Roughly 400 soldiers from 11 NATO countries began a two-week Arctic exercise across Greenland this week, practicing how to defend the island by land, sea and air — even as the alliance's most powerful member, the United States, sat the drills out entirely.

The exercise, dubbed Operation Arctic Endurance, runs Sept. 7 through Sept. 18 and includes special forces troops trained for extreme cold-weather operations from Canada, Denmark and Finland, among other allied nations. No American personnel are taking part, a striking absence given Washington's outsized interest in the territory over the past year.

Von der Leyen's Counteroffer

The drills began just as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen touched down in Nuuk, Greenland's capital, to unveil a €200 million ($232 million) package aimed at shoring up the island's energy grid, internet connectivity, hydropower and fisheries sectors. Von der Leyen signed a formal EU-Greenland partnership declaration alongside Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, and said Brussels intends to roughly double its annual support for Greenland to more than $600 million by 2028, according to Spectrum News.

GREENLAND'S FUTURE IS FOR THE PEOPLE OF GREENLAND AND DENMARK TO DECIDE — NO ONE ELSE

The message was pointed. President Trump has repeatedly said the United States should acquire or control Greenland outright for national-security reasons. Von der Leyen pushed back directly during her visit, telling reporters that Greenland's future "is for the people of Greenland and Denmark to decide, no one else," per the Washington Times.

Greenland sits atop vast reserves of rare-earth minerals and controls strategically vital Arctic shipping lanes that are opening up as sea ice recedes — a combination that has made the island, home to roughly 57,000 people, an outsized flashpoint in great-power competition between Washington, Brussels, Moscow and Beijing.

For Copenhagen and Nuuk, the NATO exercise and the EU investment package amount to a two-pronged answer to Trump: a demonstration that European allies, not the U.S., are training to defend the territory, paired with a financial pledge meant to reduce Greenland's economic dependence on any single outside power. Danish officials say they welcome deeper U.S. cooperation on Arctic security but have firmly rejected any suggestion of a sale or annexation.

The drills and the funding announcement land at a delicate moment. Greenland's government has been pushing for greater autonomy from Denmark even as it fields overtures from Washington, and polling on the island has shown most residents want neither annexation by the U.S. nor full independence in the near term, but rather a gradual loosening of ties to Copenhagen on their own timeline. What happens next will likely hinge on how aggressively the Trump administration responds to this week's dual show of European commitment.