Trump’s Greenland push ramps up security stakes

Icelanders on Saturday will vote in a knife-edge referendum on whether to resume negotiations to join the European Union, reopening a debate that has taken on deeper significance in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump‘s Arctic saber-rattling.

The question put to the Nordic nation of nearly 400,000 is simply: “Should Iceland resume accession negotiations with the European Union?”

Opinion polls indicate the advisory vote is likely to go down to the wire, with the country effectively split in half on the issue. If a majority of voters answer yes, accession negotiations will take place, which if successful, would lead to a negotiated agreement being put to a second referendum for the Icelandic people to accept or reject.

It comes as the Arctic emerges as a major hotbed for critical minerals and climate change rapidly melts sea ice, opening seasonal shipping routes, and amid Trump’s renewed push to acquire Greenland, Iceland’s closest neighbor.

The U.S. president has long advocated for control over Greenland on national security grounds. Notably, Trump appeared to repeatedly mix up Greenland and Iceland during a special address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier in the year.

“All of the arguments put forth by the U.S. president for why it would be necessary for the U.S. to acquire Greenland actually equally applied to Iceland. The only difference is that Iceland is formally an independent country,” said Eiríkur Bergmann, professor of politics at Iceland’s Bifröst University.

Iceland applied to join the EU in 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, before suspending membership talks in 2013 when a euroskeptic coalition government came to power.

At the start of the year, Iceland Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Gunnarsdottir said that deeper dialogue and collaboration with the EU would be a key factor in shoring up the country’s interests.

“It is clear that the international system we have lived in since the end of World War II is in turmoil,” Gunnarsdottir said in an article for Icelandic newspaper Visir, according to a Google translation.

Iceland, a founding member of NATO, is the only ally that does not have its own military forces. The country also sits astride the so-called GIUK Gap, a naval choke point between Greenland, Iceland and the U.K. that links the Arctic to the Atlantic Ocean.

“Iceland’s security and defense is guarded by our membership in NATO, but also, for many, more importantly, by a bilateral defense agreement with the U.S. since 1951. Now many people are sort of reconsidering the validity of that defense agreement,” Bergmann said.

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