“We did it earlier than, we are able to do it once more,” stated Daniel Fried, a former senior State Division official who labored on Soviet points within the Nineteen Eighties.
Whether or not Trump understands this historical past has been a thriller as European leaders attempt to persuade him to drop his insistence on proudly owning the island. Trump stated Wednesday {that a} “framework” for a deal had been reached, however the particulars remained murky.
In an period earlier than army air energy, earlier than Trump was even born, US army planners gave Greenland little thought. However when Germany invaded and occupied Denmark in 1940, they realised that the island, then a Danish colony sparsely populated by primarily Inuit individuals, was susceptible to Nazi management.
With airfields perilously near the US’ east coast, necessary mineral reserves and a really perfect location to trace climate that formed battle situations in Europe, Greenland’s defence was thought-about important to the US. It was an concept that will persist for many years earlier than fading briefly after the Chilly Conflict and returning with a vengeance within the Trump period.
Denmark’s king had welcomed the American drive and permitted a written settlement granting the broad army latitude on the island, so long as a risk existed, with out giving up any Danish sovereignty. With Germany vanquished and the struggle over, nevertheless, his nation was able to bid the Individuals farewell. “Danish public opinion was anticipating a return to full management of Greenland,” defined a examine of the matter by the Danish Institute of Worldwide Affairs.
Washington had different concepts. The arrival of long-range bombers had created a brand new sense of vulnerability simply because the Soviet Union was rising as a brand new risk to the US. Greenland occurred to lie alongside probably the most direct flight path to the Jap United States from Russia.
“Greenland’s 800,000 sq. miles make it the world’s largest island and stationary plane service,” Time journal wrote in January 1947. It “could be invaluable, in both standard or push-button struggle, as an advance radar outpost, and a ahead place for future rocket-launching websites.
The Individuals had no intention of leaving.
The unhealthy information was delivered in December 1946 by US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes. Throughout a gathering on the Waldorf Astoria lodge in New York, Byrnes defined to his Danish counterpart, Gustav Rasmussen, that Greenland had change into “important to the defence of the US”.
Whereas the US army’s presence could possibly be prolonged, Byrnes stated, he had a greater concept: Denmark ought to merely promote Greenland to the US.
The thought “appeared to come back as a shock” to Rasmussen, who precisely predicted that his Authorities would reject the concept, in line with one other State Division memo. However not like the present blowup, the matter was dealt with “quietly” by each side, famous Heather Conley, a nonresident senior fellow on the American Enterprise Institute who specialises within the Arctic.
The Truman administration didn’t push, partly for worry that Moscow would declare that the US had stolen land from a European ally. Because the Soviet risk grew extra vivid in Europe, Denmark grew to become extra keen to let US troops keep in Greenland.
In 1951, the US and Denmark reached an settlement “uniting their efforts for collective defence” beneath the auspices of the newly fashioned North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Whereas stressing Denmark’s continued sovereignty over the island, the settlement granted the US broad freedom to “assemble, set up, keep and function services and gear” and to “station and home personnel,” with different rights associated to army exercise. That included deepening harbours and even sustaining postal services.
The settlement didn’t embody an expiration date, and Denmark has by no means asserted one.
One of many settlement’s few limitations was to delineate particular “defence areas” inside which the US might function.
With the deal in hand, and freshly alarmed by a Soviet-backed communist offensive in Korea, the US army rapidly went to work. In a secret crash mission, army engineers working across the clock in 24-hour Arctic daylight constructed a serious air base at Thule in northwest Greenland. Operated by 1000’s of US personnel, the bottom’s 10,000-foot runway would function a launching level for strategic bombers and spy planes.
Greater than a dozen army bases and radar and climate monitoring stations ultimately opened throughout the island.
A 378-metre tower was erected at Thule for long-wave transmissions to japanese Canada. In 1959, the US began Undertaking Ice Worm, one other secret endeavour that envisioned an enormous advanced of bunkers, dozens of ft underground, meant to deal with nuclear missiles that might survive a Soviet first strike. (The mission was deemed unfeasible and deserted after a number of years.)
And as missile know-how improved, the US established extra techniques meant to offer early warning for a Soviet assault. Whereas they had been thought-about invaluable, the techniques had been removed from foolproof: In October 1960, one US radar system detected an enormous Soviet missile launch with close to certainty. It turned out that the system had noticed the moon rising over Norway.
Denmark raised few objections, happy that its sovereignty over Greenland remained protected. To underscore the purpose, a Danish flag flew alongside the American one at Thule.
The association was examined in January 1968, when a US B-52 bomber carrying 4 hydrogen bombs crashed whereas attempting to make an emergency touchdown at Thule. The bomber had been a part of an “airborne alert” programme run by the US Strategic Air Command, which saved a number of nuclear-armed bombers airborne 24 hours a day.
The bombs had been incinerated on affect in standard explosions, however left radioactive traces even after an arduous clean-up. Some Danish politicians expressed outrage that the US had introduced nuclear weapons to the island, though US officers insisted that such weapons had been implicitly lined by the 1951 settlement.
On the peak of the US’ army presence in Greenland throughout the Chilly Conflict, some 10,000 US personnel had been stationed on the island. However after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the price of a big footprint on an Arctic island made little sense.
Most US installations on Greenland had been closed over the subsequent decade, with US exercise consolidating at Thule, whose identify was modified in 2023 to Pituffik in an acknowledgment of a former Inuit settlement there. It’s now a US Area Pressure base, staffed by about 150 individuals who handle early warning radar and satellite tv for pc communications.
Trump argues that Greenland is as soon as once more important to US safety, and plenty of nationwide safety specialists agree. They level to rising Arctic competitors with Russia and China over pure sources and transport lanes as melting ice reshapes the area. Trump additionally says that Greenland is essential to the bold “Golden Dome” missile defence system he hopes to construct within the coming years.
However Trump has by no means made clear why he should management Greenland to serve these wants.
Conley of the American Enterprise Institute stated {that a} answer, if there have been one, may mirror the occasions of the early Chilly Conflict. Having been denied possession of the island, Trump seems to be contemplating an enhanced US army presence on Greenland that’s a part of a brand new Nato mission to defend the island. “That’s the proper strategy,” she stated.
Fried agreed, however stated he wished the method might have performed out quietly, the way in which it did practically a century in the past.
“Trump might have achieved this with out all of the drama,” he stated.
This text initially appeared in The New York Instances.
Written by: Michael Crowley
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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