenland retains its right to govern itself on internal matters. The United States, in her description, secures exclusive security rights permanently.
She also offers a revisionist read of Trump’s much-mocked 2019 talk of buying Greenland. Rather than a gaffe, she calls it a shrewd negotiating tactic — “anchoring,” in her word — that clarified what Washington actually wanted and forced Copenhagen and Nuuk to do the same, making a mutual agreement reachable. And she argues, pointedly, that since at least 2019 Trump has publicly spoken about the need to protect the Arctic corridor by replacing the 1951 Treaty, and that he was reviled unfairly for the effort.
“An Immovable Strategic Garrison”
The bulk of Feldman’s essay is written in the register of vindication. She describes what she calls one of the most significant territorial and security consolidations since the 1867 purchase of Alaska, painting the deal as establishing an immovable American strategic garrison at the apex of the globe. In her rendering, Moscow is locked out of the vital maritime corridors of the North Atlantic, while Beijing is evicted from Arctic rare earth deposits and stripped of its Polar Silk Road ambitions. The American homeland, she writes, is shielded beneath an expanding Golden Dome missile defense umbrella.
Then she turns on the domestic opposition. Feldman devotes considerable space to what she describes as the psychological disintegration of the American left now that the pact is signed — arguing that commentators who once mocked Arctic strategy as a real estate fantasy have shifted into what she calls bitter panic. Her broader claim is structural: that the modern progressive movement rejects strategic interest and national survival as such, opposing any action that fortifies the United States and celebrating any policy that degrades American sovereignty. She calls the sudden concern for Danish sensitivities fraudulent, noting that in her view the same ideologues applauded the dissolution of the southern border, sought to let multinational climate summits dictate domestic energy consumption, and drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to mask inflation.
Canada receives similar treatment. Feldman calls Ottawa the most pathetic spectacle in modern statecraft — a disarmed protectorate, in her words, masquerading as an enlightened moral superpower.
Deterrence, and a Warning About the Midterms
Feldman’s case for the deal rests less on territory than on deterrence. The best way to avoid war, she writes, is to deter adversaries in advance by making clear that aggression carries an enormous cost — and the way to do that is a strong military posture. Here she draws on the argument of the analyst known as Wretchard, contending that Trump has now built exactly that posture. She acknowledges the paradox of the man at the center of it: Trump is widely hated because he has stepped on everyone’s toes by reversing the machinery of international consensus, often in the most impolitic and galling manner — yet even his critics, she writes, concede by belated imitation that many of his moves are necessary. Whether he succeeds, she concedes, only time will tell.
The closing passages shift to domestic politics. Feldman argues that opponents of a strong U.S. national security posture can see the same thing she does — that their power is vanishing — and warns that adversaries who cannot win on the battlefield or through credible threats will instead try to deepen domestic fissures. She points to USAID as busted, partisan NGOs under increased scrutiny, grifters exposed and prosecuted, and what she describes as a fuller public understanding of astroturfed demonstrations posing as grassroots outpourings. As the midterms approach, she urges readers to watch for bogus posts and fabricated videos.
The Open Questions
It is worth being clear about what this essay is and is not. It is an argument — a full-throated defense of the agreement — not a straight accounting of its terms. Feldman states as fact that the deal guarantees permanent American rights at zero cost and grants Washington veto power over adversarial access, but she does not quote the agreement’s text, name its signatories, or address the specific objections that Danish, Greenlandic, or congressional critics may raise. Readers who want the mechanics — basing rights schedules, investment review procedures, dispute resolution, and the question of what happens if Greenland does eventually pursue independence — will not find them here.
That gap is significant because the strongest part of Feldman’s argument is also the part least dependent on those details. The 1951 treaty’s linkage to NATO’s lifespan was a genuine vulnerability, and the emergence of Russian submarine activity and Chinese interest in Arctic resources and rare earths is a documented trend, not a talking point. If the new arrangement truly closes the legal exposure Feldman identifies, it would represent a meaningful change in the strategic map regardless of who occupies the White House.
Her broader cultural claims are harder to test. The assertion that an entire political movement opposes American strength as a matter of reflex is a rhetorical frame, not a finding — and the passages about Canada and the left read as partisan commentary rather than analysis. That is a legitimate mode for an opinion column, but readers should not mistake it for the whole picture.
What Feldman has done, effectively, is stake out one side of a debate that is only now beginning: whether a permanent American security position in Greenland is a masterstroke of leverage or an overreach that stores up trouble with allies and an increasingly independent Greenland. She is confident the answer is the former. The agreement’s actual text — and the next several years in the Arctic — will settle the question, not the column.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/09/greenland-bases-forever/