Introduction
Greenland is a sparsely populated Arctic island on the North American continent. It is, at the time of posting still within the Danish Realm, and has been given increasing autonomy over the years, to the extent that although Denmark is a part of the EU, Greenland is not. For how long will this state of affairs continue? Is Greenland on the way to independence, a different kind of dependence, or interdependence in a multipolar world?
The Danish Realm consists of Greenland east of northern Canada, the Faroe Island, located between Iceland and Scotland, and Denmark, located in Southern Scandinavia, between Sweden and Germany; see the image below taken from the Wiki on Greenland.
If one takes a look at the map, one may notice two smaller but still large island areas east of Greenland: Iceland to the southeast, and Svalbard, a part of Norway, to the northeast. What their future will be after a possible US takeover of Greenland is different discussion.
Greenland has in recent years, at least since Donald Trump during his first term aired the idea of buying the island, become a focal point. Plans are underway to incorporate the area into the US. However it might be more of an extension of power than something entirely new. Already, the US has defacto occupied the area, pretty much since WWII, when the airports of Southern Greenland were used to fly in support for the war efforts in Europe.
One reason for the US to want more than military presence, on Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, is that in the struggle with other powers it wants even more presence without the need to go through bureaucratic Europeans. Besides, Greenland has some valuable resources, the exploitation of which have largely remained unexplored, partly because it is very expensive to develop them, partly because there are environmental concerns for the delicate fauna and flora. From a Danish and Greenlandic perspective, the environment has been protected because some of the local Inuit living in isolated and rather remote villages rely on the presence of fish, seals, reindeer, a few hundred hvales, and a small number of polar bears, hunted both for safety, as when they come to a village and won't go away, but also because it is a tradition to make warm pants from their fur. There has also been international pressure with lobby groups in the background, that have argued for the protection of the disappearing ice sheet, and polar bears, not that neither are really disappearing, but both the ice sheet and the bears are useful rallying points for people to get worked up about.
Previously, many posts about the politics surrounding Greenland, ended up in this thread Scandinavian observations and perspectives. Here is a search link, so unless some of the posts are moved, that is where you can find earlier discussions.
On SOTT, there are many articles across several categories to dive into:
In title: 156 articles
In summary 484 articles
In text: 964 articles
In summary and text: 247 articles
In title, summary and text: 109 articles
It is possible some of the comments from a few of the more recent will be moved over here. We will see.
Greenland is a sparsely populated Arctic island on the North American continent. It is, at the time of posting still within the Danish Realm, and has been given increasing autonomy over the years, to the extent that although Denmark is a part of the EU, Greenland is not. For how long will this state of affairs continue? Is Greenland on the way to independence, a different kind of dependence, or interdependence in a multipolar world?
The Danish Realm consists of Greenland east of northern Canada, the Faroe Island, located between Iceland and Scotland, and Denmark, located in Southern Scandinavia, between Sweden and Germany; see the image below taken from the Wiki on Greenland.
If one takes a look at the map, one may notice two smaller but still large island areas east of Greenland: Iceland to the southeast, and Svalbard, a part of Norway, to the northeast. What their future will be after a possible US takeover of Greenland is different discussion.
Greenland has in recent years, at least since Donald Trump during his first term aired the idea of buying the island, become a focal point. Plans are underway to incorporate the area into the US. However it might be more of an extension of power than something entirely new. Already, the US has defacto occupied the area, pretty much since WWII, when the airports of Southern Greenland were used to fly in support for the war efforts in Europe.
One reason for the US to want more than military presence, on Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, is that in the struggle with other powers it wants even more presence without the need to go through bureaucratic Europeans. Besides, Greenland has some valuable resources, the exploitation of which have largely remained unexplored, partly because it is very expensive to develop them, partly because there are environmental concerns for the delicate fauna and flora. From a Danish and Greenlandic perspective, the environment has been protected because some of the local Inuit living in isolated and rather remote villages rely on the presence of fish, seals, reindeer, a few hundred hvales, and a small number of polar bears, hunted both for safety, as when they come to a village and won't go away, but also because it is a tradition to make warm pants from their fur. There has also been international pressure with lobby groups in the background, that have argued for the protection of the disappearing ice sheet, and polar bears, not that neither are really disappearing, but both the ice sheet and the bears are useful rallying points for people to get worked up about.
Previously, many posts about the politics surrounding Greenland, ended up in this thread Scandinavian observations and perspectives. Here is a search link, so unless some of the posts are moved, that is where you can find earlier discussions.
On SOTT, there are many articles across several categories to dive into:
In title: 156 articles
In summary 484 articles
In text: 964 articles
In summary and text: 247 articles
In title, summary and text: 109 articles
It is possible some of the comments from a few of the more recent will be moved over here. We will see.
