About 40 University of Michigan students and community members gathered in Palmer Commons for “Why Greenland Matters Now,” a lecture sponsored by the Ford School of Public Policy and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia. The event, which focused on the geopolitical, economic and environmental contest surrounding Greenland today, was led by Gabriella Gricius, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz and senior fellow at the Arctic Institute.
Greenland has been circulating through headlines in the past few months due to President Donald Trump’s attempts to acquire the Danish territory for increased national security and resource access. Gricius began her lecture by reminding the audience that Greenland, and the entirety of the Arctic, has been geopolitically important since the Cold War. During the period, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union developed long-range bombers and missile defense lines across the Arctic in case of nuclear warfare.
“East-west militarization was part of the reason why this part of the world became so important,” Gricius said. “Initially, it was talked about as the shortest aerial route between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.”
Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally. In 1987, toward the end of the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev, then-president of the Soviet Union,gave a speech outlining his desire for an Arctic free of nuclear weapons and instead fostering scientific cooperation. Gricius said Finland agreed.
“People from the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, as well as the foreign ministry, came together to say, ‘We need to seize this opportunity, because there are challenges that stretch across different national boundaries in the region,’” Gricius said. “Things like transboundary pollution from nuclear testing, for example, or large-range heavy shipping in certain parts of the Arctic. They proposed that all Arctic states should move together.”
The result was the 1996 Arctic Council, a cooperation between Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Russian Federation, the United States and indigenous permanent participant members dedicated to fostering cooperation between Arctic states. However, the group faced difficulty in allocating resources and devising shipping routes, mainly the Northern Sea Route. Gricius warned about the effects of shipping on indigenous rights.
“It’s not just about, ‘Can we get through really quickly? Can we use this as an economic opportunity?’” Gricius said. “But ‘What about rural communities that are very close to some of these borders? How do they deal with threats to their traditional livelihoods?’”
Gricius then pivoted to the roles of Russia, China and the U.S. in Arctic infrastructure, shipping and industry. President Trump has argued taking control of Greenland is necessary to prevent China and Russia from encroaching on Greenland — which possesses a uniquely strategic location at the intersection of North America, Europe and the Arctic — although neither country holds a significant presence on the island.
Gricius pushed back against Trump’s narrative, saying the Greenland Defense Agreement already authorizes the U.S. to maintain military bases in Greenland.
“We don’t need to buy Greenland. We already have,” Gricius said. “A Danish ambassador came over to the U.S., and he conducted this kind of shady deal where he said, ‘You can come in, you can place as many military resources as you need, but we want to make sure that the U.S. continues to defend Greenland.’”
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Ann Arbor community member Katherine Woo said her biggest takeaway from the lecture was how common misconceptions about relations between Greenland and the United States are.
“Greenland and the U.S. already have an agreement,” Woo said. “The U.S. does not need to take over Greenland.”
The Donroe Doctrine is the name given by the media to the Trump administration’s foreign policy initiative to control the Western Hemisphere through incorporating Greenland and intervening in Latin American politics. Gricius emphasized that only Greenland can decide its own future, noting that 85% of Greenlanders said they do not want to be a part of the United States.
“What we know is Denmark doesn’t have the authority to sell Greenland,” Gricius said. “It’s in the hands of the Greenlanders themselves to decide where and how they want their future to be.”
In an interview with The Daily, Rackham student Katherine Cooney spoke about the impact this lecture had on her plans for her dissertation.
“I study public health, and I’m interested in the development of social services, and it’s sometimes a little bit removed from securitization and international relations,” Cooney said. “Being able to think about that differently and integrate it with my own work is really helpful.”
Daily Staff Reporter Adelaide Ellis can be reached at arellis@umich.edu.
