U.S.'s Greenland Policy Faces Crosswinds, Bumpy Landing

The first episode of the drama series Masters of the Air holds a two-minute scene in which a B-17 crew runs the checklist for a very bumpy landing at Bluie West One, now Narsarsuaq Airport, in Southern Greenland, while transiting to England. Snow flurries blow across the runway, whitecaps are visible on the adjacent fjord, and the tower reports a northwest wind at 40 knots, gusting to 50. Visibility is good, but the pilot stomps the rudder, crabbing—turning the aircraft to fly diagonally into the wind to maintain intended heading—as he lines up on the runway. Even watching this episode in one’s living room in summer, it feels cold. There is a feeling of relief when the bomber touches down and taxis off the runway. Then there is awe when one considers how many American aircraft touched down to refuel there in the three remaining years of World War II.

Buchanan’s conversational tone is essential, as she seeks to educate readers who may not know much about the topic. The United States has had a military presence on the west coast, next to Thule, since 1951, but most Americans were likely unaware of U.S. military stationing in Greenland until U.S. Vice President JD Vance visited Pituffik Space Base this year. Buchanan therefore answers important baseline questions about Greenland in the introduction: How big is it, really? Does anyone really own it? How many people live there? If that’s all new information, then certainly the existence there of cryolite—‘a key ingredient in the smelting process to make aluminium’—will be news, too. In fact, Greenland holds one of the world’s largest deposits; Greenland’s ‘was the sole cryolite mine operational during WWII’, and the U.S. Navy built a base at Gronnedal to protect it.

Most of the book, however, is devoted to Greenland’s relationship to Denmark—the nation currently providing it infrastructure funding, foreign policy and healthcare, as well as legal and monetary systems. The description of this relationship’s history is thorough—again, hitting all the waypoints—including agreements and referenda, both bilateral and international—and it tees up discussion on the current state of Greenland’s independence (both the in-place 2009 Self-Government Act and draft constitution) and, perhaps, where the U.S. can influence the process.

It is here, though, that Buchanan’s final approach to the runway gets rough. In the final chapters she applies multiple metaphors to the complicated relationship between Greenland and Denmark, comparing it to Stockholm Syndrome, coercive control, a ‘train stuck between two stations’, and ‘breaking free from the “Danish teat”’.

To land this book optimally, Buchanan should instead have concluded with her best metaphor, in which ‘the island is facing two choices right now: stability or chaos’, with the tempos, risks and discomforts she identifies within each option. Her exemplar is Iceland—also a Danish possession until 1940, when the Nazis occupied Copenhagen and isolated the metropole from its claimed territories. Shortly after D-Day, though, Iceland held a referendum and gained its independence. Buchanan supports the comparison aptly—both are isolated islands and have small populations and similar GDP per capita. While Iceland is now independent and Greenland is not, the comparison does provide a model for transition to sovereignty.

Instead, she finishes with an afterword, arguing that if the international rules-based order is not going to step up and defend Ukraine with military force, it certainly will not if the Trump administration decides to thump its wheels down in Nuuk as a fait accompli. If, however, ‘Trump’s Greenland gambit will likely amount to intense investment and partnership’, with more American blood and treasure put into leveraging the island’s strategic location and resources, the book demonstrates this would not represent new U.S. policy. Indeed, the Biden administration invested in Greenland, too; Buchanan lists the previous administration’s trade, tourism, critical minerals, cross-cultural and healthcare development initiatives to demonstrate continuity in recent U.S.–Greenland cooperation.

The U.S., she argues, has always been interested in Greenland. In 1867, fresh on the heels of the Alaska Purchase, secretary of state William Henry Seward proposed buying it. In 1910, the Taft administration offered to trade two Philippine islands for it. Harry Truman’s State Department offered $100 million in gold at the dawn of the Cold War.

To return to the B-17 metaphor, the Trump administration (or the next one) will also likely attempt to land there in the near future. As Buchanan describes it, though, history portends some serious limiting factors beyond Greenland’s austere climate conditions. To properly touch down in Greenland, the U.S. must crab into the crosswinds of a small but robust indigenous population negotiating for sovereignty with another member of NATO; the high costs of developing infrastructure to harvest resources in those harsh conditions; and a geostrategic environment in which at least one other Arctic power (hint: not all interested parties are NATO members) has also shown interest in developing Greenland for its own aims.

Scott McIntosh is a distinguished lecturer at the Arctic Regional Security Orientation and Arctic Multidomain Legal Courses, Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies, Joint Base Elmendorf, Alaska. The views and opinions presented here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Ted Stevens Center or any part of the U.S. government.

This article appeared originally at The Strategist (ASPI).