This article originally appeared in National Security Journal.
By Joe Varner, January 15, 2026
Washington’s aggression toward Greenland is not ambition; it is risk management, and the risk it is managing runs straight through the Canadian Arctic.
The renewed American focus on Greenland is not about acquisition fantasies; it is about America’s exposure to real threats. The U.S. National Security Strategy is explicit, the defence of the American homeland now begins far from its borders, and no adversary can be allowed to hold the U.S. at risk by missile, cyberattack, or coercion through geography. In a world of renewed great power competition, Greenland has become the fastest way for Washington to close gaps it no longer believes can remain open.
Those gaps also run straight through the Canadian Arctic. From Washington’s perspective, North America is a single defensive system. Missiles, bombers, submarines, and cyber operations do not respect borders. They exploit space, speed, and seams. The most dangerous seams lie across the polar approaches, through Greenland and over Canada’s vast northern air and maritime space.
When a warning is late or coverage is thin, the U.S. does not wait for consensus to address a threat. It acts.
That urgency has only grown. Chinese research facilities across Svalbard, northern Sweden, and Iceland have reshaped U.S. threat perceptions, reinforcing concerns about the rival’s creeping presence and dual use access in regions once assumed to be benign. In that context, Greenland has been elevated from remote geography to indispensable strategic ground. Facilities such as Pituffik Space Base already anchor missile warning, space domain awareness, and command and control in ways that immediately reduce risk, but America’s presence at the base and across the island remains insufficient to address the full spectrum of threats emerging in the High North.
But the deeper reason for the American move on Greenland is less flattering to Canada.
It reflects a growing belief in Washington that the northern approaches remain insufficiently observed, defended, and hardened, and time is no longer on North America’s side. This is why Canada’s defence choices are far more consequential than Ottawa may appreciate.
The purchase of the F-35 is not simply a fighter replacement. In U.S. eyes, it is a test of whether Canada intends to remain operationally relevant in the most demanding air and missile defence environment on the planet. The aircraft’s value lies in sensing, networking, and operating inside contested airspace, exactly what continental defence now requires. Integrated properly into NORAD and Arctic operations, the F-35 closes gaps. Treated as a prestige platform without supporting infrastructure and readiness, it does not.
The same is true of Canada’s plan to acquire new submarines. Undersea warfare is no longer a niche concern. Russian, and potentially Chinese, submarine activity is central to how adversaries threaten the homeland below the threshold of war. Canada’s aging fleet has left a vast northern maritime space thinly monitored. New submarines would directly reduce U.S. vulnerability. Delay only encourages Washington to compensate elsewhere. Then there is missile defence, increasingly described as the Golden Dome.
This is not optional window dressing in U.S. planning. It reflects a judgment that deterrence now depends on denying adversaries confidence they can strike the homeland at all. Canada’s long-standing ambiguity on missile defence participation reads very differently in Washington today. In a world of hypersonics and cruise missiles, ambiguity looks less like prudence and more like exposure.
None of this reflects American hostility toward Canada. The U.S. assumes Canada will remain its closest partner. What it no longer assumes is that goodwill alone will secure the northern approaches.
Canada still has a choice. Fully integrating the F-35, delivering real submarine capability, strengthening Arctic surveillance, and making a clear decision on the Golden Dome would signal seriousness.
If Canada stalls, Washington will lock down the northern approaches through Greenland and beyond; if that happens, Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic will fade not by force, but simply by default.
Joe Varner is the deputy director of the Conference of Defence Associations, a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and the Center for North American Prosperity and Security in Washington, D.C.
