Transcript

Why is everyone suddenly talking about Greenland?

How will Arctic security be impacted by rising great power competition?

How have US neighbours and allies responded?

In this episode, Iselin Németh Winther and Heather Exner-Pirot join David Andrews to explore the evolving significance of Arctic security, the uncertainties for Greenland under Donald Trump, and the potential impact of Arctic power dynamics on global governance.

(This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)

Iselin Németh Winther

I think Trump, by going out as hard as he did, he has already sparked debates within the Kingdom of Denmark to pay more attention to Greenland security-wise.

Heather Exner-Pirot

And so there is an American base actually in what the Danish called Tully and to my knowledge the United States has not been denied you know anything that they wanted to put in that Greenland base.

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David Andrews

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm David Andrews, Senior Policy Advisor at the ANU National Security College. Today's podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. Today's podcast, on the topic of Greenland Antarctic Security, brings together two conversations I had with Dr Heather Exner-Pirot and Iselin Naidmyth-Winther. To begin the conversation, I spoke with Iselin, a researcher at the Fritjof Nansen Institute based in Oslo, about the context for recent developments in the Arctic and how this compares to the norm of Arctic relations.

Iselin Németh Winther

I thought it would be to just lay the foundation of the Arctic geopolitics dynamics in the region. I thought it would be helpful to start with the geographical definition of the Arctic region, which is everything above the Arctic Circle. And this region has been, historically, has been looked at like this peripheral place in global politics, uncovered place, far away, a terra nullus in a way.

Like in the last decades, this region has started to attract more more attention and interest from also other external actors not being in the Arctic. And this increased attention has also kind of led to at the early 2000s kind of notions of and many will say a bit exaggerated notions about like a resource war or race happening in the Arctic or the Arctic being the place for like great power clashes going back to the definition, which states that everything about Arctic Circle is the Arctic region, that implies that all the landmass about Arctic Circle is the Arctic region and all the landmass and all the territory above the Arctic Circle is belonging to one of the Arctic eight states and there are no borders. I mean all the borders are settled within the region and there are no like dispute over any borders in the region, which means that there are kind of not that many sources to conflict within the region itself and the same goes for the water in the Arctic region, which is a large bulk of the waters within the Arctic region is under jurisdiction of one of the five Arctic littoral states and through the UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, which also states that a state can claim a EZ up to 200 nautical miles outside from their shores. And although there are some, not all the borders are settled within the region, in the ocean, most, there are kind of more borders settled within the Arctic region than in other regions in the world. And some of the borders that you would probably think is the hardest to settle like the one between Norway and Russia, was settled in 2007.

So what I'm trying to say is that the geopolitical landscape in the Arctic region has been quite stable, highly governed, and it has been a rule-based place where most of the Arctic states have been following international law.

David Andrews

While, as you've said, the key territorial questions in the Arctic are largely peaceable and settled, have you found that there's been any blowback from the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Has that affected the peaceability of the region at all?

Iselin Németh Winther

Ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Arctic states, and this is also an important dimension, the Arctic states has not only kind of supported the rule-based order in the region, but they have also kind of underscored and promote the notion as the Arctic as a peaceful place. this is, the Arctic states are kind of that's kind of been benefiting from the Arctic being stable and by promoting the narrative of the Arctic as a government place, they have also tried to kind of block out the influence from non-Arctic states in the region. So by saying like, this is a stable government place, we don't need like China to interfere or we don't need the EU to make rules for the Arctic region that kind of try to uphold their priority within region. And this is also coupled with that the Arctic states have historically tried to shelter the region from international events happening elsewhere in the world. So that was notable in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and Arctic cooperation and Arctic governance framework was kind of just continued continuing as business as usual in the aftermath of that annexation. With Russia attacking, with Russia's full scale attack on Ukraine, this has been impossible. So we saw this new dynamic in the Arctic region, which was kindly based on Russia and the other Arctic Western states together.

