Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. The new season of the popular Netflix political series, Borgen, sees the Danish politician Birgitte Nyborg, as Foreign Minister, caught in the middle of an international stand-off between the United States and China.

The issue is, ostensibly, oil. A huge discovery of the fossil fuel in Greenland, which is part of Denmark, takes on global significance when a Chinese company muscles in on the drilling rights. But oil is not its primary concern. Its sights are on access to the Arctic, and building landing sites for “bigger ships” in the area.