It would be fair to say the entire issue of “Strategic Terrain” remains largely understudied. When studied, it tends to be without the military strategy lens that informs modern military planning and is often reduced to somewhat obvious insights cloaked in abstract terms such as “mobility corridors” and “littoral manoeuvre.”
Thus, it was somewhat surprising to find that the current US administration’s demand for sovereignty over Greenland seems to have been based on a Mercator-projection understanding of school geography rather than on any operational analysis. Greenland, north to south, is about 1,400 nautical miles, which is New York to Puerto Rico, so not the vast land mass many assume.
The idea that melting ice caps make Greenland “strategic” is at best debatable and, based on current evidence, very hard to understand. Terrain with known significance to Arctic navigation stayed almost completely absent from the public debate.
Firstly, the US controls all access to the Arctic from Asia because Alaska sits on one side of the Bering Strait. That renders the significance of any terrain in the Canadian Arctic, such as Ellesmere Island, Lancaster Sound, or Fury Sound, all utterly moot. Best estimates indicate that Smith Sound, between Greenland and Ellesmere, has never been ice-free, which, yet again, negates the suggestion of Greenland’s security relevance to the US. If the US is serious about Arctic security, it begins with ensuring the US Armed Forces can sustain a blockade of the Bering Strait.
The only other way into the Arctic, or way out for Russia, because China is arguably irrelevant in terms of any ability to project military power, is the so-called “GIUK gap.” The Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom gap is more correctly the Denmark Strait, and the Southern Norwegian Sea, as far as the Faroe Islands, which are also Danish. Operational experience from the Cold War strongly suggests that modern Russia lacks the ability to seize locations such as Iceland, let alone land any relevant force on Greenland itself. Russia might be able to seize Jan Mayen if it could wipe out both the RAF and the Royal Norwegian Air Forces, and if the USAF based at Keflavik, in Iceland, let it. Jan Mayen is arguably not key terrain, but Svalbard is. Svalbard has a runway that can accommodate military fast jets and is within 600 nautical miles of the Bodo and Evenes Air Bases in Norway. If you trust Norway, Iceland, and the UK to detect and strike any surface or subsurface target in the GIUK gap, then Greenland remains an irrelevance. Additionally, all the major runways in Greenland lie on the Western coast.
OK, so what? Military Strategy Magazine doesn’t do political opinion, but we do view Strategy as a practical skill. If you cannot read a map, then Strategy will be a long, sleepless night you will have to endure. You may want to debate facts, but you cannot debate distances or the runway lengths needed to operate a P-8 or KC-46A. Relevant knowledge and its application lie as the cornerstone of all else in Strategy. Policy may not have the same constraints as ideology tramples all else. Greenland may be ideologically relevant to some, but it has nothing to do with Strategy as concerns the security of the United States.
William F. Owen
Editor-in-Chief, Military Strategy Magazine
Volume 10, Issue 4
February 2026