{"id":16060,"date":"2025-02-06T06:30:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T06:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=16060"},"modified":"2025-02-06T06:30:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T06:30:46","slug":"how-greenland-got-caught-in-a-clash-of-superpowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=16060","title":{"rendered":"How Greenland got caught in a clash of superpowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Aqqaluk Lynge is talking about a previous offer from the US to buy the island as he pores over a map of the Arctic, when a warship suddenly appears outside his window. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the Americans,\u201d says the pioneer of Greenland\u2019s home-rule movement with a laugh, looking out on to the fjord in Nuuk. The ageing patrol boat is Danish, intended to protect its sovereignty over the world\u2019s largest non-continental island, an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark.<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump\u2019s renewed interest<\/a> in taking control of Greenland has thrust this vast, frozen landmass of just 57,000 people into the geopolitical spotlight. Offers to buy Greenland are nothing new \u2014 Washington first made enquiries in 1867 \u2014 but this latest attempt, in which Trump has refused to rule out using military force against a Nato ally, has thrown Denmark and the EU into crisis.<\/p>\n

It also highlights the growing military, commercial and diplomatic interest in the region. A long period of so-called Arctic exceptionalism, during which major powers viewed the region as a low-tension area away from normal geopolitics where rival nations could attempt to find common ground over problems such as climate change, appears to be ending. <\/p>\n

Between Russia\u2019s growing militarisation of its Arctic territory, China\u2019s increasing ambitions for trade routes and Trump\u2019s expansionist rhetoric about Greenland, the Arctic is quickly becoming a region of strategic competition. Some have likened it to the Great Game of the 19th century, when Britain and Russia vied for influence over central Asia.<\/p>\n

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<\/picture>
Aqqaluk Lynge, a founder of Greenland\u2019s largest political party, studies a map of the territory. He says residents are \u2018nervous\u2019 about the increasing geopolitical focus on the area<\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Anchored vessels in Greenland, a territory whose exports largely consist of fish<\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Children and locals in Nuuk, the capital, skate on a frozen lake <\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThis is a geopolitical machination,\u201d says Klaus Dodds, an Arctic expert and professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London. \u201cIt is rooted in the sense of \u2018this is a great power struggle\u2019. The US has to ensure at the very least that its western hemisphere is as secure as it can be.\u201d <\/p>\n

Experts say that Russia and China have been thinking about the military and business challenges, or opportunities, thrown up by the Arctic for more than a decade. <\/p>\n

The US seemed largely uninterested until the end of Trump\u2019s previous presidency in 2019. \u201cThere was a real vacuum when it came to the Arctic from the US for a long time,\u201d says Anna Wieslander, director for northern Europe at the Atlantic Council think-tank. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had Russians there, we had Chinese there, and they were both very engaged. The US really didn\u2019t have anything \u2014 no strategy, no icebreakers, little in Alaska militarily,\u201d she adds. \u201cThe US is waking up to a new reality.\u201d <\/p>\n

JD Vance, the US vice-president, declared at the weekend that Greenland was \u201creally important\u201d to US national security. \u201cThere are sea lanes there that the Chinese use, that the Russians use,\u201d he said, adding that Denmark is \u201cnot doing its job, and it\u2019s not being a good ally\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Greenland itself<\/a>, there is a recognition that it can no longer stand apart from international rivalries, despite its identity as a haven from geopolitics. \u201cWe are nervous about the situation, but we think we can manage,\u201d says Lynge, a founder of Inuit Ataqatigiit, Greenland\u2019s largest political party. The Americans \u201cshould accept us as the guardians of the Arctic\u201d, he adds. <\/p>\n

Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenland\u2019s foreign minister, acknowledges that the island\u2019s strategic location as her government pushes for independence from Denmark. \u201cWe are right smack dab in the middle of what is going on in the Arctic. Our belief has always been that the Arctic should be a low-tension area,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

Foreign policy experts say that Trump\u2019s pitch for Greenland in part reflects some of the hype that often abounds in the Arctic. But they also think his bluster \u2014 not just about Greenland but also Canada and the Panama Canal \u2014 represents a belief in the concept of spheres of influence. If so, it is a world view strikingly close to that of the presidents of Russia and China. <\/p>\n

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Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenland\u2019s foreign minister, hosts a press conference in Nuuk. She says the Arctic should remain a \u2018low-tension area\u2019<\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Kuno Fencker, an MP for Greenland\u2019s parliament, supports independence for the territory but says that realistically the US will be involved \u2018in some way\u2019<\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

All this suggests that the furore over Greenland is both serious and a sign of more to come in the Arctic, as climate change more rapid than in any other region on Earth potentially makes its shipping routes and mineral deposits more accessible.<\/p>\n

