What’s the deal with Greenland? (2025)

From the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Six months ago nobody would have imagined Greenland making headlines. Almost the only things most people know about the place is that it’s not as big as it looks on maps, and it is covered in ice that’s melting due to global warming.

Then came US Vice-President Vance’s unwelcome and controversial visit to the island in late March. The ensuing furore fortuitously diverted media attention from ‘Signalgate’, the disastrous security blunder which made Trump’s senior appointees look like fools. Democrats furiously demanded the resignation of Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, who inadvertently included a journalist in top-secret discussions about bombing the Houthis in Yemen, and Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, who blithely joined in the chat from his – possibly monitored – hotel room in Moscow. Russia, be it noted, is friends with Iran, who are friends with the Houthis. Republicans too must have been quietly alarmed at such blithering incompetence on the part of people put in charge of US national security. Trump’s self-estimation as a genius clearly depends on him surrounding himself with loud-mouthed buffoons. His protégés duly followed Trump protocol – lie, deny, and go on the offensive – but he probably realised that he ought to sack them and hand the Democrats a big win, because covering for them would undermine his own credibility. But as we later saw with his astounding tariffs and subsequent craven roll-back, he believes his credibility is indestructible.

A handy diversion

In the event, Vance’s impromptu and perhaps calculated excursion to the Pituffik airbase in Greenland provided a useful distraction from the Signalgate fiasco. Vance publicly hectored Denmark for its supposedly poor stewardship of the island, reinforcing Trump’s claim that a US takeover was not just desirable but inevitable. Not surprisingly the Danes were politely enraged, saying ‘this is not how you talk to your allies’ and calling the move Trump’s ‘Crimea script’. Even Pituffik’s own commander tried to distance herself from Vance’s remarks, promptly earning herself the sack. The Greenlanders were also not best pleased. In polls, 80 percent of them want independence from Denmark, but 85 percent of them do not want to be annexed by the USA. What they do want, one can only imagine, is some sort of unworldly solution in which they no longer have to scrape by on Danish subsidies yet somehow manage to prosper as a lone island state the size of western Europe, with no industry or infrastructure, or even roads, and a population only one third the size of the Isle of Wight’s.

There is zero chance of that happening, because Greenland is just too important to major powers. Trump has been wanting Greenland since his first Presidency in 2016, and the US, for various reasons, has been wanting it since 1867. That was the year the US bought Alaska off the Russians for $7m. The US Secretary of State William H Seward, who oversaw the Alaska purchase, was also keen on buying Greenland and Iceland at the same time, in order to wedge Canada in on three sides and force it eventually to become part of the US. Trump may well be aware of this Seward plan, which would add context to his comments about annexing Canada. In 1868 Seward began negotiations with Denmark to buy Greenland. But Congress failed to ratify his similar plan to purchase the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands), and the Greenland plan was dropped.

Following a wartime occupation from 1941 to 1945 to stop a German invasion of Greenland, in 1946 the US secretly offered to buy it. Denmark refused, but did allow the US to build air bases there, as both countries were in the process of founding NATO. US interest in Greenland was now mainly military, as the island sits in the middle of the shortest missile flight path to Russia. It’s also part of a crucial choke point in the North Atlantic called the GIUK Gap, between Greenland, Iceland and the UK. Were Russia inclined to attack the US east coast using its Northern Fleet, based at Murmansk on the Barents Sea, its forces would have to pass through the gap. At the same time, a good reason not to press the Danes too heavily on the issue would have been that Denmark sits across the mouth of the Baltic Sea, meaning it could potentially bottle up the Russian Baltic Fleet at Kaliningrad.

