Greenlandic Inuit

Greenland's parliament has approved a landmark defense agreement with the United States and Denmark, bringing an expanded American military presence in the Arctic closer to reality.

The agreement would permit two additional defense areas at Narsarsuak and Mestersvig, while preserving Danish sovereignty and Greenlanders' right to self-determination.

However, opposition politicians have questioned whether the arrangement will deliver sufficient economic benefits to local communities.

Attention now turns to Denmark, where lawmakers are scheduled to begin deliberations on the 12th of November, ahead of a planned vote on the 19th.

As a kind of looting exercise? Yes.

yes think of think it hasn't even been a year since davos right but and and apparently they've signed some kind of deal so that we will not be you know looting it with our military but uh think of greenland right at davos he threatened to take greenland by force essentially from a nato ally And, you know, whatever else Greenlanders think of Denmark, I don't think they wanted to allow the United States to take them over in that way.

So, yes, I do think he sees foreign policy in imperialistic, distractive terms.

I will say I'm not so sure that Rubio is humiliated by being absent.

It has been a Cold War security, surveillance, and military outpost since the 1960s.

And there is a fear, there has been a fear, in defense circles, both in the US and Europe, that if the Greenlanders declare independence from the Danes, which they may do in the 2030s at some point, what would that mean for NATO security, for North Atlantic security? Would you then potentially see a Chinese company coming in and saying, hey, we'll build all your infrastructure if you give us all your mineral rights.

And then suddenly that becomes really quite an important geostrategic issue.

So that's just a sampling of what we're looking at up there.

It was Greenland.

In the 70s, the Greenlanders voted to have their own vote on whether to stay in the EU, and they voted quite overwhelmingly to leave.

I think maybe a few people have forgotten this, but during Trump's first term, he initially talked about acquiring Finland and referred to it as essentially just a big real estate deal.

But Danish Prime Minister Colbert of Frederiksen, who had just taken office in an interview, asked about this, called the idea absurd.

There were explosives brought to Greenland to be able to blow up, well, Greenland's own airstrips, so as to make it more difficult for Americans to make landfall.

It was a real threat and a real worry.

A real fear amongst Greenlanders and Greenlandic children who had trouble sleeping at night because they did not know what kind of world they were going to wake up to.

And again, this is between two NATO allies.

But the point is that Greenland is a critical outpost.

And One of the reasons that defense hawks and folks in the security community on both sides of the aisle have been concerned about the future of Greenland is that Greenlanders have said that they may want to declare independence from Denmark in the 2030s.

Now, if that happens, you could see a bit of a free-for-all where, say, the Chinese could come in and say, well, you know what? We're happy, Greenlanders, to build out your infrastructure, to provide you with health care in exchange for all your rare earth minerals or mining rights, natural gas rights.

That's the sort of thing that the US wants to get out ahead of.

And so I do think raising the topic as an issue, making it clear that there is a strategic value to this island and having soft power influence is the way to go.

His top priority now was for his team to attempt to beat its own record for reaching the furthest northern latitude which they had set the year before.

So in late March 1883, Lieutenant James Lockwood, Sergeant David Brainerd, and Greenlandic Inuit sled driver Thorlup Christensen headed out, traveling over land and ice by dogsled.

They were the same team who had broken the record for farthest north the previous year.

and at first it seemed certain that they would succeed again.

to make me happy.

We got Greenlanders worth trillions of dollars.

And so

that's about all I can take.

Oh, there are raw earth elements in Greenland and we should protect them that are ours or not.

They are Greenlanders and then everybody talks about it.

But everybody talks about it in the media because Donald Trump make a real important issue of that.

And it has not been made an important issue by European governments before.