Trump, Greenland, And The Future Of The Arctic

0:07The Trump administration's capture of Venezuela's president at the start of January led to a renewed focus elsewhere, Colombia, Iran, and Greenland. President Trump says he wants to buy the island or control it. He reignited fears in Europe and Greenland Wednesday morning, posting on his Truth Social platform that anything less than having Greenland in the hands of the U.S. would not be acceptable. And he had this to say earlier in the week. We need Greenland from a national security situation. It's so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.

0:45We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it, I can tell you. That was President Trump on Air Force One on Monday. Trump's senior advisor, Stephen Miller, won't say that military action to take Greenland is off the table. Here he is speaking with CNN's Jake Tapper. The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. There's no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you're asking of a military operation. Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. The message from European leaders this month has been swift and negative, including from Greenland and Denmark, of which the island is a territory.

1:28Here's Greenland's Prime Minister Jens Friedrich Nilsson speaking in Copenhagen on Tuesday. We are now facing a geopolitical crisis. And if we have to choose between the United States send Denmark here and now we choose Denmark. Denmark's leader, Mehta Fredriksen, says the island is not for sale. On Tuesday, she said Denmark faces a decisive moment and that the country would defend its values wherever it is necessary. The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland will meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance today in Washington. What could a takeover of Greenland mean for its people, NATO and the U.S.?

2:05And what's in store for the future of the Arctic as it continues to warm faster than anywhere else in the world. Kenneth R. Rosen joins us after the break to discuss all this and more. He's the author of multiple books. His latest is Polar War, Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic. It's out now. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. Stay with us. We've got a lot to get to.

2:33Ken, welcome back to 1A. Hey, Jen. Thank you. Ken, having visited Greenland and reported from there for part of your book, what context should anyone hearing these claims from the president understand? It's really baffling to hear the president speak of Chinese and Russian vessels or troops even inhabiting or circling Greenland. I had spent a month or more traveling the entire length of the coastline of Greenland, which is primarily where civilization exists, considering it's primarily covered in ice. And I had not seen one Russian or Chinese ship. The irony here is that when I was traveling in Alaska, there are far more joint patrols and military drills between Russia and China in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska.

3:25Yet that doesn't seem to be making it on the radar of the president. Tell us, what has the U.S.'s presence in Greenland met for the people who live on the island, specifically in the decades since we established bases there during World War II? I mean, we established more than bases there, Jen. I mean, we gave them roads. We built airports that are still in use today. The American military presence in the far northwest is fairly small. It's a space base called Pacific Space Base, and the runways there are primarily used for little to nothing. What it means for Greenlanders is that there is an American presence, and there is some form of American partnership there that predates a lot of the people who live on the Arctic island of Greenland.

4:14And to have that show of force in the Arctic is really something that America has leaned on for a long time. And it's something that we can build off of, not necessarily through purchasing Greenland, but cooperating with the Kingdom of Denmark, which oversees the foreign and military policy of Greenland. Well, explain a little bit more about the agreements that are in place that allow the U.S. presence there. Yeah, they date back to 1951 with the defensive Greenland agreement and then superseded by the 2004 Igali coup agreement, both of which were prefaced on the need for the U.S. to acknowledge specifically and respect the Danish sovereignty over Greenland.

4:55And, you know, today, those agreements allow the U.S. to construct or install, maintain and operate military bases all across Greenland or even house personnel and control landings, takeoffs, moorings, movements, operations of ships and aircraft. And so they're pretty robust in giving the U.S. a lot of latitude and leeway to operate militarily for the defense of both the U.S. and NATO. and those have been stalwarts since World War II, since 1916 when the U.S. purchased what are now the Virgin Islands from Denmark. Part of that agreement, part of that sale was the acknowledgement that Denmark had sovereign rights over Greenland, which it has had for 300 years.

