Trump's Greenland security deal blocked China's Arctic ambitions days before Xi Jinping arrived for a state dinner with America's top AI executives.
Page A2From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 26 September 2026
After declaring ownership of Greenland an absolute necessity, Trump signs for the use of it instead
As it ran on the front
Ownership was the word in 2025 — ownership and control, "an absolute necessity" — and you will have assumed the deal signed this month with Greenland and Denmark delivers it. It does not. Title stays where it was. What crossed the table was the use of the thing: basing, and the minerals. Usufruct, that is: the right to work a property and take what it yields while another party keeps the deed and the flag. The drafting is handsome. Nothing was seized. Nothing needed to be. Someone will say nothing changed hands. The use changed hands.
Donald Trump Jr. flew to Greenland in January of 2025, privately, weeks after the necessity was announced, and Mette Frederiksen answered that "Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders". She was correct. She is correct still. Belonging was never the ask.…
…(cont) And what came back the other way? China's Arctic ambitions, blocked — that is the gain as announced ... days before Xi Jinping arrived for a state dinner with America's top AI executives.
Greenland keeps the title. Washington gets the ground.
The well keeps a man's name. Each morning the buckets go out full.
“Ownership and control was "an absolute necessity," and twenty months later nobody owns anything new — we just took the bases and the minerals and left Denmark holding the flag. Frederiksen said Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders and she's right, which is exactly why this deal never bothered to ask. So who gets a cut of whatever comes out of that ground? Not the guy at the end of this bar.”
“Nobody annexed anything. Did I say annexed? That's not a word I use — it's a security partnership, mutually beneficial, and China was going to be up there regardless. And Don Jr. went on his own time as a private citizen, which somehow never makes the story.”
The receipts
· Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. makes a personal visit to Greenland weeks after Trump announced that "ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity". In response to the visit, Danish prime from the morgue, 7 Jan 2025
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.