Cold war refreezes

US interest cooled somewhat after the Berlin Wall fell and relations with Russia temporarily became less frosty. But now Russia has remilitarised all its old Soviet naval bases in the Arctic, heavily outnumbering equivalent NATO bases, with increasing Russian submarine patrols around the GIUK Gap. The global internet has also intensified concerns over this gap, as critically important undersea data cables pass right through it, or just south of it, making them vulnerable to submarine sabotage. This could potentially blind the USA and cripple its ability to respond in the event of any future Russian incursion into, say, the Baltic States or Finland.

In addition, the US needs ground stations for its military satellites, including in the Arctic Circle. Two of these are in Alaska and Svalbard, but the main base is Pituffik, scene of Vance’s recent outburst against Denmark. And the US very likely wants many more such bases on the island. As things stand, Greenland is terra incognita, a ‘security black hole‘ that’s impossible for Denmark’s meagre forces – mostly one aeroplane and some dogsled teams – to effectively monitor.

Not just wargames

There are also pressing non-military considerations. As the Arctic melts and the sea lanes open up permanently, Greenland could come to dominate global shipping, due to the fact that the two trans-Arctic routes, the Canada-hugging Northwest Passage (NWP) and Russia-adjacent Northern Sea Route (NSR) have the potential to cut 4,000 km off the Panama route and make the Suez Canal largely redundant. Just as the US wants back control of the Panama Canal, it will also be keen to control this polar traffic. Annoyingly for the US, in 1985 Canada claimed sovereignty over the NWP, while the US insists it is an international waterway. That might be another reason why Trump wants to annex Canada.

Then there are the untapped resources. Greenland could be the key to breaking China’s near global monopoly on producing rare earth elements (REEs) and critical minerals, as the biggest deposits of these outside China are in, you guessed it, Greenland. It is thought to have the 6th largest deposit of uranium in the world, and to be very rich in lithium, REEs, graphite, iron, nickel and copper. There is also gold, along with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and a host of other quartzes and gemstones. It has 43 out of the 50 critical minerals needed for the US economy, in particular green tech and electric vehicles. Elon Musk and the other tech bros have declared an interest for this and other reasons, including the fact that the vast territory and freezing temperatures are ideal for server farms, of which an order of magnitude more may be required to enable the AI revolution. And then there are the estimated reserves of oil and gas, which put Greenland on a par with Nigeria and Kazakhstan, and superior to Qatar.

What’s in it for the Inuit?

Almost certainly nothing. The local population doesn’t have the people, money, skills or infrastructure to exploit any of this stuff themselves, so Greenland is a sitting duck for whichever major power acquires it, either through a business deal or by military action. What could very well happen if these resources are exploited in an unregulated way by a ruthless foreign power is that Greenlanders could suffer the notorious ‘resource curse’ of places like the Congo, with the country becoming a corrupt rentier state whose ruling elite siphon off the wealth and defend their position by becoming more repressive and authoritarian (youtu.be/x8j2uWw3WfU). Faced with this awful prospect, the idealistic islanders may realise that their best chance is to do some kind of mutual back-scratching deal with the US, while retaining a fig-leaf of independence.

Deals under the table

After the Vance visit, Russia’s Vladimir Putin told journalists that relations between the US and Greenland were nothing to do with Russia, and that he had no interest in the place. This blithe response strains credulity, given Russia and China’s keen interest in the NSR, and given that a US takeover of Greenland would be as much of a strategic threat to Russia as Ukraine being in NATO, if not more so. Missiles based in Greenland, especially hypersonics, could take out Moscow, St Petersburg and Murmansk before the Russians could even react. And that’s beside the fact that Russia is – since the Ukraine invasion – now hemmed in with the addition of two new NATO members, Finland and Sweden, as well as NATO Norway.

One possible explanation for Putin’s professed indifference is that Transactional Trump has offered a private deal in which Trump takes Greenland and Russia gets to keep its captured territory (and the largest European gas reserves outside Norway) in Ukraine.