5:40So there's latitude, there's leeway, but what has the U.S. actually done with this relationship? How has it maintained its presence on the island, the infrastructure that it's put there? It really hasn't as far as the infrastructure goes. We've seen that climate change has impacted, of course, the indigenous populations across Greenland, the Inuit, as well as across the circumpolar north. But for the military infrastructure specifically, as permafrost thaws, a lot of the buildings and the runways that were constructed on top of that permafrost in Pitufik, in Kanak, are falling apart. They thaw in the summer times, and then there's cracks in the runways or buildings sink a little further and need more repair.

6:26So they haven't done a great job at maintaining their infrastructure. But what they have done a good job with in previous administrations is bolstering and supporting the Danish government and the Danish military and Royal Navy to be able to patrol those waters and to support the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, which is a two-man and I guess now four-man team that patrols and asserts Danish sovereignty over the island. There's also another interesting thing, Jen, that I think has slipped through the cracks. In December, the Trump administration actually sold Poseidon spycraft to Denmark in an effort to help and bolster that security.

7:06So there's already sort of this cross-channel agreement that the U.S. is only as good in the Arctic as its partners. And I think that's a really important takeaway, as you mentioned earlier, for some of the listeners. Well, we got this email from Doug who says, according to polls, Greenlanders do not want to be part of the U.S. They also do want independence from Denmark. Is it possible that the saber rattling is an attempt to convince Greenlanders to stay with Denmark? Greenland's independence would mean they would be free to make deals with Russia and China. In your research for this book, Ken, do you have any takeaways?

7:41Yeah, Doug, that's a really great question. And I think it's unfortunate now because Greenlanders have been looking for independence and self-determination since time immemorial. 2008, they signed a Home Rule Act that gave Greenlanders the power to make more decisions and left just the foreign affairs and defense policy with Denmark. But now the unfortunate bellicose and belligerent language that's coming out of Washington is making a lot of the Greenlanders take that conversation back, roll it back, not talk about it as much because they're more concerned about their partnership with Denmark.

8:18So it's sort of a reversal of trends. Even though they want independence, they're not able to pursue that now because of the current administration's desire to take Greenland, as it were. Well, you say current administration, but you detail a history in your book of U.S. politicians saying this country should have control over the island. Just explain a little bit of that history to us. Yeah, ever since the Secretary of State Seward under Lincoln bought and purchased what was then Russian America, Alaska, from Russia, the U.S. has sought ways to expand its territory through purchases rather than outright conflicts.

9:02And that has extended to Greenland post-World War II. The U.S. offered to buy Greenland from Denmark, and they said no because, of course, there were already those agreements in place. And so there has been a desire to build out and fortify the Arctic in the American interest. But it's a bit ironic given that the U.S. just hasn't done enough in its own Arctic to say that we have the capabilities to then secure an Arctic state that is primarily above the Arctic circle. Well, and describe what you're talking about there. When it comes to the U.S. being prepared to be an active military player in that region, what preparations have we made?

9:50What haven't we made? There have been none. I mean, Jen, you'll be surprised to know that the United States Navy doesn't possess a single icebreaker. The U.S. Coast Guard possesses four, one of which is operational, and that one is often in the shop. That note might be more obscure to listeners, but what many listeners will be aware of is the dew line, that early warning system that covered us from over-the-horizon attacks from Russia, whether it be nuclear bombers or intercontinental ballistic missiles. But that has not been maintained since the Cold War. In fact, a former commander from the Canadian Armed Forces told me that the equipment up there, the radar equipment, the satellite equipment is so aged that to get a replacement part would be impossible, that it's held together, quote, with chicken wire.

10:46So there hasn't been any investment up north. And I'm not really clear on why the Trump administration is now pursuing Greenland, though I think it's more of an aim to get the EU and NATO to invest more in the Arctic while the U.S. sits back and doesn't take care of its own. Well, Robert in Michigan emailed us this, Trump's focus on Greenland is really about their rare earth minerals. His focus on Venezuela was really about its oil. Now, your book is in part about how the Arctic region could become a more active zone for military conflict and commercial competition as the ice melts. So how is climate change changing the discussion around the value and importance of Greenland, not just militarily but also commercially?