David Andrews

To focus particularly on Greenland at this point, it's obviously been in the news a lot recently, some of the announcements made by Donald Trump since becoming president once again, and members of his administration like Secretary of State Marco Rubio have stressed that the United States views Greenland as critical not just for its economic security, but in access to sea lanes to prevent Chinese presence in Greenland and sort of an incursion within I suppose what they would deem to be their sort of near region and in what's been talked about as a quote unquote America's first foreign policy. could you perhaps tell our listeners a little bit about what the strategic significance of Greenland is, whether historically or in the contemporary setting as well?

Iselin Németh Winther

Historically, Greenland has been, or the Arctic region also, and Greenland has been important in a strategic and military-wise sense. if you, this stems from, if you look at the map, like geographically, the American and the European continents are closest to each other in the Arctic. And this has made it historically strategic important.

A very important factor is that the Russian Arctic is very important for Russia in their defence and security policy. have a lot of their military capabilities deployed at the Kola Peninsula, which is in the Russian Arctic, and by the way, just a few miles from the Norwegian border.

And the reason all these capabilities being placed at the Kola Peninsula is, if you look at the map, Russia has very, actually very few access points to the Atlantic Ocean. And at the Kola Peninsula, they have ice-free harbors, which they can use. So at the Kola Peninsula, are deployed...

As I said, military capabilities, including nuclear capabilities and the Northern Fleet, which also includes nuclear armed submarines. So the historical concern for the US is that if Russia was to attack, would do a seaborne attack. And then the Russian has to go from the Kola Peninsula over mainland Norway. And to get to the American continent, they would have to go through the G-I-U-K gap, is the Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom gap, the waters between these islands, which makes Greenland a very important localization for North American defense. Greenland is also like the Western border of the North American continent, which makes it even more important in a North American defense lens. However, the last days...It seems like Trump and Putin has started to get along a little bit more. So if the Russian threat is still what the American concern is, it's a more open question now.

David Andrews

also pose this same question to Dr Heather Exner-Perot, the Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa and Managing Editor of the Arctic Yearbook.

Heather Exner-Pirot

You know, what's made it special in the past is location, know, location, location, location, which during the Cold War, when nuclear war was kind of the most existential threat, we did build up, you know, a series of stations, North warning systems to detect early on what we anticipated would be a Soviet missile attack on North America. And the Arctic was the shortest way, the fastest way for the Soviet Union to attack American targets and also a bit of a vulnerable flank because there wasn't much in the way to intercept things.

And so there is this, you know, a station and there is an American base actually in Danish called Thule, but it still has a U.S. presence there. And to my knowledge, the United States has not been denied, you know, anything that they wanted to put in that Greenland base. They did close their Icelandic base a few years ago you know, among some consternation with the Icelanders, but they kept the Greenland one. So mostly it was trying to detect early on the threats from the Soviets. Now in this latest iteration where Trump is talking seems really to be about critical minerals. You know, if you're an investor, you may not be as excited as Donald Trump about the critical mineral energy potential from Greenland, but we can get into that.

David Andrews

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's definitely not just in Greenland, but we've seen in recent days, Ukraine. That's a topic that President Trump has raised there as well. So clearly there's some strong economic interests and going back to his, I believe it was in his inaugural address or thereabouts, he spoke about saying that we as in the United States need Greenland for economic security. And then Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about how the Arctic is so critical for shipping lanes and concerns around that China might by fair means or foul establish a presence there and therefore impede their security. as you say that economic dimension seems to be a big focus of the conversation. Do they actually need Greenland to protect their shipping lanes or is that just, does that feel like bit of a rhetorical fig leaf?

Heather Exner-Pirot

No, it's a fig leaf and you know the Arctic is seen as exotic by a lot of people and people may have some strong impressions based on you know very superficial information but let me get into some of the weeds of it. First of all, you know we have an idea that climate change is opening up shipping lanes and making everything easier. Well here it is in February and I promise you no one is doing you know having an easy time shipping through the Arctic. The ice comes back.

