The United States military has placed 1,500 Arctic-trained soldiers on standby for deployment, marking the most significant military mobilization in the escalating crisis over Greenland that has fractured relations between Washington and Copenhagen.
The Pentagon issued prepare-to-deploy orders to two infantry battalions from the 11th Airborne Division, the Army's premier Arctic warfare unit, stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and Fort Wainwright in Alaska. The soldiers are specialists in "sub-zero operations, austere airfields, glacier movement, and high-latitude logistics," according to military analysts.
While Pentagon officials stated the troops were being readied for potential domestic deployment to address civil unrest in Minneapolis, multiple defense analysts questioned why Arctic warfare specialists would be selected for urban operations.
The mobilization coincides with President Donald Trump's repeated threats to acquire Greenland "one way or another" if Denmark refuses negotiations. Trump has threatened a 10% tariff on Danish goods beginning February 1, escalating to 25% by June 1—measures that also target Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland, all of which have deployed military personnel to the island in recent weeks.
To understand today's headlines, we must look at yesterday's decisions. The current crisis represents the most serious rift within NATO since the alliance's founding in 1949. Denmark has held sovereignty over Greenland since 1814, though the island maintains significant autonomy. The territory hosts Thule Air Base, a critical U.S. early-warning radar installation that monitors potential missile launches from Russia.
The selection of Arctic-trained troops, combined with the escalating rhetoric and economic threats against European allies, has created what one senior NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described as "an unprecedented crisis of confidence in American intentions."
Denmark has historically been one of Washington's most reliable NATO partners, contributing troops to operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Danish forces sustained some of the highest per-capita casualty rates among coalition partners during the Afghanistan campaign.
The crisis has exposed deep fissures in the transatlantic alliance at a moment when European security faces its most severe challenges since the end of the Cold War, with ongoing conflict in Ukraine and heightened tensions with both Russia and China.
Analysts note the overlap between Arctic troop mobilization and Arctic geopolitical tensions creates potential concerns about the stated rationale for the deployment, though Pentagon officials have denied any connection to overseas contingencies.