\u201cArctic exceptionalism doesn\u2019t exist any more,\u201d says Kuno Fencker, a Greenlandic MP who has recently met several Trump associates and wants his homeland to be independent. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is utopia to think about a sovereign Greenlandic state without the US being involved in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The warship outside Lynge\u2019s<\/strong> house could serve as a symbol for Copenhagen\u2019s tricky relationship with Greenland. <\/p>\n

Together with a single surveillance plane and some dog sled patrols, it is meant to protect a prime piece of Arctic territory roughly the same size as western Europe. <\/p>\n

But for more than a decade until recently, the vessel\u2019s guns were useless as they lacked a crucial targeting system, public broadcaster DR revealed last year. Denmark\u2019s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, conceded in December that the Nordic country had not spent enough on defending Greenland.<\/p>\n

Denmark and Greenland jointly plan to spend $2bn on the military in the Arctic, including replacement ships and drones. \u201cThere is a big portion of our country where there is no supervision now. We are trying to have surveillance over the whole country,\u201d says Motzfeldt.<\/p>\n

Trump and his officials have ridiculed the dog sled patrols. But Greenlanders, many of whom are Inuit hunters and fishers living in isolated settlements of pretty wooden buildings along its vast coastline, point out that their country is difficult to defend or attack because most of it is uninhabitable. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t invade Greenland,\u201d says Lynge, laughing again. None of its more than 50 coastal settlements are linked by roads. Despite global warming, winters are still very cold, making business activities such as mining or tourism viable mostly in the summer months.<\/p>\n

The US has the sole military station on Greenland, the Pituffik Space Base in the north-west. \u201cIt\u2019s the US that is protecting us. It\u2019s the US that is defending us,\u201d acknowledges Vittus Qujaukitsoq, a former finance and foreign minister. But he does not see why the Americans need to own the island. \u201cThey can have more bases if that is what they are asking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

America\u2019s military presence has in fact declined since the end of the cold war. Pituffik is used for missile warning and satellite and space surveillance, not to defend Greenland itself. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s so important to have military presence in Greenland, why do they have only 150 troops? They used to have 15,000,\u201d says Rasmus Jarlov, a former Danish minister and current Conservative MP. \u201cIt\u2019s their choice. We didn\u2019t ask them to leave. They themselves have decided to scale it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A new development on the outskirts of the capital Nuuk. Greenland\u2019s small population is said to cause labour supply issues <\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Locals wait for a bus in Nuuk. Greenland\u2019s business minister says that, unlike in Africa, China does not appear to be interested in big infrastructure projects on the territory <\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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A mural on the side of an apartment block in the city. Some predict Trump\u2019s focus on Greenland will boost tourism <\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Greenland\u2019s government may have rebuffed the idea it is for sale, but it is keen to attract US investors. \u201cWe would like to have a closer co-operation with the US and we\u2019ve been saying that for years,\u201d says Aaja Chemnitz, one of two Greenlandic MPs in Denmark\u2019s parliament. \u201cBut we\u2019ve only got one US investor in minerals.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mining has drawn most of the headlines due to the large amounts of minerals buried beneath Greenland. But officials in Nuuk say tourism has the biggest potential as they try to entice those visiting Iceland and northern Norway to sample something even more remote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are getting a lot of positive publicity [from Trump]. We are going to have more visitors this summer, for sure,\u201d says Christian Keldsen, head of the Greenland Business Association. <\/p>\n

But with a population that would fit into \u201ca small Premier League football stadium\u201d, according to Dodds, labour supply is an issue. <\/p>\n

\u201cJob creation isn\u2019t necessarily positive. Since nobody is unemployed, a project for 300 people takes that from existing projects \u2014 and then suddenly I can\u2019t repair my house,\u201d says Keldsen. <\/p>\n

Securing more autonomy from Denmark is \u201cgoing to need a sustainable source of income\u201d, he adds. <\/p>\n\n

China may be separated<\/strong> from the Arctic by the vast emptiness of Siberia, but it still regards itself as a \u201cnear-Arctic\u201d power and published a strategy paper on the area in 2018. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese are intensely following how the ice is melting, and they are preparing,\u201d says Wieslander, of the Atlantic Council, pointing to their icebreakers and submarines. <\/p>\n

After Denmark, China is the second-biggest destination for Greenland\u2019s exports, which consist mostly of fish. But Wieslander adds that Beijing has have been less successful in its Arctic business efforts, such as trying to gain control of airports in Greenland and Finland, or large swaths of land in Iceland. \u201cWe don\u2019t like big powers coming in,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland\u2019s minister for business, trade, natural resources, justice and gender equality, says there have been \u201clots of rumours regarding Chinese involvement in the Arctic\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think there was a fear at some point it would be like in Africa where they do have a lot of infrastructure projects,\u201d she adds. \u201cThey have shown interest in the past. You don\u2019t see it a lot right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marco Rubio, Trump\u2019s new secretary of state, is more sceptical, arguing in a recent interview with SiriusXM radio that China could yet try to do what it has done \u201cin the Panama Canal and other places\u201d by investing in commercial projects that have potential military uses. <\/p>\n