The Earth tilts at 23 degrees. It's perfectly pitch black there at 90 degrees latitude right now. And the ice comes back every year, which means that it has to melt again every year. And so what we're talking about when we talk about shipping lanes and the Arctic opening is moving from, depending on where you are, maybe your two or three month window into a three or four month window. And I have to tell you for the economics of this, that still is not very, you know, a four-month shipping season is not much more appetizing than a three-month shipping season. And Greenland in particular, you know, we talk about sea routes in the Arctic. We're usually talking about the northern sea route, which goes over top of Russia. And they do obviously have a very significant icebreaker fleet. Several of them are nuclear icebreakers, and 80 % of their gas is there, and they have the largest gas reserves in the world. It is still not a great...

It is still not a great route and they still need ice breaking assistance and it's still very difficult and people get stuck in in November, that kind of thing. On the Canadian side, the one that you usually talk about is the Northwest Passage, which you would go, you know, past Alaska and towards the southern tip of Greenland. So there is no passage in Greenland. It's just open waters, you know, perfectly under the law of the sea. Anyone can go around Greenland outside of their 12 mile territorial zone.

But the Northwest Passage is a much worse shipping lane than the Northern Sea Route because you're going through all these islands through the archipelago and the ice, you know, sticks to it, it chokes up in it. It's very unpredictable. And so the only shipping we're really seeing there, you know, it's not container shipping passing through. It's usually what we call destinational shipping where there happens to be a mine.

And really there's two minds that I could tell you that we have in mind, you know, and that use the root seasonally when, you know, and instead, you know, in the winter they usually go a different way or they just stockpile until then. So the shipping lanes are not really opening up. And again, like I say, there will always be winter and the ice will always come back. So we're talking about an extension of a summer shipping season, not open waters year round.

On the other aspects, I just have to say that doing anything in the Arctic is harder, is more expensive. You don't have the benefit of infrastructure. Logistics are difficult. The conditions are terrible. There is no local labor force. And so doing any kind of mining in Greenland, in the Northern Territories in Canada, in Alaska is going to cost you more than doing it in just about any other jurisdiction in the world. And commodity prices have to be pretty high to justify that kind of investment.

And right now, commodity prices are not high enough.

David Andrews

We've had a conversation previously on the podcast about rare earth and critical minerals and, and those complicating factors of often it's not a question of there being enough of them, but it's how do you extract them in a sort of cost efficient way? And like you say, I'm sure that makes it even less cost efficient when you're in an isolated sort of the, the, the deep north of Canada or Greenland and it's, it's minus 60 Celsius or something like that. It's not going to make extraction particularly straightforward.

But I think you mentioned before that there's really not a lot of limitations on what the United States has been able to do in Greenland to this point. so from that, you might say, strategic perspective, could they not just pursue those objectives through a different agreement with Denmark or with NATO or with Greenland? Is there anything actually stopping them from pursuing a more expansive vision other than through this acquisition claim?

Heather Exner-Pirot

I don't see it. And even, you know, to your point of rare earths. And, you know, there's pretty good exploration in Greenland. It's mostly covered with an ice cap, as people who've, you know, looked at the map know. So we're really talking about the bits on the outside, which, however, makes it, you know, accessible to tidewater and to, you know, export shipping. And so there is one particularly good deposit that has some uranium and some rare earths.

So it's a good deposit. It's not the best deposit. know, Australia has rare earths, Canada has rare earths, United States has rare earths. So they are, as you say, they are not that rare. They're hard to process. And in that particular case of this deposit, you know, the last Greenlandic election was actually basically a referendum on it because many people were opposed to the uranium side of the mine and didn't want to see uranium mining. They're worried about the radioactivity and that kind of thing. And the party that was opposed to that mine actually won and they made a ban on uranium mining, which made the case, the economic case for the rare earths also very much weaker because you're not getting the economic benefit from uranium. So that, you know, that one good deposit that we all think about, I want to say, I know how to spell it, Kvannifeld, out of the Danish and the Greenlanders pronounce it. It is not going ahead. Now, again, if the United States just wanted to invest.

