What to know about Greenland's role in nuclear defense and Trump's 'Golden Dome'

PARIS (AP) — In a hypothetical nuclear war involving Russia, China and the United States, the island of Greenland would be in the middle of Armageddon.

The strategic importance of the Arctic territory — under the flight paths that nuclear-armed missiles from China and Russia could take on their way to incinerating targets in the United States, and vice versa — is one of the reasons U.S. President Donald Trump has cited in his disruptive campaign to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark, alarming Greenlanders and longtime allies in Europe alike.

Trump has argued that U.S. ownership of Greenland is vital for his “Golden Dome” — a multibillion dollar missile defense system that he says will be operational before his term ends in 2029.

“Because of The Golden Dome, and Modern Day Weapons Systems, both Offensive and Defensive, the need to ACQUIRE is especially important," Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday.

That ushered in another roller-coaster week involving the semiautonomous Danish territory, where Trump again pushed for U.S. ownership before seemingly backing off, announcing Wednesday the “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security that's unlikely to be the final word.

Here’s a closer look at Greenland's position at a crossroads for nuclear defense.

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs, that nuclear adversaries would fire at each other — if it ever came to that — tend to take the shortest direct route, on a ballistic trajectory into space and down again, from their silos or launchers to targets. The shortest flight paths from China or Russia to the United States — and the other way — would take many of them over the Arctic region.

Russian Topol-M missiles fired, for example, from the Tatishchevo silo complex southeast of Moscow would fly high over Greenland, if targeted at the U.S. ICBM force of 400 Minuteman III missiles, housed at the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and the Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

Chinese Dong Feng-31 missiles, if fired from new silo fields that the U.S. Defense Department says have been built in China, also could overfly Greenland should they be targeted at the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.

“If there is a war, much of the action will take place on that piece of ice. Think of it: those missiles would be flying right over the center,” Trump said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

An array of farseeing early warning radars act as the Pentagon's eyes against any missile attack. The northernmost of them is in Greenland, at the Pituffik Space Base. Pronounced “bee-doo-FEEK,” it used to be called Thule Air Base, but was renamed in 2023 using the remote location's Greenlandic name, recognizing the Indigenous community that was forcibly displaced by the U.S. outpost's construction in 1951.

Its location above the Arctic Circle, and roughly halfway between Washington and Moscow, enables it to peer with its radar over the Arctic region, into Russia and at potential flight paths of U.S.-targeted Chinese missiles.

“That gives the United States more time to think about what to do,” said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst who specializes in Russia’s nuclear arsenal. “Greenland is a good location for that.”

The two-sided, solid-state AN/FPS-132 radar is designed to quickly detect and track ballistic missile launches, including from submarines, to help inform the U.S. commander in chief's response and provide data for interceptors to try and destroy warheads.

The radar beams out for nearly 5,550 kilometers (3,450 miles) in a 240-degree arc and, even at its furthest range, can detect objects no larger than a small car, the U.S. Air Force says.

Pitching the “Golden Dome” in Davos, Trump said that the U.S. needs ownership of Greenland to defend it.

“You can’t defend it on a lease,” he said.

But defense specialists struggle to comprehend that logic given that the U.S. has operated at Pituffik for decades without owning Greenland.

French nuclear defense specialist Etienne Marcuz points out that Trump has never spoken of also needing to take control of the United Kingdom — even though it, like Greenland, also plays an important role in U.S. missile defense.

An early warning radar operated by the U.K.'s Royal Air Force at Fylingdales, in northern England, serves both the U.K. and U.S governments, scanning for missiles from Russia and elsewhere and northward to the polar region. The unit's motto is “Vigilamus" — Latin for “We are watching.”

Trump's envisioned multilayered “Golden Dome” could include space-based sensors to detect missiles. They could reduce the U.S. need for its Greenland-based radar station, said Marcuz, a former nuclear defense worker for France’s Defense Ministry, now with the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank in Paris.

“Trump’s argument that Greenland is vital for the Golden Dome — and therefore that it has to be invaded, well, acquired — is false for several reasons," Marcuz said.

“One of them is that there is, for example, a radar in the United Kingdom, and to my knowledge there is no question of invading the U.K. And, above all, there are new sensors that are already being tested, in the process of being deployed, which will in fact reduce Greenland’s importance.”

Because of its location, Greenland could be a useful place to station “Golden Dome” interceptors to try to destroy warheads before they reach the continental U.S.

