Looking Ahead To The Arctic Century: Greenland As Kingmaker

Dr Dwayne Ryan Menezes

Founder and Managing Director – Polar Research and Policy Initiative

Let us be clear: we are soon entering the Arctic Century, and its most defining feature will be Greenland’s meteoric rise, sustained prominence and ubiquitous influence. Over the coming decades, developments in Greenland and the wider Arctic will impact every aspect of our lives: our politics, our commerce and our culture. As the world grows more multipolar and more connected, Greenland - located on the crossroads between North America, Europe and Asia, and with enormous resource potential - will only become more strategically important, with all powers great and small seeking to pay court to it. One is quite keen to go a step further and buy it. After all, in the Arctic Century, Greenland will be a global kingmaker.

The idea of buying Greenland might sound outrageous, but it isn’t new. Even before Trump proposed that the US should acquire it in 2019 and 2024, the idea had been mooted time and time again in the US - notably in 1867, 1910, 1946 and 1955. The hierarchy of motivations may have evolved over the past 158 years, but the mix is generally the same. Securing access to Greenland’s abundant resources, such as critical minerals, fish and water. Advancing defence and security interests, in consideration of Greenland’s strategic location, and the risks an inadequately defended Greenland could pose to the US. Pursuing policies of containment or keeping third parties at bay. Great Britain and Canada early on; then Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; now, China and Russia.

Furthermore, it isn’t just the US that has shown interest in buying Greenland: the British Empire had its eyes on it too, with proposals to acquire it for Canada put forward in 1903 and 1917 mainly with the intent of keeping the US from obtaining it. In 1920, the British government, at Canada’s behest, sought the right of pre-emption should Denmark decide to part with Greenland, in exchange for British recognition of Danish sovereignty over the whole of the island. Neither the US nor Denmark were inclined to recognise that right. In 1940, once Germany invaded Denmark, leaving Danish colonies in the North Atlantic as unoccupied territories of an occupied colonial power, the British and the Canadians explored the prospect of occupying Greenland to protect it from the Germans, as Britain had done in Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Although officially neutral, the US obstructed the plan and occupied Greenland instead.

What is surprising and concerning about Trump’s interest is not his rationale, which is understandable, but his approach that seems out of date by nearly a century - and, of course, his persistence. Nevertheless, it highlights just how important Greenland has become to our collective future in the West, especially the US. As the US, the UK and the EU seek to reduce their dependence on China for critical minerals – especially rare earth elements – so crucial to their national and economic security, to key industries such as defence and technology and to the green transition, and develop more secure and reliable domestic or continental critical minerals supply chains, it would be stranger if they did not turn their gaze to Greenland. For the US, ever engaged in a trade war with China while being reliant on it for 72% of its rare earth imports between 2019 and 2022, Greenland represents a gigantic opportunity in its North Atlantic and Arctic neighbourhood that abounds in the very resources that the US so desperately needs, not least some of the world’s largest rare earth reserves.

However, while critical minerals may make Greenland more attractive to the US, it is only one of several factors contributing to Trump’s seemingly relentless pursuit of it. The reality is that as temperatures rise in the Arctic faster than anywhere else in the world, and as the ice melts, making Arctic shipping routes and resources more accessible, the prospect of Chinese and Russian interest and presence in and near Greenland grows more likely. This has serious security ramifications for the US and its Western Allies.

Greenland’s geographical position between North America, Europe and Asia places it along the shortest shipping routes and flight paths between major ports and airports in the three continents. Militarily, its location on one end of the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap makes it vital to ‘minding the Gap’ - monitoring Russian vessels and submarines seeking to access the North Atlantic, and protecting critical subsea infrastructure. To the US, thus, Greenland represents not just a significant opportunity, but also - if inadequately defended - an equally massive vulnerability.

The US also has significant military infrastructure in Greenland. In 1941, while Denmark was still under Nazi occupation, the Danish Ambassador in Washington, Henrik Kaufmann, signed an agreement with the US Secretary of State permitting the stationing of American troops in Greenland. Greenland served as a de facto protectorate of the US until 1945 - that is, for the rest of the Second World War - with the Americans building infrastructure such as airfields, ports, radio and weather stations, and search-and-rescue stations across the vast island territory. There were stations in Narsarsuaq, Grønnedal (now Kangilinnguit), Sondrestrom (now Kangerlussuaq), Aasiaat and Thule along the west coast and Torgilsbu, Comanche Bay (now Igtip Kangertiva), Ikateq, Scoresbysund (now Ittoqqortoormiit) and Ella Island along the east, among others.