 

In a mine is actually an Australian headquarter company, by the way, that lost, you know, lost a lot of money on that. But if the United States just wants to invest in mining, know, Greenland is open for development. think, you know, I'll be on a Greenland, you know, panel in a week at a very large mining conference in Canada. They're trying to attract investment. But right now, mining accounts for a very small fraction of Greenland's economy, which is already a very small economy.

In fact,public sector, transfers from the Danes and fishing are far and away the largest sources of revenues for Greenland. So mining isn't a big part of their economy. There are no mines, know, starting that imminently, you could invest in it. The business case is, you know, average. But certainly if Donald Trump wanted to use American money to invest in Greenlandic rare earths and other things, he could. Now, if I was Alaskan, I might say, why aren't you investing this money in Alaska? Because they already have a corner of the Arctic, which is primarily underdeveloped, whereas it's hard to do mining production, which Alaska would love to attract more investment into mining. And so it's not as though these deposits are that rare. And there's lots in the United States that I'm sure would love to have more public sector support if they just wanted to start there.

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David Andrews

In my conversation with Iselin, she also identified rare earths and critical minerals as a fundamental aspect of renewed US interest in Greenland.

Iselin Németh Winther

Yeah, so think critical minerals are the main driver behind Trump's interest in Greenland. And you saw that already in 2018 and 2019 ish when he was he was claiming that he wanted to buy Greenland. And Greenland is rich in critical minerals. But this is also a dynamic which cannot be read into like Arctic specific dynamic.

This is like the search for critical minerals or these dynamics are a part of the broader US-China increasingly great power competition. So China has shown interest to exploit critical minerals at Greenland. Probably US or Trump's administration want to, if not secure the critical minerals at Greenland, at least kind of control them through in a way and also hinder China from exploiting critical minerals at Greenland. But then again, as I said, this is not Arctic specific. We saw just yesterday or the day before that Trump is including critical minerals in his deal with Ukraine. So this is more like a worldwide global geopolitical dynamics.

David Andrews

Heather, can I just return briefly to the North Sea route that you mentioned and those shipping considerations, because I think there are these sort of concepts like the North Sea route that you're often discussed as potential game changes and whether that's in this case, it's a sort of a trade or economic term, but it could also be things like uncrewed systems in the defence space that are seen as potentially dramatically changing the game from the fundamentals of what we're dealing with.

But like you say, it's not necessarily going to change things hugely. And it does open up some extra possibilities, but maybe it's not enormously different. But for countries who have an interest in this space, are there other initiatives like that that they're pursuing? Are there new things that they're doing in the region? Or is the North Sea route the big principal activity that's being pursued at this stage?

Heather Exner-Pirot

Well, mean, Russia is by far the largest Arctic player by almost any criteria. It is the largest. I think it's, you know, as I like to say, it's it's half the land. It's two thirds of the people and it's three quarters of the economic activity. And so when we're saying why does Russia invest and they have all their military bases, you know, and they're, know, their Arctic superpower, you know, Russia's Arctic contributes depending on the price of commodities, about 20 percent of its GDP.

Alaska is less than 1 % of American GDP. The Canadian territories are less than 1 % of our GDP. Greenland is less than 1 % of Danish GDP. And so it is just much more important to the Russians, to their economy, and many more people also. And so sometimes it's, know, if, you know, if Russia can do it, why can't we do it? And we talk about that in Canada with a lot of, you know, ice-covered ports and seaways and gas deposits, that kind of thing. Part of it is that, you know, Russia does have the best resource in the Arctic in terms of oil and gas. It's the reserves are of a higher quality and of every greater amount. And I think people think that the Arctic is full of oil and gas, and we're all waiting to extract it. That's not really the case. And I'll point out to you that Alaska's oil production peaked in 1989. And it's just been more economic to work again in Texas and the Shell revolution.

