Geopolitics & Resilience
2026-04-26
10 minute read
15 sources
Greenland 2026: rare earths, US-EU competition, and the economics of self-determination
After the Demokraatit win in March 2025 and a year of explicit US acquisition rhetoric, Nuuk is renegotiating the price of every barrel of mineral rent. The question is no longer whether Greenland's critical minerals enter the Atlantic supply chain, but on whose terms, in whose currency, and against which sovereignty trade.
Greenland is a 56,865 person polity (Statistics Greenland, January 2024) sitting on roughly 1.5 million tonnes of identified rare earth oxide resources (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025), the second largest known accessible deposit outside China after Mountain Pass. Per capita GDP was DKK 480,000, total nominal GDP USD 3.4 billion in...