11:30Right. To the writer's point, the rare earth minerals, cobalt, silicone, all the things that we use in EVs and photovoltaic panels and also missile defense and aircraft technology do exist in Greenland. But over the years, people have tried to mine such rare earths and minerals but have just not found any success. And that's a product of how difficult it is to operate in such a region. There are short seasons to get equipment in and out. It's hard to find people who are capable of working in such demanding environments. And there's just no infrastructure in Greenland. There's, you know, 100 roads for an area two and a half times the size of Texas.

12:16So that's very difficult. What we're seeing in commercial development is the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage, which runs atop the coast of Russia. that's seeing more commercial sea traffic. I think in 2005, there was a total of 103 ships that transited the northern sea route, 3.2 million tons of cargo. But that pales in comparison to how much is coming through the Bering Strait, which was 877 transits, more than a 100 % increase over the last year. So there's more and more ships that are able to navigate those waters, and that's something that China and Russia are looking to open up that northern sea route for commercial trade to shorten the journey of commercial vessels from East Asia to Europe by 10 to 14 days.

12:59We're talking to Kenneth R. Rosen. He's author of the new book, Polar War, Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic. It's out now. Kenneth, you made other stops in the Arctic, and we'll talk more about Greenland, but you visited places like small towns in Alaska, northern Norway near its border with Russia. What did you learn about the culture of these places? They span multiple countries, but they share a very difficult climate and a similar level of remoteness. Yeah, there's about 2.5 million people who properly live above the Arctic Circle. And how to define the Arctic is a subject of debate.

13:38And what I've noticed is that there's a real sense of community and rural small township, if I may, across the global circumpolar north, the global Arctic. You know, I went to every single Arctic nation except for Russia, though I did visit Russian territory in Svalbard. And it seemed like everyone knew everyone. Even if I was in Alaska, someone knew someone who was in Norway. Or if I was in Svalbard, someone knew someone who was in Sweden or Arctic Canada. And there was that sense that you need to rely on your neighbors. You need to rely on your partners and your friends next door because that's the only way to survive in such a demanding climate.

14:17And that really always fascinated me. And no matter how often I traveled or how far I traveled, I always felt in some sense that I was coming home because there was that welcoming familiarity. We're going to head to a quick break here. Still to come, the players in a warmer Arctic and how the U.S. is behind. That's just ahead.

14:40Now back to our discussion about Greenland and the wider region of the Arctic. Kenneth, we were talking about how a warming Arctic is changing the region, how it's affecting the people there. But how do you see the reality that the Arctic is warming and changing, affecting aspects like diplomacy and cross-country partnerships in the region? Yeah, for so long, the Arctic had been this exceptional region that was prefaced on scientific cooperation, search and rescue operations, this place that Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, called a zone of peace. But now as it's warming and the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, which some scientists believe will be absent completely by 2030, we're seeing more and more nations vie for some of the materials up there or those shipping lanes we mentioned earlier.

15:37And that's turning it from a zone of peace to a zone of war. We're seeing nations as far away as India claiming to be near Arctic states, Turkey, China, wanting to move out of just the scientific cooperation aspect and move into discussions about security and potential spheres that are within their control. Well, we got this email from Ken in Massachusetts who says, why does no one criticize Trump's machinations towards annexing Greenland as risking dissolution of NATO? The Soviet Union and its successor state Russia struggled for years to counter NATO, spending trillions of rubles to do so unsuccessfully.

16:16Now Trump may give Putin a gift he could never have dreamed of getting, showing his effort to help Trump get elected in 2016 was the greatest return on political investment in world history. And we should mention here that a criminal probe that established that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election on Donald Trump's behalf is under review by the Trump administration's Department of Justice. NATO Secretary Mark Ruda said this about Greenland and the Arctic on Tuesday. Quote, we all agree in NATO that when it comes to the protection of the Arctic, we have to work together, and that's exactly what we are doing.