Far cheaper barrels in the continental United States than there is in Alaska. Same with Canada. If you're going to invest more in oil and gas, would be in our Montney Shale and in our oil sands. It's just a far cheaper barrel, much more economic than what we have in the Arctic. Norway has oil and gas production. Most of it is not classified as Arctic itself. It's further into the Norwegian Sea south of the Arctic. They have some more potential.

Arctic oil and gas production is projected to peak in 2025. So no one else's oil and gas is booming, but Russia has these great reserves, desperately wants it to get out because it's such an important part of its government revenue and of its exports, et cetera, its economy. So they have icebreakers. They've been using that again since the 1980s. It's not necessarily new. It's certainly not because of climate change. But a lot of what Russia was developing in the last 10 years was LNG. And Australians would know, you know, there wasn't much of an LNG market before 2015 and it kind of took off as a real global market. And there's lots of investment, lots of projects. Russia wanted to get in on it. Its main market was going to be, of course, Europe. And where Russia's natural gas reserves are situated is very close if you went west to ice-free waters, year-round ice-free waters. It's kind of where the warm barrence current ends.

If it now needs to shift to Asia, China in particular, now it has to go through very, very ice covered waters where it really needs ice breaking assistance and that adds cost. It adds time and it adds cost and it adds risk. And so Russia's intent on doing it, the sanctions have greatly harmed its ability to do it. It's first set of LNG icebreakers that got from South Korea because of sanctions it can't get more icebreakers from Korea again for LNG export. It's restricted its markets, it's restricted its investment. So even though Russia is doing it, I question, you know, the extent that it's profitable. And I think as, you know, a generalist investor, that wouldn't be the first place you would look. Russia is doing it with state funding because it needs to do it. But if you're just looking for a return on investment, Russian Arctic gas and oil would not be where most people would go.

David Andrews

This might be a particularly technological tangent, but you're speaking about icebreaker capability, and that obviously sounds like a pretty fundamental part of how to use these waters and these territories effectively. Are the United States and Canada and Denmark and others investing in that sort of technology to the same extent, or is that something that's really dominated by Russia because of their geography?

Heather Exner-Pirot

It's dominated by Russia because of the economics. That just because again, because Russia has more development, there's more of an economic demand and a need to acquire icebreaker services and people pay for it. And that's really a big part of their access to tidewater. know, Canada has much better tidewater, you know, to the Atlantic and to the Pacific than to the Arctic Oceans. And obviously that's even more true with the United States and they also have the Gulf of Mexico. So no one else needs to use the Arctic Ocean to the extent that Russia does.

And so they've, you know, procured and have become very good at icebreakers. You can't deny they're the best in the world at icebreakers. Now from a security perspective, this gets a little tricky because Russia does have capabilities that we simply don't have in the West. you know, obviously the United States still has the world's most exquisite military. There's a ton of things they can do. But they can't get into these difficult places as easily as Russia can in very ice covered thick thick thickly ice covered waters. Canada has been getting better. think Canada's probably number two at icebreaker capability. Again, the bulk of our ice breaking capabilities in the Great Lakes region, you know, where you think between Chicago and Toronto and Michigan, because again, that's where the that's where the economic activity is. That's where that is incented to keep those waters clear in the winter so we can continue trade through the Great Lakes in these winter months. There isn't much economic desire for it in the Arctic that's really becomes just research based and security based. Canada has developed what we call the Arctic and offshore patrol ships, which are naval, not Coast Guard. And they can go into, you know, I think first year ice, so fairly thin ice, but they can get into a lot of places. And we are building two heavy ice, new Coast Guard heavy ice breakers, you know, that should come into service around 2030, 2031. And we entered into what we call an ice packed with Finland and United States and Canada just a few months ago before Donald Trump was the president. So we'll see what happens with it now. Finland is also excellent icebreakers. Why is that? Because they need it for their own, you know, for their own sea. So again, not for the Arctic, but for, you know, basically ice covered seas. So we're trying to work with the United States if they're still interested in the coming months to use, you know, Finnish, Finnish know, knowledge, engineering, design, Canadian shipbuilding expertise that we're building up now in American needs.

