What's going on between Greenland and the US?
No one is sure what is going on between Greenland and the US and many are too shocked to try and work it out. But the events of the past week look and sound awfully like the shattering of the 80-year-old Atlantic alliance. For having the temerity to oppose US annexation of Greenland – an autonomous Danish territory whose 60,000 or so residents are Danish and EU citizens – the US president announced 10% tariffs on eight European nations, including Denmark and the UK. By not accepting the need for US sovereignty over the world’s largest island, first settled by Norse explorers more than a millennium ago, America’s Nato allies had created “a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet”, Trump wrote. He said the 10% import taxes would rise to 25% in June and continue “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland”.
Is Greenland for sale?
No, Greenland is not for sale, but this is at least the fourth time Washington has tried to buy it, which is geographically part of North America. In 1868, US secretary of state William Seward pursued the acquisition of both Greenland and Iceland (which didn’t gain full independence from Denmark until 1944) for a reported $5.5million (about $130million today). It followed the successful purchase of Alaska from Russia the previous year for $7.2million. The talks stalled, and there were similar failed negotiations in 1910. It wasn’t until 1917 that the US formally recognised Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, in exchange for the US purchase of the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands).
Why does Trump want Greenland?
Location, natural resources and prestige – but it’s not clear in what order. After World War II, when the US occupied Greenland with Danish consent, president Harry Truman offered $100million (about $1.7billion today) to buy the island. That, too, was turned down, but a 1951 US-Denmark defence pact once again recognised Danish sovereignty, while giving free rein to the US to build military bases there. For decades, under the Nato umbrella during the Cold War, the US made the most of that right, principally at the Thule air base, on the northeast coast 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle. At its peak, the base (now renamed the Pituffik Space Base) was home to 6,000 US military personnel, with another 4,000 across the island. Today, there are fewer than 200.
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Is Greenland not exactly a strategic priority?
Quite. But the world’s heating climate has changed that sanguine calculus. Global warming is opening up Arctic sea routes, making the exploitation of Greenland’s mineral resources more plausible and conceivably increasing the threat to the US from Russia or China via the polar region. But when it comes to resources – Greenland has 39 of the 50 minerals classed by the US as critical to national security – the economic case doesn’t add up. Greenland is an island the size of Saudi Arabia with just 100 miles of paved roads in total, and most of the territory is covered by an ice sheet up to a mile deep. “The harsh environment, enormous financial investments, and massive infrastructure and workforce buildout required to create an economic engine could cost at least $1trillion over two decades [and makes] little to no economic sense,” says Jordan Blum in Fortune. There’s oil, but the last, unsuccessful drilling bid was abandoned in 2011. Neither of the active mines extract the desired rare earth metals essential to computer, vehicle and military equipment. Moreover, Greenland is already open for exploitation, and sovereignty would add nothing.
What about the security argument?
Greenland is on the fastest routes between the US and Russia. Existing defence treaties with Denmark give Washington all of the necessary military access for “Golden Dome” bases and naval patrols. But Trump is on a drive for hemispheric dominance and – perhaps – personal prestige. His administration increasingly sees the world in terms of 19th-century Great Power politics, with the Monroe Doctrine of US hemispheric hegemony – and its new “Trump Corollary” – specifically at its centre. In 1848, the British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston observed that England has no “eternal allies or perpetual enemies” – only eternal and perpetual interests, and “those interests it is our duty to follow”. For the 19th-century hegemon, Great Britain, read Trump’s America today. Trump believes the Atlantic alliance is ineffectual, so it doesn’t matter to him that the US could achieve all of its national security and economic objectives without annexing Greenland. Trump’s “eternal interest” is in safeguarding the security of the US in perpetuity, and he appears to have determined that acquiring sovereignty over Greenland is vital to that end.
What can Europe do?
Protect its own interests. European governments and investors own around $8trillion of US bonds and equities – almost twice as much as the rest of the world combined. But pulling that investment back is likely to be a slow process, with investors wary of overreacting. If Trump’s tariffs had gone ahead on 1 February, then Brussels would almost certainly not ratify last year’s EU-US trade deal, and retaliatory tariffs would be on the table. The nuclear option for Europe would be the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument, a law that allows the EU to respond punitively to economic blackmail from non-EU countries interfering in the “legitimate, sovereign choices” of the EU or its member states. Measures include tariffs, import and export restrictions, curbs on trade in services as well as reduced access to banking and capital markets – and blocking access to most of the single market while ignoring existing international treaties. It’s a nuclear option as it would wreak major economic damage on Europe itself, and is designed more as a deterrent – bringing offenders to the negotiating table – than as an offensive one. Let’s hope it isn’t needed.
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