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

Dirty work in the Indian Ocean (1998)

From the May 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

A small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean was of such strategic importance that its whole population was expelled to make way for a military base.

The island of Mauritius, which lies about 500 miles east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is only 40 miles from north to south and 25 miles from east to west at its widest, yet with a population of over one million is one of the most densely populated areas of the world. Formerly a French colony it was ceded to Britain in 1814.

In 1964, Mauritius was granted self-government; and in March 1968 it became fully independent, but on condition that the British government was allowed to purchase from the newly-independent colony the Chagos Archipelago, which lay 1,500 miles to the northeast, and which had been previously administered from Mauritius. This was forced upon the government of Mauritius despite a UN resolution, passed by the General Assembly in December 1965, which called on Britain “to take no action which would dismember the territory of Mauritius” or “violate its territorial integrity”.

Mauritius, like other islands and territories in the Indian Ocean, was all-important to Britain as well as France, South Africa and, later, the United States because of the trade routes, and particularly the Gulf oil tanker routes, possible off-shore oil deposits along the East African coast, and the monitoring of Soviet shipping and submarines. These countries were also much concerned about the spread of what they called “communist subversion” in the area, particularly among young people.

In the defence policy review of 1967, the British government decided to move the naval communications station at HMS Highflyer in Sri Lanka to the town of Vacoas in Mauritius, where it was renamed HMS Mauritius. On obtaining independence in 1968, the Mauritian government signed a defence treaty with Britain, allowing for the continued use of HMS Mauritius. In exchange, Britain trained the island’s security forces.

For most of the time since independence, Mauritius has been governed by the Labour Party either alone or in coalition with such parties as the Parti Mauricien Social Democrat (PMSD) or, later, for a short period in 1995, the Mouvement Militant Mauricien ((MMM), led by Paul Berenger.

In December 1976, the hard-line anti-British, nationalist MMM, which from 1970, had only held one seat in the Assembly, won 34 of the 70 seats, and became the largest single party. Only a rather shaky coalition of the Labour and Social Democratic parties kept the MMM from power. With the predictable collapse of this coalition, the MMM achieved power. It joined the non-aligned block of Tanzania, India, the Malagasy Republic (Madagascar) and the Seychelles; and called for the demilitarisation of the Indian Ocean. Mauritius attempted, on a number of occasions (the last time in 1991), to raise the issue of returning the islands and atolls of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, but without success.

But why did Britain want to retain control of Chago Archipelago? Officially named the British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965 it is the only British colony created since decolonisation after the Second World War. In 1814, because of their importance “astride the trade routes to the East”, the islands of the Chagos Archipelago were annexed by Britain, and administered as a dependency of Mauritius until 1965.

The population of the islands, when they became the British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965, was around 1,500, of whom most lived on Diego Garcia. They were the Ilois who were descended from slaves introduced to work on the small copra plantations. Most were fifth generation islanders. The new colony was given a flag, a Commissioner, a customs office and a police station. A few Royal Marines were stationed on Diego Garcia. A post office was established; and the Territory even issued its own postage stamps.

The base

In 1966, however Britain signed a “defence” agreement with the United States, leasing the British Indian Ocean Territory to America for 50 years, with an option of a further 20 years. America did not, of course, want the islands for their copra or their fish; and they did not want to establish hotels for tourists. Far from it. They particularly wanted Diego Garcia, with its huge lagoon, as an intelligence, military and naval base and, later, as a nuclear weapons depot and refuelling point for US bombers. As the British discovered in the 19th century, whoever controlled the Chagos Archipelago controlled the Indian Ocean.

There was only one problem for Britain: America required the islands without the people who lived there. Britain had to get rid of them, particularly from Diego Garcia. The evacuation, or to be more accurate, the deportation, of the Ilois began in 1965 and was finally completed before the end of 1972, despite UN articles IX and XIII which state that “no one should be subjected to arbitrary exile”. The British government assigned the job of resettling the islanders to the Chagos-Agalega Company, coconut exporters and the only employer on Diego Garcia. They were deported to Mauritius; and the last few remaining islanders were told “if you don’t leave you will not be fed”. By 1972, the US Defense Department told Congress that “the islands are virtually uninhabited, and erection of the base would thus cause no indigenous political problems”.

In December 1974, a joint UK-US memorandum stated that there is “no native population on the islands”; and a British Ministry of Defence spokesman denied that this was a deliberate misrepresentation by saying the “there is nothing in our files about inhabitants or about an evacuation”. For Britain and America, the Ilois of the British Indian Ocean Territory had become an unpeople.

In fact, they were dumped in Mauritius, in the words of a Minority Rights Group report by John Madeley, “without any workable settlement; left in abject poverty”, and given a tiny amount of compensation on condition that they renounced their rights to return to the islands. By 1980, only a very few owned any land or houses, and 40 percent still had no jobs. Not surprisingly, most still live in Mauritius in poverty.