16:50Kenneth, talk a bit about that NATO calculation calculation and how NATO has traditionally worked together in the Arctic and how that's changing. Yeah, it's actually fascinating how much has changed over the last five years. The former Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, had called more or less the Arctic NATO's Achilles heel. This was before Sweden and Finland acceded to the treaty organization and became full-fledged members of NATO. I remember I was traveling in northern Sweden above the Arctic Circle and was meeting with military commanders there. And we were discussing these new defense cooperations agreements that Secretary Blinken at the time was signing and the way NATO was now posturing itself in the Arctic.

17:35And for the longest time, there was this blank spot on the NATO defense map of how to defend Northern Europe, the European Arctic, because of the lack of Sweden and Finland. But now with their integration, a lot of nations have started to increase their military spending up there, reopening their own bases and placing more troops up there. So NATO has been placing a premium on Arctic control and security operations for a while now. And it's just now picking up because of the rhetoric coming out of Washington. But it hasn't dissipated. I mean, what's most concerning is that the 77-year agreement of NATO is under threat, though we'll have to see what happens with the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark today when they speak with the vice president and secretary of state.

18:20I'm curious about Russia's strategy for extending its influence in the region. There's a map in your book that shows where Russia has military installations in the Arctic compared to the U.S. And it's a startling image. Just describe it for us. Sure. There's only a handful, and I mean five or less, American installations in the Arctic proper. Of course, we operate in the Arctic in numerous different ways that I and you are not able to know for top secret reasons. I can't tell you where nuclear submarines are located or operating. But Russia has spent the last decade or more opening up dozens of Cold War air bases and enlarging its fleet of icebreakers north of 50 right now.

19:12And they can cut a lot more ice than what the U.S. is capable of. So the defense and infrastructure for Russia is in place, not so much for the U.S. But we also have to understand that Russia is the largest stakeholder in the Arctic. Sixty percent of its countries are underlined by permafrost. It's got the largest littoral coastline along the Arctic Ocean, and it's part of its national identity. The writer from Massachusetts had noted that it's sort of a gift to Russia, the way Trump's talking about Greenland and the Arctic writ large. I think that's true, but I also think that it's sort of goading NATO into doing more in the Arctic and perhaps even America in the Arctic.

19:55And whether or not that's a gift to Russia, maybe. I do think that one thing that President Vladimir Putin is banking on is that we eat each other up from the inside and then he can sit back and watch. Well, that makes me curious not just about the U.S. level of preparation for a busier Arctic region, but that of our allies like Canada or Scandinavian countries. Yeah, so Canada is an interesting case, too, where they've spent several billion Canadian dollars on remodernizing that northern defense line for over-the-horizon attacks. That project is ongoing. It hasn't been completed yet. When I spoke with officials, they were still in the initial planning phases, but that's one project that might be of interest to North American security and American security by extension.

20:47The Scandinavian countries have been spending an increasing amount on their defense budgets. And since the war in Ukraine began in 2022, have been focused on reestablishing their own production lines for the equipment that matters to them most. The most interesting thing, I think, is the case of Sweden, which has opened up spaceports and placed more and more regiments in its Arctic regions, despite the ongoing threat of unilateral Russian and Chinese operations to destabilize, whether it be through GPS jamming or derailment of train lines that run through critical parts of their territories in the north.

21:28Well, you also highlight Norway as an important U.S. ally for navigating the Arctic Circle in the future, patrolling it, defending it. You spent some time on a Norwegian Coast Guard ship. What did you see during that visit that Norway does differently in the Arctic, that the U.S. doesn't get something that we could learn from them? Absolutely. I'm looking at a map right now, actually, of the Arctic Ocean. And it's always fascinating for me to remember that Norway hooks around over the top of Sweden and Finland and touches and just kisses the Kola Peninsula of Russia, where Russia bases its nuclear fleet.

22:06It's like bastion defense of the north. So Norway has been an extremely important partner for America and the Arctic, in part because it's so close to Russia that it shares that border and is a listening post into Russian activities, both military and political. But when I was with the Norwegian Coast Guard KV Svalbard icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean, I spent two weeks with them seeing their operations, understanding how they worked with Russian fishing vessels, how they treated their Russian partners who were also fishing and patrolling those same waters, until I was eventually transferred to the U.S.