Then, it was in the context of the Cold War that the US negotiated with the Kingdom of Denmark the 1951 Defence of Greenland Agreement that granted the US almost unhindered access to Greenland for defence - and indeed the extensive privileges it still enjoys more than seven decades later. Cognisant that the Arctic represented the shortest route for a Soviet attack on North America, the US set out to build a strong anti-Soviet defence system. By the late-1950s, it deployed an early warning system - the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line - that comprised a string of radar stations that ran from Alaska to Greenland and was designed to detect incoming bombers from the Soviet Union. Starting in 1958, the US constructed a more sophisticated Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) to detect an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) nuclear attack. It began operating in 1961 and had one of its three sites in Thule, Greenland, alongside the other two in Clear, Alaska, and RAF Flyingdales, UK.

The US also operated Camp Century in Greenland, established in 1959 officially as a scientific research site but which entailed a clandestine military base built under the ice, hosting around 200 inhabitants, as well as prefabricated buildings, laboratories, a railway track, a school, a church, a theatre, a hospital and a portable nuclear reactor, all within 21 covered trenches. This is where Project Iceworm was being developed, an even more extensive network of tunnels spread across 52,000 miles (three times the size of Denmark) under the Greenland Ice Sheet where the US could station, move and launch up to 600 nuclear medium range ballistic missiles (MRBMs).

Then, in the late-1950s and 1960s, Greenland fell within the geographic scope of the USAF Strategic Air Command (SAC)’s airborne alert programs. One such program, Operation Chrome Dome, saw up to 12 B-52 bombers carrying thermonuclear bombs remain on continuous airborne alert 24 hours a day, with at least two overflights over Greenland daily. Its purpose? Nuclear deterrence. In the case of a Soviet nuclear attack, it guaranteed the US could retaliate. Another mission, Hard Head, saw a nuclear-armed bomber remain airborne over Thule Air Base to provide continuous visual surveillance of the BMEWS radar.

Both the Second World War and the Cold War, thus, stand testimony to Greenland’s strategic importance to the US - as well as Canada and the UK - from a defence and security standpoint. While the US no longer operates an extensive network of bases in Greenland, Greenland still plays host to the northernmost installation of the US military, the Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), that remains central to the Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR) system for missile warning, missile defence, and space surveillance and control operations, as well as for space domain awareness.

In short, Greenland has been a constant friend, willing partner in defence, good neighbour to the US, and an indispensable part of NATO.

While generally welcomed, the US military presence in Greenland has not been without controversy. The development of the US air base in Pituffik-Thule in the early-1950s led to a loss of hunting and fishing opportunities for the local population and their relocation by the Danish government to Qaanaaq. In 2003, the Danish Supreme Court accepted that these were acts of expropriation, while the Danish Prime Minister’s Office admitted that they constituted a serious offence and unlawful conduct, and agreed to pay compensation.

Then, in January 1968, cabin fire on board a B52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear bombs compelled its crew to abandon the aircraft before it could make an emergency landing at Thule, causing it to crash on the sea ice in North Star Bay. In its immediate aftermath, SAC brought the airborne alert program to an end. The environmental pollution caused by the detonation of the explosives, and the radioactive contamination of the area resulting from the dispersal of the ruptured nuclear payload, also necessitated an ambitious cleanup operation. The workers involved reported long-term health impacts over subsequent decades, including a higher incidence of cancer, and took legal action against the US and Denmark. The incident also raised questions about how the US had deployed nuclear weapons in Greenland despite Denmark having a nuclear-free policy in place since 1957. In 2008, a BBC article claimed that not all parts of the fourth bomb had been found, though a Danish report the next year challenged this claim.

Even at Camp Century that was decommissioned in 1967, its infrastructure and hazardous waste were abandoned under the ice, giving rise to concerns that as the ice melts, radioactive waste, toxic pollutants, untreated sewage and diesel fuels could be released into the fragile Arctic environment.

