President Donald Trump is seeking to expand the military reach of the U.S. rulers in the Arctic by taking control of key locations in Greenland. Washington is preparing for more and deadlier wars to come, reasserting its domination across the Western Hemisphere and pushing to weaken its rivals — especially Beijing, as well as Moscow and capitalist “allies” in Europe.
Greenland is strategically located for both defensive and offensive military operations in the region. It’s a colony of Denmark’s capitalist rulers, with a population of 56,000, mostly Inuits.
After behind-the-scenes talks at the Davos conference, Trump announced Jan. 21, “We have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland, and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region.” He cancelled tariffs he had intended to impose on Feb. 1 hitting a number of European countries whose governments had rejected his demand that Washington get decisive control over the large island.
“There’s not a thing that Denmark can do about it if Russia or China wants to occupy Greenland, but there’s everything we can do. You found that out last week in Venezuela,” Trump told the press Jan. 14. The governments of France, Germany and the U.K. had dispatched a handful of troops to join Danish forces there to show their determination to defend Denmark’s domination over Greenland.
After talks between Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, U.S. officials announced Washington no longer intends to seize Greenland. But they say Washington does want to take full control over the areas of the country where U.S. military installations are located. Future talks will address this as well as proposals to prevent Beijing and Moscow from acquiring rights to mine plentiful rare earth minerals there.
The Danish government complained after the announcement. “NATO does not have a mandate to negotiate on behalf of Denmark and Greenland,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said.
Washington has some 150 military personnel stationed at its large base in Pituffik, in northwest Greenland. The outpost provides crucial early warning capacity for the U.S. rulers’ missile defense system, and is linked into its space-based surveillance operations.
The administration sees control over Greenland as key to reasserting U.S. imperialism’s weakened military superiority. The island will be “vital for the Golden Dome we are building,” Trump said. Washington is taking steps to augment its ground-based missile defenses with space-based interceptors. They want to be able to destroy ballistic weapons that are being acquired by a growing number of rival ruling classes around the world.
Moscow and Beijing are also seeking to strengthen their forces in the Arctic. They’re renovating their radars and conducting joint patrols in the Bering Sea. Chinese submarines traveled beneath the Arctic ice for the first time last summer, mapping undersea conditions and plotting future sea routes. In November Chinese military and research vessels operated in Arctic waters around Alaska.
Record of U.S. coveting Greenland
Washington’s demand to take over Greenland is nothing new. During World War II, Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent U.S. forces to occupy Greenland. They used it as a refueling station for U.S. bombing raids on Germany. In 1946 the administration of President Harry Truman looked into buying the island.
Despite growing frictions, the U.S. and Danish governments agreed to a treaty in 1951 granting the U.S. military three areas on the island where they could operate unimpeded.
In 1995 it was revealed that the Danish government had allowed Washington to station nuclear weapons on Greenland between 1958 and 1965, with Copenhagen insisting the agreement be kept top secret.
After a U.S. B-52 crashed in Greenland in 1968, spreading radioactive plutonium across wide areas, the two governments agreed the U.S. would no longer base nuclear weapons there. Washington demanded the right to deploy nuclear weapons in case of an “emergency,” but the Danish government refused.
Today Trump is seeking outright title to areas of Greenland. “Who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease,” he said Jan. 21. “You need ownership to defend it.”
The dispute between the capitalist rulers in Denmark and the U.S. ignores the growing aspirations of the Inuit population of Greenland for independence.
“If Denmark really believed Greenland belongs to Greenlanders, they would let us decide our own future,” Amarok Petersen, a well-known advocate of self-determination for the Inuit, told the New York Post Jan. 14. Petersen was one of thousands of Greenlandic women fitted with contraceptive coils to prevent them having children, done without their knowledge or consent between 1960 and 1991. After a historic legal fight, the Danish government finally agreed Dec. 11 to pay compensation to 4,500 of the women.
“I’ve had enough of Denmark and how they’ve governed us,” Nikolannguaq Heilmann, a retired shrimp-boat engineer in Greenland, told the Post. He went on to say he didn’t want Greenland to become part of the U.S. either.