Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen for Unsplash+
I am hoping ‘Bits and Pieces’ is appropriate for this US holiday weekend. As it turns out I decided to take look at the continuing Greenland tensions generated initially by President Trump. I had kinda thought this issue hopefully had quietly slipped away while this President expended significant though not necessarily successful efforts over: Venezuela, Iran and Cuba. But that does not appear to be the case.
While most of us were looking elsewhere – at least I was, discussions in fact have been ongoing over Greenland. Reporting recently on these discussions were Jeffrey Gettleman Maya Tekeli Anton Troianovski and Eric Schmitt from the NYTimes in a piece titled, “In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland”. As they describe this has been what has been going on:
“But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.”
“The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.”
“An investigation by The New York Times, based on interviews with officials in Washington, Copenhagen and Greenland, has discovered:
The United States is trying to modify a longstanding military arrangement to ensure American troops can stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if Greenland becomes independent. The notion is basically a forever clause, and Greenlanders do not like it.
The United States has pushed the talks beyond military matters and wants effective veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China. Greenlanders and Danes strongly object to this.
The United States is discussing cooperation with Greenland on natural resources. The island is loaded with oil, uranium, rare earths and other critical minerals, though much of it is buried deep beneath Greenland’s ice.
The Pentagon is rapidly moving ahead on plans for a military expansion and recently sent a Marine Corps officer to Narsarsuaq, a town in southern Greenland, to inspect the World War II-era airport, the harbor and places where American troops could be housed.”
“The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. Despite all of the talk from Danish and American officials that Greenland’s future is up to the island’s 57,000 people, Greenlandic officials said the American demands would tie their hands for generations.”
“If the Americans get everything they want, said Justus Hansen, a member of Greenland’s Parliament, there will never be any “real independence.””
So, where is the state of these talks? According to the above NYTimes folk:
“So the Greenlandic, Danish and American negotiators involved in the talks hope they can reach a deal that the mercurial president will accept, officials familiar with the discussions say. The accounts made clear that there was still some distance to go. The officials who spoke to The Times asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the continuing negotiations.”
“Greenlanders have been emphatic they do not want to be part of the United States, but Greenlandic politicians say they are OK with having more American soldiers on their soil. Thousands of American troops were stationed there during World War II and the Cold War, though the United States eventually shut down every base save one.”
“Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenland’s former foreign minister and another member of Parliament, said that if the wars in Iran and in Ukraine end, it could spell trouble for Greenland. She fears Mr. Trump would return to his obsession and Russia would also shift to the Arctic, long a strategic priority for Moscow.”
“She and other Greenlandic politicians were bracing for June 14, the president’s birthday, and the Fourth of July.”
““If he’s going to realize his policy of making the U.S. greater again,” she said, “he could use days like those.””
And as the FP Situation Report describes the current situation in the far north:
““We are still in a surreal situation and dialogue where the leading member of NATO threatened to invade and take over the biggest Arctic state, which is a part of the kingdom of Denmark,” said Thordis Gylfadottir, the former foreign minister of Iceland.”
“‘Completely absurd.’ Trump has said that the United States needs to control Greenland for national security purposes and to prevent Russia and China from taking it over. But a 1951 agreement already grants the U.S. considerable military access to Greenland. Though there’s no doubt that Russia and China both have major interests in expanding their influence in the Arctic—and Moscow already has a massive military presence in the region—there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that they would attack Greenland and risk open war with NATO.”
So great. Bad things occur if conflicts continue in Iran and other hot spots and bad things occur if the conflict ends with Iran and others and Trump targets his friend and allies. Isn’t that just so sad – one needs to shake one’s head at the future prospects of conflict with you own allies.
Meanwhile, I can’t help mentioning before I leave the troubling, indeed very troubling US administration current unwillingness to confirm the increase in armaments destined for Taiwan. As pointed out at the FP Situational Report:
“Meanwhile, a prospective trip to China by Baker’s former boss, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, has been held up by Beijing until Trump decides whether to approve a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, the Financial Times reported. According to the South China Morning Post, Colby’s visit was meant in part to set the stage for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—who accompanied Trump to Beijing last week—to make his own trip later this year.”
This is bad – really bad – and what one might expect where this administration has not been forthright in maintaining US policy toward Taiwan. We will definitely keep our eye on that situation.