This year’s Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø began on a hopeful note, (as the city was spared the windstorms which plagued the event last year). The theme of the conference, ‘Beyond Borders’, had multiple meanings, given that many of the challenges facing the far north are not restricted to any one part of it, including climate change and development questions. The title though could also refer to the fact that more security risks in the region are not constrained by national sovereignty, and that boundaries actual and virtual are now being constantly tested and sometimes breached.
It was no surprise that although in previous years the conference had previously focused on business and economic development as well as scientific areas, like the Arctic Circle conference in October last year, this Arctic Frontiers event adopted a greater focus on regional security. Greenland, predictably, was a frequent topic both in panels and in hallway discussions. In late December last year, incoming US President Donald Trump revisited the failed ‘buy Greenland’ proposal from 2019 by posting that ‘the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity’. The statement, which was doubled down in a Christmas post sending greetings to Greenland, ‘which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes,’ further underscored that the island was to be viewed by the incoming American administration solely as a strategic asset.
Moreover, stress levels were raised when the new US president refused to rule out force to take not only Greenland but also the Panama Canal, which was also cited as being unfairly taken from US control in the 1970s. There was also a threat to use tariffs to coerce Denmark into agreeing to a potential transfer, a move which would likely invite a response by the whole of the European Union. The revival of the buy Greenland trope resulted in reminders from both the Greenlandic and Danish governments that the island was not for sale, along with sometimes vitriolic responses from elsewhere in Europe.
Since the prospect of the United States purchasing Greenland was first reported in 2019, the issue had gone on to represent two of the most negative aspects of American foreign policy during the first Trump administration, namely a glaringly transactional approach to diplomacy, at times veering into aggressive zero-sum calculations, and disdain for / ignorance of international laws and norms, (and in this case, Greenlandic history and ontological security concerns). By once again bringing up this hapless policy direction, a third facet of Trumpian foreign policy reappeared in the Arctic: an unwillingness to learn from previous mistakes.
Approaching the Danish government to buy Greenland was and is in contravention of the 2009 Self-Government Act between Copenhagen and Nuuk, which enshrined Greenland’s right of self-determination. Specifically, Section 21(1) in the document states that ‘Decisions regarding Greenland’s independence shall be taken by the people of Greenland’.
As well, a specious but still oft-repeated argument that since Washington had attempted to procure Greenland in the past, by default it can do so again, fails to acknowledge the evolution of international law since the beginning of the twentieth century, especially relating to de-colonisation. This includes the 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. Since the initial 2019 proposal, Greenlandic policymakers and the current government of Prime Minister Múte B. Egede, have frequently used the term ‘nothing about us, without us’ to stress the importance of including Greenlanders in affairs which directly impact them.
There have been numerous reasons mooted as to why the Greenland issue has reappeared, including ersatz imperialism (along with an odd nostalgia for the late nineteenth century expansionist period, aka the ‘Gilded Age’, in American history), an acknowledgement of the resource potential of the island (including strategic materials like rare earths), and a desire to create a strategic buffer zone for US interests in the Arctic to discourage incursions by great power adversaries, with Trump making vague references to ‘Russia and China boats’ in the region.
This latter argument waves aside the fact that the United States already has extensive monitoring capabilities in Greenland, including via the US Space Force base at Pituffik (formerly Thule). This facility has grown in importance given concerns about North Atlantic security, and especially the region’s GIUK Gap, which like during the cold war is seen as a vulnerable space for Russian maritime incursions. As well, NATO, including with the addition of new members Finland and Sweden, has also begun to focus more intensely on observing and securing the North Atlantic and Arctic regions.
As Nuuk continues to pursue a policy of eventual independence from the Danish realm, relations with the US were seen as essential for a sovereign Greenland’s foreign policy. The Greenlandic government’s February 2024 foreign and security policy document called for a reduction of trade barriers with the US, enhanced cooperation in several key economic sectors including infrastructure, transportation, mining and tourism, and a revision of the 1951 Defence Agreement between Washington and Copenhagen to allow for a greater say by the Greenlandic government. Nuuk has also sought to diversify its trading partners, including the US, as a precursor to independence.
