I have a feeling the Iranian attempts to overwhelm the Israeli missile defense system have much more to do with this increased obsession with its acquisition than rare earth materials or stationing troops themselves on Greenland to limit Russian or Chinese excursions via the Arctic. I blew off the "golden dome" idea when it was floated, but Greenland would be a key piece of real estate for its implementation. Now, I don't know why we don't just put it on our bases already there or build more of them (as we have a treaty that allows this), but it isn't just pure insanity to want it for defense purposes. I have seen this image before (actually many times in my younger years, without the "Greenland" overlaid, when reviewing "Cold War" nuclear proliferation doctrine in grad school), and I viewed it then as a sad ghost of our Cold War past. What makes this more "important" now is if you hold the view that the end of the Russia/Ukraine conflict could fracture Russia into 3 to 10 new "countries", with 2-4 of them with ICBMs under their control, then this image is a scary reminder of what could happen. Right now, Greenland doesn't matter, as any Russian attack would be an all-out doomsday event, but if Russia fractures, then the likelihood of a limited-scale launch (or the threat thereof as a negotiation tactic) is much higher than the current stalemate. These same routes, mainly the ones in Siberia and Mongolia (the left 5 dots on the map), are what the Chinese DF-41 ICBMs would most likely follow to strike the US east coast. Once again, China has a "don't strike first" policy, but if you view the Chinese state as potentially unstable (and their internal numbers have been concerning, and you expect the continued decoupling of the US and EU from the Chinese supply chain to continue), then the same concern about fragmentation would come to play. Love or hate Trump, his absolute dread of nuclear weapons and fear of global nuclear conflict is one of his longest-held public positions. If he sees Greenland as a long-term way to "protect" the US from one of his greatest fears, he will pursue this. It would be a legacy item for him to brag about. Now, people are getting caught up in the carrot-and-stick negotiations (which are becoming increasingly public), but just as with the ugly public trade tariff deal negotiations, things are going on behind the scenes to balance that out. Trump is the flippant "bad cop" in all of these scenarios, a position that he plays well and people eat up, and the staff plays "good cop" and we end up with some solution to a problem that no one was willing to resolve when everyone at the table were all try not to offend everyone. I don't "like" the approach, but I understand the logic criteria. If there is any concern that Russia or China may split, then Greenland is important to the US interest. Even if they don't fracture, it has rare earth mining potential, transshipment port value to potentially bypass both the Suez and Panama canals, and all of those would provide value. This is a hedge bet couched as security that has enough economic potential to have it more than break even.