The “highly complex system can only work at its maximum potential and efficiency ... if this Land is included in it," Trump wrote in his post last weekend.

But the U.S. already has access to Greenland under a 1951 defense agreement. Before Trump ratcheted up the heat on the territory and Denmark, its owner, their governments likely would have readily accepted any American military request for an expanded footprint there, experts say. It used to have multiple bases and installations, but later abandoned them, leaving just Pituffik.

“Denmark was the most compliant ally of the United States,” Marcuz said. “Now, it’s very different. I don’t know whether authorization would be granted, but in any case, before, the answer was ‘Yes.’”

FILE - A Russian military Topol M intercontinental ballistic missile launcher rolls during the Victory Day military parade to celebrate 74 years since the victory in WWII in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2019. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

FILE - Vice President JD Vance, center right, and second lady Usha Vance, center left, pose with personnel at Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on March 28, 2025. (Jim Watson/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - In this photo provided by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operation test at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Feb. 23, 2021. (Brittany E. N. Murphy/U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command via AP, File)

FILE - President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on May 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

BANGKOK (AP) — The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil briefly topped $100 a barrel early Thursday, just days after it spiked near $120 in the latest jolts to financial markets and the global economy as a whole.

Oil prices initially shot more than 9% higher as supply concerns worsened with Iranian attacks on commercial shipping around the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. campaign of airstrikes in Iran is now in its 13th day.

U.S. benchmark crude oil jumped 4.5% to about $91 a barrel. Brent, the international standard, was trading 5.3% higher at about $97 per barrel.

Iran has escalated its attacks aimed at generating enough global economic pain to pressure the United States and Israel to end the war. But there was no sign the conflict was subsiding.

Iran has targeted oil fields and refineries in Gulf Arab nations and effectively stopped cargo traffic through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.

In response, the International Energy Agency agreed Wednesday to release 400 million barrels of oil, the largest volume of emergency oil reserves in its history, in a bid to counter the war’s effects on energy markets. The U.S. planned to release 172 million barrels of oil next week from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat steep prices.

The IEA’s announcement came a day after energy ministers from the Group of Seven — the leading industrialized nations of Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and Britain — met in Paris to look at ways to bring down prices.

But the continued strife and uncertainty have fueled speculation prices could push still higher, and that pulled shares lower.

The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.4% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.5% lower.

Germany's DAX lost 0.4% to 23,533.60, while the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.7% to 7,982.64. Britain's FTSE 100 sank 0.7% to 10,285.91.

During Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 fell 1% to 54,452.96. In South Korea, the Kospi lost 0.5% to 5,583.25, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng gave up 0.7% to 25,716.76.

The Shanghai Composite index shed 0.1% to 4,129.10 and in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 dropped 1.3% to 8,629.00.

On Wednesday, U.S. stocks were little changed as the S&P 500 edged 0.1% lower for a second day of modest moves following a wild stretch caused by the war with Iran. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.6%, to its lowest level this year, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.1%.

Since the start of the war, sharp moves for oil prices have triggered swings up and down for financial markets worldwide, sometimes by the hour. Oil prices briefly spiked to their highest levels since 2022 this week because of the possibility that production in the Middle East could be blocked for a long time, which in turn raised worries about a surge of debilitating inflation for the global economy.

In a report, Oxford Economics said “the swings in Brent crude oil prices over the past several days are eye-catching and odds are volatility will remain because of the absence of a timeline for when the conflict will de-escalate and when the Strait of Hormuz, which is effectively closed, will see traffic begin to recover.”

The level of volatility suggests that depending on news developments, oil prices could spike as high as $140 per barrel, it said.

A report released Wednesday showed U.S. consumers paid prices for groceries, gasoline and other costs of living that were 2.4% higher in February than a year earlier.

That's the same level as the month before and better than the 2.5% that economists expected, but it remains above the Federal Reserve's 2% target and doesn’t include the spike in gasoline prices this month due to the war.

High inflation combined with a stagnating economy would create a worst-case scenario called “stagflation” that the Federal Reserve has no good tools to fix. Stagflation fears are rising not just because of higher oil prices but also because of weakness in hiring by U.S. employers.

In other dealings early Thursday, the dollar fell to 158.84 Japanese yen from 158.95 yen. The euro fell to $1.1553 from $1.1566.

Gas prices are displayed at a station Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Evanston Ill. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Pedestrians mill about outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The New York Stock Exchange is seen in New York, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)