Is a similar Trumpian quid-pro-quo over Taiwan possible, making for a three-way neo-colonial carve-up? On the face of it, no. Hegseth continues to sabre-rattle at China by reiterating US backing of Taiwan, and Vance is also waving his stick at China for wanting to expand operations in Greenland. But China has operations almost everywhere, and anyway rejects any comparison with Taiwan, arguing that Greenland is a sovereign foreign state whereas Taiwan is China’s intrinsic territory. Why would they do a deal over what they see as already theirs?

Even so, TSMC and other Taipei chipmakers are racing to set up shop in Texas, California and Arizona in an energetic US bid to make Taiwan less of an Achilles heel for western tech industries. Should this attempt succeed – and there are wage-rate, skill-set and supply-chain reasons why it might not – US support for Taiwan could evaporate.

Take the money and run?

It seems hard to believe that the US would actually invade Greenland by force. But given its tiny population of around 56,000, one intriguing possibility is that the US could wait until the expected declaration of independence from Denmark, and then offer to pay the entire Greenland population $1m each to buy the place. $56bn might sound like a lot but it’s approximately what the place is valued at in potential revenues, and it’s only 1/15th of the planned 2025 US military budget, or about 1/8th of the US annual debt-servicing bill. That way, Greenlanders could all be millionaires and retire to beach houses in Bali. But would they take the payout and emigrate, or opt to stay poor for the sake of patriotism? It’s hard to say. Nationalism is powerfully embedded in capitalism’s ideology, and objective logic often plays very little part.

Paddy Shannon

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kylie Jenner, the 27-year-old billionaire and car enthusiast, was recently spotted with her sister Kendall Jenner driving her $3 million Bugatti Chiron in Beverly Hills. Known for her impressive car collection, Kylie gave fans a rare glimpse of herself behind the wheel rather than posing next to her fleet. 

(Yahoo)

‘Everything outside the Christian framework — including secular music, television, and books — was discouraged. Just as I signed multiple purity pledges throughout my preteen and teen years, promising to avoid not just sex, but even impure thoughts, we were taught to practice absolute abstinence from dangerous ideas’. 

(AlterNet)

While official data is still somewhat sketchy, it’s estimated that 12,000 illegal transplants are performed annually, about 10% of the total number of transplants conducted each year. The organ trade is immensely profitable, generating between $840 million to $1.7 billion in revenue for a relatively small number of traffickers, according to estimates compiled in 2017. Organ trafficking survives, in part, because the demand from affluent consumers in the advanced capitalist West is so high and the legal supply of organs – primarily (about 80%) kidneys, but also lungs, livers and cornea – barely keeps pace. Many people wait at least two years to qualify to receive an organ transplant legally and thousands die every year – about 25 daily, according to the World Health Organization – because no organ becomes available in time to save them. Where do the illegally harvested organs come from? Primarily from North Africa and South Asia. Organ traffickers prey on poor and vulnerable rural dwellers, offering cash in exchange for an organ, usually a kidney. 

(Counterpunch)

This is about the Arctic. You have Russia that is trying to become king of the Arctic with 60-plus icebreakers, some of them nuclear-powered. Do you know how many we have, Jesse? We have two, and one just caught on fire. This is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources. This is about, as the polar ice caps pull back, the Chinese are now cranking out icebreakers and pushing up there as well. So, it’s oil and gas. It’s our national security. It’s critical minerals. 

(Common Dreams)

The response provided by South Africa’s elected officials has so far been both lacking and sinister. It targets migrants with few political allies in the country’s fractured political scene, increasingly characterized by populism, highlighting problems without solutions. 

(Geopolitical Intelligence Services AG)

As long as the capitalist system continues, we will never be able to escape from the shackles of economic crisis, war and massacre, ecological destruction, and workers’ sacrifice. The only solution is the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement with communism, a society in which the means of production are no longer in the hands of capitalists or the state, but are socialised, in which production and distribution are in harmony with humanity and nature. 

