Is the China-Russia Threat in Greenland Real—or Just America’s Excuse?

Beijing and Moscow are manoeuvring in the Arctic. But Washington has mastered a separate art: turning limited strategic ambition into existential alarm.

When Donald Trump declared in January 2025 that the United States needs to acquire  Greenland and followed by threatening additional trade tariffs against a number of European allies for opposing his plans, most observers reacted with a mixture of alarm and ridicule. Several conditions served to be legitimate reasoning for the United States maneuver in Greenland, such as preserving natural resources, gaining regional hegemony, and national security. But beneath any of that, lay a strategic calculation that Washington refined for years: frame China and Russia as existential threats in the High Norths and make every US ambition in the Arctic become a defense movement.

The narrative has taken hold with remarkable speed. In congressional hearings, think tank roundtables, and Pentagon strategy documents, they all said that Beijing is ‘buying up’ Greenland minerals and Moscow is militarizing the Arctic. The 2024 Department of Defense Arctic Strategy warns that Russian capabilities have the potential to hold the US homeland at risk while Chinese-Russian military cooperation in the region continues to increase. This put US stances in Greenland as a response to a threat environment, not of its own making.

But, here is the problem, the gap between what China and Russia are actually doing in Greenland and what the United States claims they are doing is vast. Sure, China and Russia have expanded their presence in Greenland. But the crucial question remains whether these activities truly constitute a serious threat—or whether Washington has deliberately magnified them into one.

First, we have to look at the facts on the ground to understand China’s actual ambitions in Greenland. Take Shenghe Resources, a Shanghai-listed company that became a significant shareholder in the Kvanefjeld Project. Under a non-binding 2018 memorandum of understanding, Shenghe was positioned as the prospective purchaser of all rare earth output from the site. Given that China already controls nearly 90% of rare earth refining capacity, its interest in diversifying its supply is both rational and commercially logical.

But the U.S. government seems to be narrating this whole scheme through a different lens. They claim China has invested $90 billion in the Arctic when, in fact, the Atlantic Council notes that Shenghe holds a mere 6.5% stake in the company—a far cry from the “backdoor for Chinese encroachment” feared by Washington. Beyond the economic scope, China has admittedly built scientific research stations and polar-orbiting satellite ground infrastructure. However, none of these manoeuvres have involved military equipment or deployment, proving that China’s actual ambitions have been significantly exaggerated.

Russia’s Arctic posture is a different matter. Unlike China’s largely commercial presence, Russia’s military infrastructure in the region is substantial, long-standing, and deeply intertwined with its nuclear deterrent. The Kola Peninsula hosts Russia’s Northern Fleet and a significant portion of its submarine-launched ballistic missile force. As the 2024 U.S. DoD Arctic Strategy correctly notes, Russia boasts the largest Arctic territory and the most developed regional military presence of all the Arctic nations. Russia’s Arctic Strategy through 2035, adopted in 2020, sets ambitious goals: developing the northern sea route as a globally competitive national transport corridor, expanding hydrocarbon extraction, building out port infrastructure and icebreaker fleets, and asserting sovereign navigation rights over Arctic waters in ways that explicitly challenge UNCLOS.

Here is where we have to be careful at the analysis. We need to look at the numbers and geography before jumping to conclusions about Russia in the Arctic. Russia’s military manoeuvre isn’t actually targeted at Greenland or an aggressive push towards U.S. presence in the zone, it is actually a defensive movement. Their military assets that were put on the Kola Peninsula is just a hangover from the Cold War–that’s where Russia kept their nuclear deterrent according to geographical condition not for other meaning.

On top of that, the war in Ukraine has severely stalled Putin’s dreams in the Arctic. For example, while he announced a goal of moving 80 million tons of cargo through the Northern Sea Route by 2024, the actual traffic didn’t even hit half that mark, capping out at 37.9 million tons. Military experts writing in the Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies point out that while Russia’s Arctic navy and air force are still intact, their ground troops have been absolutely gutted by the war in Ukraine. Simply put, Russia isn’t in a position to threaten Greenland or challenge the U.S. in the Arctic right now.

Then, the main story here is not what Chinese and Russian did in the Arctic, but how American responded to that. The U.S. tends to run a very familiar scheme which is they will point out to rival’s presence, paint it as a worst-case scenario, and use that fear to justify expanding its own footprint. Today, we can see directly the results from this approach. The Pentagon’s 2024 Arctic Strategy successfully opened up new funding for icebreaker fleets and northern military bases. Meanwhile, NATO has shifted its focus to the High North, ramping up military drills in Norway and Iceland. This is framed to European allies as a necessary shield against Russian aggression, rather than what it also is: America shifting its own strategic chess pieces. Even Denmark, which holds sovereignty over Greenland, is feeling the squeeze—getting pushed to accept an American security umbrella it never actually asked for. 

The facts on the ground tell a quieter story. Chinese mining ventures in Greenland have collapsed under the weight of financing failures and local political opposition—hardly the profile of a coordinated state-backed takeover. Russia’s Arctic posture, while militarily real, is geographically defensive and operationally constrained by its war in Ukraine. Neither power is in a position to challenge American dominance in the region in any meaningful near-term sense. Yet Washington’s rhetoric has not adjusted to this reality. It cannot afford to—because a threat-free Arctic is a budget-cut Arctic.

When we see the actual fact on the ground, it tells a quieter story than what the American has told us. Take a look at China’s mining projects in Greenland, they didn’t lead to some grand, state-backed takeover—they simply fell apart because of funding issues and local political pushback. And for Russia, while their Arctic military presence is real, it’s mostly defensive and severely bogged down by the war in Ukraine. In short, neither power can realistically challenge U.S. power in the near term nor threaten them in some way. So why do Washington still insist that their movement is highly influenced by third parties when they already had some party in their backyard?