Chilling times: We have to talk about Greenland …
All of a sudden Donald Trump wants Greenland and Elizabeth Buchanan’s new book offers a timely explanation of the history of this otherworldly land.
We live in an era when real-estate salespeople are regarded with a wariness once reserved for snake-oil vendors.
It’s fair to presume that most people, on hearing the 45th and 47th US president threaten to take over Greenland, dismissed his words as just another kite-flying exercise in distraction to whet the insatiable appetites of his MAGA acolytes.
But, as things stand nine months into his second term, they would have been wise to remember that Donald Trump and his father were both dominant players in the world’s richest property market.
The US Geological Survey has estimated that the area off the island’s east coast contains 31 billion “barrels of oil equivalent” with perhaps half as much off the west coast. With a barrel of Brent crude fetching about A$100 these days, 47 billion barrels is worth almost A$5 trillion, roughly twice Australia’s gross domestic product. So when the gerontocrat that Democrats love to hate says, “Drill, baby, drill”, as he so often does, we should be sitting up and paying attention.
this book, which ranges far and wide into Viking history and modern geopolitics, always comes back to location, location, location
In this her third book, Australian defence strategist Dr Elizabeth Buchanan weaves a spellbinding tale that is, in essence, a real-estate thriller based on a battle to possess an island the size of Western Australia (albeit one that bulks as large as Europe on a world map).
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With Greenland possessed of rare earth minerals, the fight for which could spark outright global conflict at any tick of the Doomsday Clock, this book, which ranges far and wide into Viking history and modern geopolitics, always comes back to location, location, location.
Towards the end of its 180 pages, Buchanan lays out scenarios for Greenland’s future, ranging from American annexation to accelerated steps towards sovereignty with or without Copenhagen’s approval. Her expertise as a defence strategist is in constant view, but sometimes, it ought to be said, her political understanding leaves something to be desired.
Asserting that if Greenland became independent, followed by the Faroe Islands, “the Kingdom of Denmark would cease to exist” is just wrong. Imperial Britain granted independence to dozens of colonies in the past century, but the United Kingdom remains intact.
Compelling as her subject matter is, attentive readers will find reason to question whether, as the author protests, she has “no horse in this race”. As the co-founder of a “polar warfare programme at West Point’s Modern War Institute” (to quote the back-cover blurb), her professional reputation would doubtless be burnished if, in the event of conflict, her plans were picked up by the Pentagon.
That said, Buchanan grounds her views – which are decidedly sympathetic to President Trump’s designs on the icy landmass – on the bedrock of indisputable facts. Most of us will not have been aware that China is increasingly active in the Arctic, committing as early as 2018 to invest in the exploitation of Greenland’s under-the-tundra riches.
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While on solid ground when reviewing the history of European contact, which began with Norseman Erik the Red’s landfall in 982 AD, her interpretation of Great Power plays in the 20th and 21st centuries is open to question.
In her chapter on Greenland’s pivotal contribution to the Western alliance during the Cold War – which again is laudably comprehensive – Buchanan is at pains to suggest that Greenlanders themselves were better off as a result. “It was the little things – pre-war, the seal-oil lamp was a fixture … but the advent of war and of US forces ushered in kerosene lamps and, later, electricity for Greenland,” she writes.
Material progress is a familiar justification deployed by an occupying power: It was long used to defend White Australia’s treatment of the Aboriginal population; and, more recently, by China’s Communist Party in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Accommodative as the author is of Trump’s tactics, she is unequivocally clear-eyed about Denmark’s hypocrisy in spruiking the right of Greenland to independence while it slow-walks the long path to Independence Day.
Where Buchanan’s narrative performs a genuine public service is in drawing our attention to the fact that non-Arctic states – among them China and members of the European Union – are jostling for a bigger stake in the future of the circumpolar zone, where almost none of their citizens lives.
In an analogy sure to strike home, she warns: “Excessive non-Arctic interest in the small Arctic region has the potential to cause problems. Think: parents are away and you throw a house party, but the invitation goes viral. Logistical nightmare, maybe. Security problem, absolutely.”
Militaria book buffs who feel a frisson of excitement at mere sabre-rattling are sure to find this provocative title a veritable thriller – or perhaps that should be chiller.
So You Want To Own Greenland? by Elizabeth Buchanan, NewSouth Books, $34.99.