(Controversies)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite the Pentagon’s repeated failures to pass audits and various alarming policies, 81 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted with 200 Republicans…to advance a $883.7 billion annual defense package. 

(Common Dreams)

In Iran, the mandatory hijab law has been a contentious point of resistance ever since the Islamic Revolution in 1978. But it has become much more widespread in the past two years after the killing of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the morality police for not wearing a hijab correctly, and died in custody. Women have been at the forefront of this resistance, engaging in protests as part of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. It has called for the abolition of compulsory hijab laws and an end to gender-based oppression. But rather than acknowledging these acts as legitimate political protests, the Iranian state has increasingly sought to frame them as symptoms of individual mental illness. 

(The Conversation)

Yet another gruesome gang horror has played out in Haiti, as at least 184 people — most of them elderly — were variously slashed, hacked or shot to death on the orders of a warlord who’d been advised that aging slum residents had used sorcery to give his son a severe illness. Interim Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé called it ‘a barbaric act of unbearable cruelty’. The brutality was reportedly ordered by Monel ‘Mikano’ Felix, who leads the Wharf Jeremie gang. The carnage took place on Friday and Saturday in the densely populated seaside slum of Cité Soleil, a neighborhood in the capital city of Port-au-Prince which The Guardian has called Haiti’s ‘most notorious slum… Much of the slum is an open sewer…infant children bathe in water contaminated with sewage. The stench is unbearable’. 

(Zero Hedge)

As temperatures rise because of global warming Arctic areas that were previously frozen may become navigable, and natural resources more easily exploited, setting off competing claims. Blair said: ‘This growing access is already enticing nations to the region, heightening security challenges and geopolitical competition’. China and Russia are working together to gain control over the region, say analysts. 

(Financial Times)

The mosquito has determined the fates of empires and nations, razed and crippled economies, and decided the outcome of pivotal wars, killing nearly half of humanity along the way. She (only females bite) has dispatched an estimated 52 billion people from a total of 108 billion throughout our relatively brief existence. As the greatest purveyor of extermination we have ever known, she has played a greater role in shaping our human story than any other living thing with which we share our global village.

(Penguin Random House)

Malaria killed almost 600,000 people in 2023, as cases rose for the fifth consecutive year, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO). Biological threats…climate and humanitarian disasters continue to hamper control efforts…Officials said a $4.3 billion annual funding shortfall was among further challenges. 

(Mother Jones)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

The Nautilus and the Sputnik (1958)

From the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Use and Misuse of Science

On 9th August two items of news reached the Press, the voyage of an American atom-powered submarine under the North Pole and the hint by the British Minister Of Supply that the Government is considering, the construction and launching of a British Sputnik. Here surely are two evidences of the marvels of scientific knowledge and human courage and ingenuity that no one need hesitate to glory in!! And so it might be if the human race had learned how to conduct its social relationship in a manner conducive to its own wellbeing and happiness. But that is precisely what it has not yet done.

The submarine “Nautilus” with 116 men aboard, had journeyed under the North Pole and the Arctic icecap from Alaska to Iceland, proving the practicability of cutting the voyage from London to Tokio from 11,200 to 6,300 miles; truly, as described in a message from the British Admiralty, “a remarkable and historic achievement.” The submarine is reported to have cost nearly £13 million, and allowing for all the other costs involved, this might be considered a trifle if it did in fact bring the kind of benefits to mankind that are claimed for the feat. But what in fact will it achieve? Its captain, Commander Anderson, said:—

"We were anxious to show the possibility of utilising this route some day as a fast commerce route."—(Daily Telegraph, 9th April, 1958.)

What else has it achieved? A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph tells us:—

"A new ocean, the frozen wastes of the Arctic, has been opened up to navigation and hence to naval use. This is the meaning of the unprecedented trans-Polar under-sea voyage from Hawaii to Iceland, of the nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus."