David Andrews

If we could just stick with Canada for a moment. I think we've all seen some of the disputes going on at the moment between Canada and the United States following the threatened sanctions and just the conduct of President Trump particularly. I think one question which maybe people don't ask enough is what would a American Greenland mean for Canadian security, be that physical or economic, because I mean, it's the largest non-continental island in the world. It's sort of off the coast of Canada and the United States. And I'm sure to some degree would physically isolate Canada on the Atlantic side. And particularly when maybe there's not a lot of trust in that relationship right now. I imagine that would be a concern. Is that fair or is that maybe a bit overblown?

Heather Exner-Pirot

On the one hand, you know, I hesitate to speculate on American, you know, ownership and occupation of Greenland because I think our Danish allies, they are our NATO allies. know, mean, you know, Article 5 would be invoked and we would fight for Greenland to remain Danish or when the Greenlanders choose to become independent. And they've been working since 1979 incrementally to develop greater self-determination on the way to independence and I think one day they will achieve it. And so, you know, there's no situation where Canada would sit back and allow, you know, do nothing if the United States decided to occupy, I don't know, invade Greenland and it's even hard to imagine.

 

Um, that being said, you know, in a hypothetical universe, you know, where Trumpism kind of goes awry, I, again, Canada has quite limited economic activity in the Arctic. And so, you know, where the, Russian fear or the Russian paranoia is often that we would Stein, you know, we would block their, their, you know, their, mining shipments or their Arctic, um, shipments or their LNG shipments. There's very little to block in Canada and most of it can easily make it to open, know, move from Canadian territorial waters to open water. And so we don't need to use Greenlandic internal waters to get our limited product out or to navigate freely in our own waters. In the context is almost, don't know, probably Australians don't appreciate the extent to which Canadian and American forces collaborate in the Arctic and on continental fence.

And we actually we do joint operations together still, you know, even recently and have joint bases and it's through NORAD, the North American Aeronautical Defense. God, I probably got that wrong. But anyways, you know, where we work so closely where you have an American commander and a Canadian deputy commander and where we do, you know, we do these patrols jointly.

When a Russian aircraft comes into Alaskan airspace, Canadians are beside the Americans on these patrols. The Chinese weather balloon comes in. The entire operation was very closely coordinated in NORAD between Canadian and Americans. I don't know if there's another defence alliance that is as close as Canada and the United States, particularly in the Arctic.

Heather Exner-Pirot

And so it is hard to imagine that this would go from our closest ally, you know, to an adversarial relationship in terms of Greenland. mean, you know, I mean, they have almost as much, you know, it just it would boggle the mind to think that that would that that would be a threat to Canadian sovereignty. Again, you know, there's an old joke

you know, the Canadian general said, if someone were to invade the Canadian Arctic, my first job would be to rescue them. And from a military operational perspective, logistical, there is nothing to take. There is nothing to invade. within months, you know, I mean, within days, you would be having logistical problems and you'd be a sitting duck and you'd have no energy and you'd freeze to death and you'd have no food. And it's just almost, you know, almost impossible to think of someone invading and conquering anything in the Arctic.

So even the Americans, you know, with no icebreaker fleet would find it very difficult, even if they did have, I mean, they already have a tow hold in Greenland, but if they wanted to use it for nefarious purposes.

David Andrews

Mindful of Trump's threat of targeting Denmark with punitive measures should they oppose his ambitions for annexing Greenland, I also asked Islund about the European response thus far.

Iselin Németh Winther

I don't think Trump's statement on Greenland specific has the most impact on the Arctic kind of geopolitical landscape. I think it's like Trump's foreign policy overall. So for example, and this has implications for first and foremost, the liberal world order, which almost all the Arctic states are supporting.