U.S. priorities

The United States Join Chiefs-of-Staff first sought the Chagos Archipelago island of Diego Garcia as a base as early as 1959, and persuaded the British to hive off the island, and other atolls and islands in the archipelago, from Mauritius prior to independence. In order to finance the base, the US Department of Defence established a secret Polaris Trust Fund (as Britain was unable to pay for the Polaris nuclear missiles for its submarines) to pay for the leased base rights. The money from the Trust Fund was then deducted from Britain’s Polaris research and development costs, set at five percent.

The first American contingent moved on to Diego Garcia in 1971; and the first US project was to establish a naval Signals Intelligence (SIGNIT) station to monitor radio signals in the Indian Ocean. With British Royal Navy participation, a United States National Security Group monitoring station was set up in 1972. It became a “ground control” base for the US-Australian-British CLASSIC WIZARD Ocean Surveillance Satellite System network for electronic satellites. Also set up, in 1974, was a major GCHQ/NSA Signals Intelligence station. Of the facilities, Jeffrey Richelson and Desmond Ball observe: “Not only is Diego Garcia ideally situated for monitoring naval traffic in the Indian Ocean, but during the 1970s, it also acquired many functions previously performed by the NSA facility at Kagnew station, at Asmara in Ethiopia” (The Ties That Bind, Sydney, Australia, p.205), abandoned because of the civil wars raging in that part of Africa.

A second US-UK treaty, in 1972, sanctioned the “limited naval communications facility”. A US airstrip and port facilities were developed; and access to Diego Garcia was restricted to British and American military personnel and civilian construction workers. In 1976, a third treaty regularised the construction of an “anchorage, airfield, support and supply elements and ancillary services”. Aircraft using Diego Garcia have included RAF Hawker Siddely Nimrod MR2 marine reconnaissance aircraft, Lockheed P-3 Orion transport aircraft, and USAAF Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers capable of carrying nuclear devices stored on the island. During the 1991 war against Iraq, Diego Garcia was used as a refuelling point for US bombers.

During the recent crisis, the British Indian Ocean Territory was once again an important base for military operations. Yet more dirty work in the Indian Ocean.

Peter E. Newell

More dirty work – in the Atlantic (2006)

From the April 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Between 1965 and 1972, the British government expelled, deported or forced out the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands, and particularly Diego Garcia, known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This was because it had signed a “defence” agreement with the United States, leasing the islands to the US for an intelligence, military, and naval base and, later, a nuclear and fuelling depot for long-range bombers. The BIOT is located strategically in the centre of the Indian Ocean, so controlling it provides power and influence in the whole of Southern Asia and much of the Middle East. (See “Dirty Work in the Indian Ocean”, Socialist Standard, May 1998.)

History may never actually repeat itself exactly, but the present situation on the island of Ascension, midway between Africa and South America in the Atlantic Ocean, is very similar. In 1956, the British government leased to the United States Wakefield Airfield, now a top-secret base on Ascension. According to the Observer (12.02.06), it is one of the Pentagon’s most important military communications hubs; and is also used for troop deployments. Cable & Wireless and the BBC also have facilities on the island. Furthermore, Ascension is 1,000 miles off the oil-rich coast of West Africa.

About 1,100 people live on Ascension Island, some indigenous, many of them from St. Helena 750 miles to the south, and most of them British citizens. According to the Observer of the same date, after the Human Rights Act was adopted by the British government in 1998, the then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, published a White Paper with the aim of bringing democracy to the island, as well as establishing a right of permanent abode, and full property rights, for all residents. Previously, although many of the islanders were born there, they were, and still are, only allowed to remain as long as they have jobs.

In 1999, the British government pledged that this would change. Following Ascension’s first general election in 2002, a local council was formed which went on to create a national park on the extinct volcano in the centre of the island. There was a plan to encourage eco-tourism to take advantage of the unique plant and seabird species, first discovered by Charles Darwin in 1844. Many of the islanders bought shops and other small businesses. But it was all to no avail.

In January this year, the Foreign Office minister, one Lord Triesman, wrote to the Islanders informing them that the government had changed its plans, and that “they would not have a right of abode or right of tenure”. They would be thrown out if necessary. Says the Observer:

  The Foreign Office is accused of covering up the true reason for its change in heart. Many blame the Pentagon for pressuring Britain. They believe the US wants to expand its military operations on the island and objected to plans to increase tourism. Washington does not want its activities to be subject to unwanted scrutiny. The west African coast has become of increasing strategic interest to the US, with discoveries of oil that have turned countries such as Equatorial Guinea into wealthy trading partners.

And Lord Triesman, who has allegedly bowed to the Pentagon’s wishes, or dictates? He is better known as David Triesman who, as a sociology student at the University of Essex in the summer term of 1968, was suspended, but was later reinstated following a student occupation of the university. And who wrote an essay, “The CIA and Student Politics”, in a Penguin Special book, Student Power, Problems, Diagnosis, Action, in which he exposed the CIA for financing and largely controlling the International Student conference and British NUS, adding: “The generation developing in this country will not want to pay mere lip service to the international struggle against imperialism, colonialism and racism; it will be in conflict with capitalism as the parent of these enemies.”

It would seem that the good Lord Triesman has since changed his mind regarding American Imperialism, the CIA and capitalism.

Peter E. Newell