This is Greenland’s military power: how many soldiers, planes, tanks and ships does Denmark have?
Following the incursion into Venezuela, Trump is looking for ways to take over the world's largest and most promising island.
US President Donald Trump is again insisting on his intention to buy Greenland, the largest and arguably most strategically promising island on the planet. It has vast untapped natural resources, and its position in the Arctic Ocean makes it a crucial geopolitical enclave. Trump planted the seed a year ago and, this January, he is once more testing the waters, looking to add Greenland to his shopping cart.
Most Greenlanders want independence from Denmark, the country on which they still depend and from which they receive around €500 million a year, almost half of their public budget. Even under these conditions, Greenland wants to break away from Copenhagen. In elections held last March, five of the six parties that ran openly advocated independence.
Following the US incursion into Venezuela and the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro, Trump has continued to look beyond America’s borders. In line with these expansionist ambitions, he now intends to buy, not invade, Greenland, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. However, Vice President J.D. Vance has not ruled out the use of military force, stating in an interview that Trump is “prepared to go as far as necessary” to “defend American interests”.
Armed conflict in Greenland remains a highly hypothetical scenario, almost a fantasy. But the world is real, and what seems distant can quickly become possible. What would happen if the United States decided to seize Greenland by force? Could Denmark and the world’s largest island defend themselves in any meaningful way?
Greenland has no army of its own. The island belongs to Denmark, which controls its foreign affairs and defence. According to Global Military, Denmark ranks 45th in the world in military strength, behind countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, Brazil and Pakistan. The same ranking places the United States as the world’s most powerful military, followed by China and Russia.
By those figures, Denmark has 11 active aircraft, 127 ships, 14,500 active troops and 44,000 reservists. The United States, by contrast, has 1,326,000 active troops, 471 ships, 13,043 aircraft and more than 5,000 nuclear warheads.
“It wouldn’t be difficult for the United States to deploy a few hundred or a thousand troops to Greenland, and there’s no clear power preventing it,” Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the defence think tank Defense Priorities, told AFP. The United States already maintains a permanent presence on the island at Pituffik Air Base, which hosts its ballistic missile early warning system.
I am an American. I love my country. But today I side with the people of Denmark, Greenland and the European Union over this insane, immoral, corrupt, treasonous and vile President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/YLNaRYwt4x
— Fernand R. Amandi (@AmandiOnAir) January 17, 2026
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There is no precedent for an attack between NATO members, an organisation to which both the US and Denmark belong. Greenland’s president, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, insists that the US “cannot” conquer the island, that “there is no need to panic”, and that the “fantasies about annexation” must come to an end.
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