And second, it has huge implications for America's historical allies like Canada and Europe. like, mean, that's almost all the Arctic states. so you could see already in Europe that the Arctic or the European states are trying to to stand strong together. And this has kind of sparked or is probably going to spark EU debate within the European states which are not part of EU. And this applies to Iceland and Norway, are Arctic states, and they are one of the few European states which are not a part of the EU. So this could have ripple effects into the Arctic political landscape if all the European Arctic states are to become EU members. This will perhaps have an impact on both the government mechanisms in the region as well as the security constellations.

David Andrews

Heather, one point you touched on that I think it's important we discuss a bit more as well is that question of indigenous rights, of the rights of the Greenlandic population and their self-determination. Because as you say, that's something that they've actually pursued before this. This hasn't brought on the interest in self-determination. That's existed for number of years, and it's been a long running part of their politics. And I understand that they've actually now got a general election coming up on the 11th of March, so not too long away now, and you'd imagine that would have some sort of shape on the future of where they're heading. likewise, the Danish Crown has in fact changed their official crest to include a specific reference both to Greenland and the Faroe Islands. So there's obviously a lot of these different sort of political dimensions going on, but am I correct in understanding that actually most of the population of Greenland are actually indigenous, You're not sort of imagining Danish people in Greenland, they're indigenous Greenlandic people.

Heather Exner-Pirot

Yes, last time I checked I think it was 85 % Inuit and 15 % know Danish, last European or immigrant and so it's still significantly Inuit and it has been explained to me and I've been there and I've observed that you know Greenland may be the first post-colonial nation in the sense that they do identify as Greenlandic people you know everyone there not just the 85 % Inuit but all the people that live there identify as Greenlandic that's their nation obviously, they have very close ties to, for example, Canadian Inuit, know, Alaskan Inuit, even Russian Inuit as part of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. And so very, you know, very proudly an Indigenous nation, but a Greenlandic. And so in 1979, and this was a period of a lot of civil rights movements and Indigenous self-determination movements, you know, in the 60s and 70s, led in Greenland to the establishment of Home Rule.

Again, where they became less a colony and more of a self-governing nation on some aspects. In 2009, that became self-rule and they took over just about everything except for, for example, monetary policy, security, defense, very high level state functions. But to this day, they get about half of their revenue, their budget, their government revenues from Denmark.

And so the challenge to full independence has always been how will they make up that other 50 % of the budget that they rely on Denmark for now. The only answer is resource extraction. And in the last commodities boom, I'll call it, there was great interest. know, oil for a brief time was $147 a barrel. There was a lot of people looking in the Arctic who wouldn't otherwise look. And there was exploration off the coast of Greenland. People were hopeful, but it didn't amount to much.

And then, you know, critical minerals would be your other option. Again, it has not amounted to much. And this current Greenlandic government that wants to achieve independence, you know, has has banned, you know, the greatest or most promising deposit they have. So it will be hard for Greenland to become independent if they don't do more resource development that conflicts with some other indigenous values and goals. And we'll see if and when they can find some balance between those two.

David Andrews

I think one of the key points there that you've stressed is that independence is their goal, not joining another country, not establishing some sort of partnership with someone else. And we've even seen people in the Australian press saying, well, they should join America. It'll be more profitable for them. They'll be part of a bigger economy. think they're missing the point that actually, is that what the people want? And from what you're saying, it very much isn't what the people agree on.

Heather Exner-Pirot

I'm so glad you brought this up because it really is it's insulting. You know, and I've studied this for a long time and I'm, you know, you know, I'm white myself, European, but I, you know, people are only talking this way because it is so easy for them to diminish the Greenlandic people as a viable nation of themselves. You know, and it's not even, you know, it's not even that Greenland would become a state. They would just become, you know, a territory, you know, with no representation in Congress and that kind of a thing. And the idea that a people could be bought and that's the language that's being used that they're going to buy Greenland. They're going to make a deal with Denmark, which in their minds is, guess, a legitimate state and buy Greenland, which I guess in their mind is a piece of property and not a nation filled with people. you know, even jokes about it. And I've seen jokes on the progressive left side also, you know, I feel are very insulting.