How these proposals will be reconciled with what appears to be an emerging maximalist approach towards Nuuk by the Trump government is now an open question. Unlike in 2019, the Trump government thus far has shown little sign of dropping the matter, with reports of a heated phone conversation between Trump and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen last month over the controversy, the 8 January introduction of a US House of Representatives bill ‘to secure the acquisition of Greenland by the United States,’ with no mention of the interests of Greenland’s 57,000 citizens. In an interview this week by the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, he said the plan to obtain Greenland was ‘not a joke’.
Despite arguments by the American leadership to the contrary, a poll released this week suggested that 85% of those surveyed in Greenland did not want to join the United States, and another poll indicated that 46% of Danes surveyed now viewed the US under Trump as a threat, a higher number than North Korea.
During the Arctic Fronters conference, Sara Olsvig, Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, reiterated a point made in an ICC statement on 27 January: ‘There is no such thing as the better coloniser’.
Despite not yet taking office, Trump had previously declared that there would be reversals of previous Arctic-related policies, including in Alaska. The incoming administration had already expressed support for oil drilling in the state’s National Wildlife Refuge, (with the Republican governor of Alaska reportedly advocating the removal of fossil fuel extraction restrictions). Trump also called for a reversal of the 2015 decision under President Barack Obama to change the name of Alaska’s highest peak to its traditional Indigenous name, Denali. Trump called for the mountain to be renamed Mount McKinley in honour of the former US president, who was widely known as an avid economic protectionist as well as overseeing a considerable expansion of American overseas territory, (Hawai’i, for example, was annexed during his administration, in 1898).
The revisiting of the ‘buy Greenland’ controversy comes at a fraught time for the Arctic, given the potential for geopolitical spillover of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine into the far north, and the possibility of increased military activity in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific.
There have also been considerable strains between the Trump government and another NATO member, Canada. The US now threatens to implement a 25% tariff on Canadian goods, on unsound policy grounds, including even potentially on petroleum, in the aftermath of a series of taunts by the American leader that Canada should just become the ’51st state’ of the US.
In May 2025, the Arctic Council chair will be passed from Norway to the Danish Kingdom. Earlier this month, after much debate, the Danish government agreed to appoint an Arctic Ambassador from Greenland, and it was decided that Greenlandic foreign minister Vivian Motzfeldt would act as Council chair. Copenhagen has also expressed concern, including via the most recent threat assessment report published in December last year by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service, about the deteriorating security situation in the North Atlantic, including Russian maritime incursions, espionage, and the opportunities for closer Sino-Russian cooperation. Cooled relations between the US and two NATO members critical to Arctic security have the potential to spill over into these deliberations.
The Arctic Council is already facing aftershocks from a reduced Russian role in the group’s deliberations, but now there is also the spectre of the US repeating its failed diplomacy at the 2019 Rovaniemi summit, which was effectively scuttled when the US delegation refused to support a final statement which mentioned climate change. In both previous and updated Trump policies, climate change has been falsely described as a fiction. Predictably, upon arrival in office the Trump government announced that it would again withdraw from the Paris global environmental accords.
As strains on various areas of Arctic cooperation continue, another reminder of the nebulous nature of regional security, along with ‘grey zone’ threats, appeared in Tromsø just as the conference was wrapping up. In the latest in a string of undersea cable cutting incidents, a Norwegian-owned, Russian-crewed vessel, the Silver Dania, was impounded this week by the Norway Coast Guard on suspicion that it was involved in the recent damage to a fibre-optic cable in the Baltic Sea between the Swedish island of Gotland and the Latvian coast. The ship was briefly held in a Tromsø port before being released after a statement was made that no evidence of the ship’s complicity in the incident was found.
Over the Circle 