Thus, while many in Greenland are favourably disposed to a closer relationship with the US, they are also more informed about the historic highs and lows in the trilateral Greenland-Denmark-US relationship than many external observers and analysts. This is evident in the more nuanced approach adopted by many Greenlandic commentators to the recurring surges in American interest. There is, for instance, an acute sense of awareness that the US military presence and activities in Greenland were enabled, and are still regulated, by the agreements of 1941 and 1951 that directly concern Greenland and yet which were signed with the US by the government of a colonial power (Denmark) from whom they are now seeking to be independent - prior to the establishment of Greenland’s Home Rule Government in 1979 and Self Government in 2009.

The frustration, if any, is not so much with the US military establishment, as it is about Greenlanders not having been consulted by previous Danish governments in decisions that continue to impact them. It does not suggest a lack of understanding about the crucial role Greenland played in the Second World War and the Cold War, or a lack of interest in cultivating a stronger partnership with the US. Instead, it simply indicates a desire to have a seat at the table, to be able to convey their own concerns, to be able to advance their interests themselves, and to have a greater or final (or indeed, the only) say in decisions that directly concern them, as captured in the adage “nothing about us without us”.

From the vantage point of some in the US defence community, however, this could be perceived differently. Not just through the lens of self-determination, indigenous autonomy and self-governance, but also through the framework of geopolitical and geoeconomic risks. It is well and good that Greenlanders wish to be consulted in decisions that directly concern them, but what if a current or future leader might seek to revisit longstanding defence and security arrangements? What if they wish to pursue policies less conducive to US interests and friendlier to US adversaries? What risks does that pose to the future of the US military presence and activities in the region, and to US national security?

From this standpoint, any change in the status quo between Greenland and Denmark also has major implications for US security, if not accompanied with bankable assurances that the long-term interests of the US will not be affected. This could explain Trump’s initial approach of dealing directly with Denmark. At the same time, the direction of travel in Greenland is clear. As a realist, Trump can see that so long as Greenland and Denmark remain in a turbulent half-in-half-out marriage, the interests of the US could be endangered even as a bystander to their internal bickering. So, a change in the status quo could be beneficial after all, especially if backed by the US. This could explain Trump’s more recent approach of dealing directly with Greenland.

However, that still does not eliminate the risk that a future leader of an independent Greenland might pursue policies contrary to US interests. At a time of intensifying great power competition, it is not difficult to see why Trump might perceive any risk of current or future prevarication or equivocation on the part of Greenland as a vulnerability that the US simply cannot afford. Using Trump’s ‘America First’ logic and real estate background, buying Greenland simply makes the most sense: it eliminates such risks altogether. It must be said here that the question is not about whether or not Denmark has been a good and reliable ally; it is more about whether it still is a necessary piece in the equation or one that is increasingly redundant.

The irony is that the US already enjoys overwhelming support for a closer bilateral relationship in Greenland, so there is little that can be achieved through the rhetoric of acquisition or the potential use of force that cannot be achieved simply by building on existing goodwill. The proposal to buy Greenland serves more to undermine, rather than build, trust. In the 21st century, the leader of a state as well-resourced as the US has many more tools in his armoury to be able to secure its long-term interests without needing to embark on neoimperialist adventures, undermine longstanding alliances, and disrespect local peoples. Engaging directly, honestly and respectfully with the people of Greenland and their elected officials would be far more effective than flashes and flexes of cowboy masculinity.

The current Greenlandic leadership is already keen for a stronger partnership with the US and its Western allies. They would just prefer to do so as Greenlanders rather than Danes or Americans. As Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede of Greenland said to Fox News, “We want to be independent in Greenland, but Greenland is part of the Western alliance, and we will always be part of the Western alliance and a strong partner for the US. We are in the North American continent, and your security is our security.” He added that Greenland and the US had already cooperated for 80 years, and the future still had a lot to offer, especially in defence and security. On the question of independence, he clarified that while “it is up to the Greenlandic people to decide when we want to be independent”, even if Greenland did, “it will always be a part of the Western alliance”; they just sought to be so “as a Greenlandic people”.

Greenland represents both a gigantic opportunity and a potential vulnerability for the US, but to fully develop that relationship, it is important that the US understands and respects the right of the Greenlandic people to self-determination, indigenous autonomy and self-governance. As we enter the Arctic Century, we would do well to remember that Greenland - the grand centrepiece of the Arctic - is not only paving the way, but also holding court as kingmaker.

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