And you have to appreciate how nerve-wracking this is, you know, maybe from a distance. And I guess, you know, from Canada, it's not from a distance either. It's nerve-wracking for us. Annexing us, we're also in the same boat. But Greenland is a small nation and Denmark is, you know, a relatively small state and they don't have anywhere near the capability that even Canada has. And this is a real threat to their sovereignty. So it's scary for them, you know, and when I've talked to some Danes, you know, this is the behind the biggest foreign policy crisis that they've experienced in the past century. And and again, insulting for Greenlandic people. know, I don't I don't think we should, you know, it would reflect very poorly on any of us who just, you know, wipe us away and don't think about really, you know, what this represents.

David Andrews

We've spoken quite a bit about rare earth and critical minerals so far, and resource exploration, but there's one quite recent occurrence that I wanted to bring up, which is at the, let's say, negotiations between the United States and Russia in Saudi Arabia about the war that Russia started with Ukraine. One of the things that's come out only in the last day or two at point of recording is the possibility of restarting joint resource exploration between the United States and Russia in the Arctic. Was that a surprise to you?

Heather Exner-Pirot

Yes, I mean, everything that's happened in last six week's has been a surprise to me. You

know, it’s surprising that shocking that kind of a thing. But, but yes, that one was surprising to me that for the for many reasons, but I want to say number one, you know, what I truly believe Trump did want to accomplish, you know, kind of a north star of what he wanted to accomplish was energy dominance. That was a theme in Trump 1.0 and it was a theme throughout his campaign. And it was consistent and on brand, I think with Republicans and the conservative base and movement and everything.

And for Trump to go around and ask Saudi Arabia to increase production, to ask OPEC to increase production, talk about Russia removing sanctions or increasing production there, all of that is a threat to Texas. And that's why I can't understand why the American oil and gas sector, who are feeling pressure now as shale gets more expensive, are tolerating their president trying to improve the market demand for their competitors. So that's very surprising. the second thing, you know, there's an article in the Moscow Times. So that's obviously state, you know, sponsored publication. It's obviously the, you know, the official Moscow Kremlin line that they do want American investment back into the Arctic. And it is true that there were several you know, multinationals, Exxon was certainly among them. I think Shell, Total, who had investments in Russia, you know, and lost their shirts kind of when they had to pull out after Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia then turned their attention to China, both as an investor and a buyer. And there was, there was and is fear, you know, that, you know, Russia and China are aligning, particularly in the Arctic. And that's changing the balance of power in the Arctic. And that's threatening.

So what I get most out of the secret meeting two days ago, not so secret, they're telling us everything that happened in it, is that Russia and China, the relationship is not that good because Russia's desperately, this must be desperate move to want to again, invite American companies back in and it can't do it on its own. It doesn't have the markets on its own, doesn't have the investment on its own, doesn't have the technical skills on its own.

So they're asking President Trump, What would be the path for American companies to invest again? So that is a very good tell I think that's very good information for us to consider, you know how this multi-polarity is is shaking out but the last thing I'll say is Trump, you know, I've heard this before that Trump has you know, he It is easier for him to control Iranian oil and production than American oil and production Because American oil production rises and falls on the price of oil and what shareholders and what Wall Street wants to see and that kind of a thing. He can't make American producers produce at a loss and he certainly cannot make them invest in Russia. And I think from a corporate point of view, no one is going to be wanting to be the first to get back into the Russian oil and gas game in these very geopolitically trying times.

David Andrews

this has been a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation across a part of the world that many in Australia don't know much about yet is highly topical at the moment and I and I'm sure our listeners have undoubtedly learned a great deal from today's guests. So Heather Exnipereau, Islund Namath-Winther, thank you so much for being on the National Security Podcast.

Heather Exner-Pirot

Thanks for having me.

Iselin Németh Winther

Thanks.

National Security Podcast

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