This was mostly an overview of the strategic reasons Greenland has historically been important to U.S security, and an explanation of the long history of U.S arctic acquisition behind the current administration’s threats to acquire Greenland by force, which made the news a few cycles ago. An abridged summary of the presentation, given by Rob Andrew and Sofia Givens of the College of International Studies is as follows. This is an extremely abridged version and I cut a lot of the important history bits for brevity, so apologies if I accidentally misrepresent the lecture in any way. Some of this is also my rephrasing of points made in the lecture from my notes.

Background

There is a UN council that manages security relations in the arctic, namely, the “Arctic 5”, which includes the U.S, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark. All of these countries have coastlines in the arctic ocean, hence their inclusion on this council. There are also the “Arctic 8” of countries who don’t have direct coastlines in the arctic, but have some sort of other connection/interest tying them to the area.

The arctic has traditionally been low-conflict, due to its status as an inhospitable wasteland that no country really wanted to deal with. However, with climate change and the melting of the ice, the arctic suddenly seems to look very strategically important, especially in regard to resources. There are also other reasons control of the arctic is something countries want to have, it was traditionally submarine territory, there were concerns about anchor dragging and the cutting of undersea cables in the area, and it appears that I have “Russia Training—–> Test nukes” written down in my notes, which is a horribly ominous bit of notation. I don’t know if that means Russia wants to test nuclear weapons in the arctic or historically did, but suffice it to say many entities have an interest in this area.

Shipping

There is also the potential for a better shipping route to open up in the arctic once the ice melts, that would reduce the transportation time from thirty days to twenty days, which is important for the economic concept of “just in time” shipping, because as it is the North Sea Route is only open for a few months a year

Proximity to Strategic Locations

Greenland is close to Russia, Alaska, Europe, and Russia has been remilitarizing bases near Greenland as well, and the primary purpose of like the one base the U.S maintains there currently is to detect Russian ICBMs. Thus there is a good reason to want to maintain bases in Greenland/security in that part of the arctic.

Downsides to Acquiring Greenland Specifically by Force

• It would be the end of NATO, Russia would achieve a long-held goal of theirs to get the U.S out of NATO for good
• A military operation to take over Greenland would cost so much money
• There’s the risk of a Greenland insurgency
• Indigenous groups in Greenland get a lot of benefits now and wouldn’t want to give those up
• Sets a precedent for the violation of a country’s sovereignty
• Sets a precedent specifically for Russia to acquire land by force in the Arctic
• The U.S has bigger fish to fry internationally right now
• No one in the U.S would be moving to Greenland

Policy Recommendations

The U.S would have a lot more bargaining power if they were a signatory to UNCLOS (The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), they could vote on if Russia gets arctic mining permits, and it would give them a lot more international legitimacy overall, because the U.S follows UNCLOS in everything but name in the status quo anyway. If the U.S really wants more bases in Greenland specifically there are mechanisms for them to negotiate that through diplomacy, which would be the recommendation of the presenter if anyone were to consult them on the matter.

This was a really interesting presentation and there was a lot of nuance and history that I had to cut from it to get down the main points of the talk, but I ended up learning a lot overall from this about U.S history and its historic geopolitical maneuverings.