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The formidable reality confronting any US, NATO, or European plans for Greenland is its ice. The relentless frozen expanse obstructs harbours, encases valuable minerals, and transforms coastlines into treacherous fields of white and blue shards, posing a year-round threat to shipping.
Navigating this challenging environment necessitates a specific solution: icebreakers. These colossal vessels, equipped with powerful engines, reinforced hulls, and heavy bows, are engineered to crush and cleave through thick ice.
However, the United States currently possesses only three such ships, with one reportedly in such disrepair as to be almost unusable. While agreements are in place to acquire an additional eleven, procurement faces significant geopolitical hurdles, as potential sources include either adversaries or recently alienated allies.
Despite toning down his rhetoric, U.S. President Donald Trump seems set on the U.S. owning Greenland for security and economic reasons: to keep what he call..

US president Donald Trump has provoked anger among British politicians and veteran fighters by claiming Nato soldiers avoided the front lines in the war in Afghanistan.
Around 1,186 non-American Nato troops died in the conflict that began in 2001, according to Help for Heroes. More than 2,300 members of the US armed forced were killed.
But Mr Trump ramped up tensions with Nato on Thursday, saying he was not sure the alliance would “be there if we ever needed them”.
He told Fox News: “They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan … and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”
Lord Sedwill, a former British ambassador to Afghanistan, told Times Radio that Mr Trump’s claim was offensive and simply wrong, and that Afghanistan veterans and the families of those who died would be right to feel deeply offended.
open image in galleryMr Trump saw US Afghanistan veterans’ bodies repatriated (Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)He said: “The Ame..

CloseTrump drops Europe tariffs threat over Greenland after Nato talks at DavosA Danish MP has said that the deal U.S president Donald Trump claims to have struck over Greenland is “definitely not a deal” and that his so-called negotiations with Nato were “not real”.
Trump yesterday backed down from his threat to impose tariffs on European nations after reaching the “framework of a future deal” over Greenland, hours after giving a fiery speech in Davos.
He abandoned plans to impose tariffs on allies who had objected to his efforts to acquire the Danish-controlled territory after what he described as a “very productive” meeting with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte.
Sascha Faxe told Sky News that “there can’t be a deal without having Greenland as part of the negotiations, first of all”.
“So we have a Greenlandic MP in Denmark – and she’s very clear that this is not a prerogative of Rutte and Nato; they can’t trade the underground in Greenland, or Greenlandic security without Greenlande..

Rescuers in New Zealand were searching for several people, including at least one child, after a landslide tore through a popular holiday campsite as days of record-breaking rain and flooding continued to batter the country.
The landslide struck a campground at the base of Mount Maunganui on Thursday morning, overturning campervans, crushing tents, and hitting a toilet and shower block, according to emergency officials.
Rescue teams said they initially heard voices calling for help from beneath the rubble but had detected no further signs of life by late afternoon, as concerns grew about the stability of the hillside.
The landslide came after days of torrential rain linked to a tropical weather system, which has dumped extraordinary volumes of rain across large parts of the North Island.
New Zealand’s emergency management minister, Mark Mitchell, said parts of the east coast resembled “a war zone”, with helicopters deployed to rescue families trapped on rooftops and local states of em..