Then the correspondent, Mr. Hanson Baldwin, develops this theme—far removed from Commander Andersen’s words about commerce. Quoting an American naval expert he shows how a submarine firing guided missiles could range across the Arctic, with the Russian towns of Murmansk, Leningrad and Moscow well within range. “The whole vast Arctic coastline of Russia is potentially open to assault.”

From the Depths Below to the Moon Above

So much for the penetration of the icy waters. Now for the projected British Sputnik in space. The Manchester Guardian, in the seemingly thoughtful and sober way of which it is proud, discusses the project and doubts its advisability. But the Guardian’s argument is atrocious when viewed from the real interests of the human race.

It concedes that there are “virtues in carrying the Union Jack outside file earth’s atmosphere,” the virtues consisting chiefly of “a certain amount of prestige,” like that gained by the Russian and American governments already. But the Guardian’s editor considers the cost would be too great, unless at the same time some military advantage can also be gained in the shape of using the launching of a Sputnik to acquire experience with guided missiles.

Not that the editor underestimates the value of “prestige,” but he thinks that “the kind of prestige which Britain needs is that which makes it easier to sell locomotives in South America, motor cars in the United States, and electrical machinery in the Far East.”

“A Sputnik may help in this direction,” he writes, “though not as much as a successful Zeta or victory at Le Mans.”

Here we see the real motive behind it all, the one that poisons and distorts every official and commercial activity of the world in which we live. The scientists may talk of pure research to discover Nature's secrets, and the Cabinet Ministers of benefits of peaceful commerce, but all the time their actions line up with the inescapable character of capitalist enterprise, the trade competition that gives rise to rivalry and war, with Nationalism and Patriotism serving as the justification for every hostile act including the bestialities of war itself.

How can the vicious circle be broken? There is only one way. It is stupid self-deception for the Manchester Guardian and Labour Parties of the world to dream of taming the cut-throat struggle through United Nations pacts and interventions. Continuing on those lines means continuing the history of the past 100 years into a war-torn future, with consequences beyond imagination. If capitalism continues, with the giant capitalist Powers, U.SA and Russia fighting it out, and with their respective capitalist allies and satellites all necessarily involved, the conquest of the Arctic seas and the conquest of space will prove as empty as and even more disastrous than did the opening of the Suez Canal nearly a century ago, about which just the same soothing claims of beneficial progress were made. (We can see in our day what the Suez Canal really did for the world.)

The only way out, and one the Manchester Guardian never even considers, is to end the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, and the consequent ceaseless armed conflict for control of sources of nature-given materials, and competition for markets in which to dispose profitably of the products of the workers' labours, and to launch out on the really great and fruitful adventure of organising world resources on the simple basis of production solely to meet the needs of mankind.

But that is Socialism and so far its daring simplicity frightens all except the small minority who hold to the principles of the S.P.G.B. and its companion parties.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Scramble for the Arctic (2007)

From the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

On August 3, the oceanographer and polar explorer Artur Chilingarov descended 14,000 feet in a mini-submarine and dropped a titanium capsule containing a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole. “The Arctic is Russian,” he declared.

In fact, the Russian government is laying claim not to the whole Arctic, but “only” to the Lomonosov Ridge, a wedge about half the size of Western Europe that it considers an extension of Siberia’s continental shelf. According to the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea, the five states with coastlines on the Arctic Ocean – Russia, Norway, Denmark (through ownership of Greenland), Canada and the United States (Alaska) – are entitled to 200 miles of territorial waters, but can claim more distant chunks of Arctic seabed by demonstrating links to their continental shelves.

This, of course, is a game that not only Russia can play. All the other Arctic states have advanced counterclaims or are preparing to do so, all on the basis of the same vague legal provision.

Why now?