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An ice sheet on the east coast of Greenland viewed from 25,000ft. The cold climate means business activities such as mining or tourism are often unviable outside summer months <\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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The Statue of Hans Egede commemorates the founder of Nuuk. The repercussions of any US action around Greenland could be felt far away from the Arctic<\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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A couple walk past a cemetery in the capital city. Greenland\u2019s vast, frozen landmass is home to about 57,000 people<\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But for all the talk about China, it is Russia that has probably been the most active power in the region. Moscow has trumpeted the potential of its own 24,000km Arctic coastline for both trade and military uses. <\/p>\n

In 2021, it brought a group of journalists to its northernmost base on Alexandra Land, an island of blizzards and polar bears in the Arctic Sea, where Russian soldiers maintain missile and radar systems. <\/p>\n

It has also sought to co-operate with China in the Arctic, both in shipping and in military matters, such as a joint bomber exercise near Alaska in July that surprised western security officials.<\/p>\n

With former US president Joe Biden distracted by events in Ukraine during much of his term, \u201cChina has been able to become a serious Arctic power, and Russia has aided and abetted this. It\u2019s never been about just Greenland. It\u2019s about hemispheric security,\u201d says Dodds, the University of London professor.<\/p>\n

A potential source of tension between Russia, China and the west is of the gradual opening up of new shipping routes through the Arctic. Mariners have long looked at the north-west and north-east passages as ways of shortening distances between Asia and the west.<\/p>\n

Climate change is now making these routes easier to navigate. The Northwest Passage, which begins to the west of Greenland, is still largely ice-bound but what Moscow calls the Northern Sea Route, the north-east passage above Russia, is navigable for parts of the year. <\/p>\n

Volumes through that corridor hit a record high of 38mn tonnes last year, though that was still less than half the amount Russia had targeted. It represents just 2-3 per cent of the volumes sent through the Suez Canal in 2023, before traffic there was disrupted by Houthi attacks on shipping. <\/p>\n

\"US<\/picture><\/figure>\n

Trump has also talked of Russian and Chinese submarines around Greenland, something experts judge a possibility, though Greenlanders themselves say they have seen no Chinese or Russian vessels of any kind recently. <\/p>\n

But one former prime minister of an EU member state describes fears of Chinese military and commercial activity in the Arctic as \u201cludicrous\u201d, adding that the Americans are \u201chyping themselves up over the Chinese threat. It\u2019s fantasy land, and it\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jarlov, the former Danish minister, says that while Greenland is an important monitoring station for the GIUK gap, referring to the sea in between Greenland, Iceland and the UK, it has little intrinsic military value.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing would be achieved by invading Greenland in a war between the west and Russia,\u201d he says. \u201cYou would just freeze to death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The rising big-power interest<\/strong> in the region has left the Arctic Council, long the anchor of Arctic exceptionalism, facing existential questions. <\/p>\n

After Russia\u2019s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 the body \u2014 which consists of the eight countries present in the region as well as multiple \u201cobservers\u201d such as China \u2014 remained a forum where western powers could talk to Moscow calmly. <\/p>\n

That changed in 2022 with Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after which the council\u2019s seven western countries \u2014 the US, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland \u2014 paused all official work.<\/p>\n

The Nordic states and Canada are keen to try to keep the Arctic as a low-tension area divorced from global politics. But by invoking Greenland, alongside Canada and Panama, the Trump administration seems increasingly to be talking about its own \u201csphere of influence\u201d, according to both Wieslander and Dodds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s worth taking seriously. What kind of order do we want? Where are we heading with this?\u201d asks Wieslander. She says the more belligerent US stance \u201cdoesn\u2019t resemble how Europe looks at the world; unfortunately it looks more like the way Russia looks at it\u201d. <\/p>\n

Dodds adds that the repercussions could be felt far away from the Arctic. \u201cTaiwan should worry about Greenland. Ukraine should worry about Greenland. If the US is saying, \u2018Back off, Greenland is in the American sphere of interest,\u2019 it\u2019s utter big picture stuff,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

Back in Nuuk, Lynge turns to the map once more to reflect on how Greenland became caught up in a much bigger game. He refers to the 1946 attempt by the US to buy Greenland from Denmark, under which one proposal was for it to be swapped for land in Alaska that was later found to be rich in oil. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat is how primitive their thinking is,\u201d says the Greenlander, before turning to today\u2019s situation. \u201cHere we have a US president with no borders at all, both psychologically and politically.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt must be like seeing Rome burn down. It\u2019s so incomprehensible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova in Nuuk<\/em><\/p>\n

Cartography by <\/em>Cleve Jones<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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