22:43Coast Guard Cutter-Healy, which is the one icebreaker I mentioned earlier in our discussion. And when I went from one boat to the other, it was like night and day to see how worried and unprepared the U.S. was for interactions with Russia, which eventually occurred on my second or third day when a Russian Coast Guard vessel came very close to our ship and launched a helicopter that circled the ship for about an hour, taking photos and sort of stirring up commotion on the U.S. ship. It was only after the Russian vessel left that the CO, the commanding officer of the Healy, gathered the contingent on board and spoke to them about how they were preparing for such an event.

23:30And one of the Norwegians that I had been with who was also on the Healy said, you know, this is just sort of another day in the Arctic where we're all working together and we're all seeing each other. There's nothing of concern here. So that outlook on the Arctic, that understanding that we still have to operate and work together in this extraordinary space was prevalent in the minds of the Norwegians, but not so much in the minds of the Americans. And I wanted to focus in for a moment, not on Russia, but on China. It declared itself a, quote, near Arctic state in 2018. India and other countries have done the same.

24:07What has China done in the Arctic, particularly in Greenland? Sure. So just to back up a little bit, China has sought to build out infrastructure across the circumpolar north. It has sought to fund airfields in Norway. It has built research stations in Svalbard, which is a Norwegian territory in the Arctic Ocean. It has also built a research station in Iceland. And so it has this idea that it can also be part of the circumpolar north vis-a-vis Russia with its contributions to building out the northern sea route along the coast of Russia, part of its polar silk road initiative. In Greenland more recently, China sought to back a mine project that was championed by Australia and to fund it and also bring Chinese workers to Greenland to complete the project.

25:00But that was summarily shut down by the Kingdom of Denmark. Also shut down by the Kingdom of Denmark was financial support from China for the expansion of an airport in Nuuk. A lot of people would be interested to know that the only way to get to Greenland at present is through Denmark, is the only country that operates direct flights to an airport there that isn't even the capital, that you then have to take a connecting flight from that airport, Kangaluswak, to Nuuk. But they wanted to help build, the Chinese wanted to help build that airport out in Nuuk in order to facilitate international flights from the U.S., from Canada, from elsewhere in the world.

25:38But again, the Kingdom of Denmark stepped in and offered a better loan deal for the Greenlanders so that they could finish out the project. So there's always been this push and pull, and it's one of the reasons why Denmark wanted to keep foreign affairs and defense under its umbrella when it issued that Home Rule Act for the Greenlanders in 2008. When we think about the U.S.'s posture towards Greenland, what could the U.S. do now in the short term and in the longer term to start turning the page from what you describe now, where the U.S. and its allies are basically catching up, especially in the face of climate change in the Arctic, which is moving so quickly?

26:21Well, of course, Janet, I mean, forgive me, but I would tell everyone in Washington to read the book. Get the book and learn about some of the issues that are facing American forces in the Arctic. But in all seriousness, I would say that climate change is really impacting the Pacific space base. And to double down and invest more heavily in infrastructure up there to shore up the resources that we do have would benefit not only Denmark and Greenland, but NATO writ large, as well as American interests. I always question why we have fifth generation fighters stationed in Eilson Air Force Base in Alaska, but not at Pacific.

26:58And that's probably a product of the fact that the airstrip there in Greenland is not maintained well enough for those flights. So I think investing in the capabilities that we have, working on recruitment efforts for the Coast Guard so that we can operate more icebreakers, so that we can put together a polar security cutter fleet, which is the name of the Trump administration, to double down on the ice pact that we signed with Finland to get more ships built that can help us operate both militarily and scientifically in the high north. I think all these things are in place, but they're sidelined.

27:36And they're sidelined further by this conversation of taking Greenland, which, again, is an unfortunate aspect of this whole discussion. And as we're watching this story play out, watching what the Trump administration does in regards to Greenland, what do you not want to get overlooked as people are following this story? I don't want to get overlooked at the fact that we already have these agreements with Greenland, that we already cooperate with them, that we've helped them shore up their defenses. You know, on the other side, on the flip side, there are some issues with the Danish Royal Navy.