Why is this carve-up happening now? Apart from people concerned with the deployment of nuclear submarine forces, the native Inuit (Eskimos), and a few scientists and explorers, no one used to care much about the Arctic. Vast quantities of oil, gas and other minerals might lie under the frozen wastes (up to 10 billion barrels of oil under the Lomonosov Ridge, for instance), but extracting them was not a practical proposition. So it did not matter if borders and exploitation rights were not very clearly defined.

Now, however, it is starting to matter. In part this is due to advances in extraction technology, but the main reason is the rapid melting of the icecap under the impact of global warming. The extraction of all those underwater resources is no longer a pipedream, and the big oil and gas companies and the governments that back them are jockeying for position in the new arena.

Survival versus profit

From the perspective of survival of the planetary ecosystem, the rush to grab Arctic oil and gas is grotesque in the extreme. After all, it is largely the burning of oil and gas that is melting the ice, thereby opening up the prospect of extracting and burning yet more oil and gas and further accelerating global warming.

The capitalists, however, have a quite different perspective. For them the overriding imperative is to be sure of making every last cent, penny and kopeck of profit from selling hydrocarbons before finally proceeding to exploit the next source of profit – solar energy and other “alternative” energy sources. By then, unfortunately, it may well be too late to prevent runaway global warming from turning Earth into a second Venus. But that is something the capitalists do not want to know.

The melting of the ice will also have a huge impact on shipping. Over the next few years, expanding areas of the Arctic — and within a few decades all of it — will be navigable to commercial shipping throughout the year. The Northeast Passage through the Russian Arctic and the Bering Strait is expected to be open within eight years, greatly reducing the distance and cost of sea transport between Europe and the Far East. The Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic will provide another link between the Atlantic and the Pacific, competing with the Panama Canal. New deepwater ports are planned to support trans-Arctic trade. Finally, a continuing rapid growth in Arctic tourism is anticipated.

Not a new Cold War

The alarm with which the media have reacted to the Russian claim on the Lomonosov Ridge is reminiscent of the Cold War, especially in the context of other recent tensions between Russia and “the West.” Nevertheless, it is misleading to talk about a new Cold War or, indeed, about “the West.” We no longer live in a world of bipolar confrontation between “East” and “West.” We now live in a multipolar world of fluid alliances among a fairly large number of powers, some of them rising (e.g., China) and others in decline (e.g., the US). In certain ways the early 21st century resembles the first half of the 20th century much more closely than it does the second.

Nothing illustrates the new-old pattern of multipolarity more clearly than territorial disputes in the Arctic. Several important disputes do not involve Russia at all. They are between the other Arctic states, all of which are still formally allies, fellow members of NATO.

The potentially most serious disputes are, perhaps, those between Canada and the United States. One concerns the offshore Canada/Alaska boundary, which traverses an area thought to be rich in oil and gas. The other dispute is over the straits that separate Canada’s Arctic islands from one another and from the mainland. Last year the Canadian government declared that it regarded these straits, which together make up the Northwest Passage, as Canadian Internal Waters. The US government has made clear that it still regards the straits as international waters by sending its navy to patrol them.

Lord Palmerston is famous for his remark that “Britain has no permanent allies, only permanent interests.” Evidently the same is true of any capitalist state.

Canada flexes its muscles

The behaviour of the Arctic states also debunks the widely held idea that some states are inherently peace-loving and others inherently militaristic. Many people think of Canada as being in the first category. They might be perturbed to come across the following Guardian headline: “Canada flexes its muscles in scramble for the Arctic” (LINK).

As Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper observed in this connection, “the world is changing.” It is changing in ways that on the surface seem quite dramatic. But there is a deeper level at which, as the French saying has it, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” The 21st-century scramble for the Arctic is a phenomenon of the same general kind as the 19th-century scramble for Africa. Both are cases of commercial and military rivalry between the capitalist classes of different countries to open up for plunder and exploitation a region that was previously closed to them.

True, these scrambles now entail dangers that were unknown in the past. The 19th century knew nothing of either nuclear weapons or global warming. It is high time to move on.

Stefan