Beyond simply examining maps and speculating about US motives, the current US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has admitted that controlling Greenland is directly tied to controlling shipping lanes along the Arctic.
In a January 2025 interview published on the State Department’s official
website, Secretary Rubio explicitly stated:
“…the Arctic Circle and the Arctic region are going to become critical for shipping lanes, for how you get some of this energy that’s going to be produced under President Trump – these energies rely on shipping lanes. The Arctic has some of the most valuable shipping lanes in the world. As some of the ice is melting, it’s become more and more navigable. We need to be able to defend that.
So if you project what the Chinese have done, it is just a matter of time before – because they are not an Arctic power. They do not have an Arctic presence, so they need to be able to have somewhere that they can stage from. And it is completely realistic to believe that the Chinese will eventually – maybe even in the short term – try to do in Greenland what they have done at the Panama Canal and in other places, and that is install facilities that give them access to the Arctic with the cover of a Chinese company but that in reality serve a dual purpose: that in a moment of conflict, they could send naval vessels to that facility and operate from there. And that is completely unacceptable to the national security of the world and to the United – to the security of the world and the national security of the United States.”
While Secretary Rubio attempts to frame US actions as responding to a supposed Chinese threat, the purpose is clearly to close off any potential alternative to the maritime chokepoints the US has already poised its military forces across the Asia-Pacific region to close.