September 25, 2025 • 49 mins
For some, Greenland might have only entered their consciousness when US President Trump offered to buy it. But there’s much more to the story, even beyond its history with the United States.
In today’s episode, Liz Buchanan gives Stop the World listeners a useful crash course on Greenland, from the mysterious disappearance of the Vikings in the 1400s, to Greenland’s pivotal role in World War II and the Cold War, and its continued – and increasing – strategic importance today.
Liz covers everything from Arctic shipping routes and how they impact Australia despite our geographical distance, Greenland’s ideal positioning for prospective polar space launches, to the Cold War's “Project Iceworm”, a US-built underground ice city complete with a barber shop and bowling alley.
As Liz explains, Greenland is far from an Arctic afterthought, and if you’ve only ever considered it as a desolate blob on top of the Mercator map, this episode will be sure to change that.
Images used in this episode are credited to So You Want to Own Greenland? Lessons from the Vikings to Trump by Elizabeth Buchanan.
Find Elizabeth’s book here https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/so-you-want-to-own-greenland/.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Stop the world. Welcome to Stop the World, the
Aspy Podcast. I'm Olivia Nelson.
And I'm David Rowe. Now, Dave, to be honest, how
much did you know about Greenland before Donald Trump
talked about taking it over? Fair question.
I knew my dad worked there as a summer job doing geological
mapping in the late 1960s. I knew that the Makata map,
(00:24):
which is the one that turns the three dimensional globe into A2
dimensional flat map, enlarges everything close to the polls,
including Green Lane. So it's actually smaller than it
looks on a McKay to map. Beyond that, bugger all.
I have to say I'm about the same, or maybe even less, but
here we are having recorded a whole episode on it because it
turns out there's an amazing history that explains what
(00:44):
seemed a pretty out there proposal from the US President.
And Dave, you asked me to inserta Viking joke here, but I got
nothing. I know right?
I I went looking online for Viking jokes and there aren't
any. There are at least no good ones.
The tireless research efforts tostop the world podcast no stone
left on thanks we go to concerned any who.
So this week we've got Aspy senior resident fellow doctor
(01:06):
Elizabeth Buchanan. She's joining you for a
conversation on Greenland, a topic she delves into in her
book. So you want to earn Greenland
lessons from lessons from the Vikings to Trump.
Yeah, it's a great crash course on the island.
It's history, including the mysterious disappearance of the
Vikings in the 1400s, it's role in the world, the two world
wars, plus the Cold War. And also, of course, it's in
(01:28):
importance today. You covered a lot of ground in
this chat, Dave. Some might say you dived deep
Hundreds of years of history, Arctic shipping routes, space
and prospects for polar launch. Liz also points out that the US
interest in Greenland is really not new, and she tells you about
the mysterious Project Ice firm.It's a really fascinating one.
It describes a an underground ice city built by the US, which
(01:48):
had a Barber shop, a bowling alley.
It was powered by a nuclear reactor.
We still don't know the full details of what it was used for.
It was all classified, and it's come out in dribs and drabs.
But it's, yeah, it's a really fascinating story.
Amazing stuff. I learned a lot this episode,
not just on the history of Greenland and Denmark too, but
the strategic importance. It's really importance to space
(02:09):
and the history, increasing strategic competition and
demographic challenges Greenlandfaces.
Yep, no, it was a cracker. And I thoroughly recommend the
chat and also, of course, that listeners grab.
I have a copy of Liz's book. Let's hear from Liz.
Congratulations on the new book.Thanks for coming on Stop the
World. Thank you for having me.
So I had given, I confess, very little thought to Greenland
(02:32):
until Trump declared that he wanted it.
I suspect I wasn't Robinson Crusoe there, but now I realise
I was missing a cracking yarn the entire time, not studying
the history, or at least gettingmy head around Greenland.
You obviously weren't suffering from the same problems.
So you've written this book. Just tell me about why you wrote
the book. And give us a sense of what
would an average reader take away from it?
(02:55):
What value are they going to getabout their understanding of
Greenland? It's probably the nerdiest story
as to why I wrote the book, but it starts with starting a PhD.
So my PhD is in Russian Arctic warfare, So in the early stages
of studying for that, I had to understand all of the Arctic
stakeholders, all of their foreign policy interests and I
guess all their dirty laundry. So, you know, I've got a nice
(03:15):
little bit of compromise on all Arctic stakeholders.
And the one that was there for the Danes was obviously its
relationship with Greenland, which it uses to make itself an
Arctic nation, so gets its seat at the table when it comes to
the Arctic. So I guess you could say I was
gleeful that I had an opportunity to kind of unbox all
these really useless facts that had been stored away after years
(03:38):
of study. So that was the first kind of
reason I wrote the book. And second of all, I was driven
by a real sense of, I guess, frustration at how disingenuous
the discussion about Greenland really was.
It was framed in a kind of anti Trump narrative, which for me
(03:58):
was really interesting because the relationship between the US
and Greenland was, you know, decades if not centuries longer
than the Trump relationship. So I yeah, I kind of wanted a
bit of a fact telling. Book great right which?
Is what I've end up with. So, so you must have been saying
thank you, Donald, for putting Greenland in the newspaper,
because now I can actually, I can use all of this.
(04:19):
Information, I think I'd alreadyinked the contract for the book
and then he went and did the state Union address in which he
actually even called out the Greenlanders.
So I've missed the chance to putan extra zero or two on my on
your contract. Yes, right.
All right, we'll, we'll, we'll get to the, the current
strategic logic of the whole thing, but let's, let's whiz
through the relevant history because the history really is
(04:39):
important here. And as you say, there's a,
there's a lot of back story thatthat most people don't
appreciate first. I mean, most people will know
that Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Explain how that came about first.
So without going back to 5000 BC.
Yeah, I was like, do we have farback?
Do you want to go, Dave? So let's go back Treaty of Keel
(05:02):
days. So 1814 is when we're starting
with the Kingdom of Denmark. So before that it was the
Kingdom of Denmark, Norway. So they were together and
Greenland, Faroe Islands, they actually set under Norway.
So there was a huge kind of shift around on the on the chess
board of pieces when you had theTreaty of Kiel, end of the
Napoleonic Wars and you had, youknow, Sweden come out, Kingdom
(05:26):
of Norway, Kingdom of Denmark. So the relationship has been
fraught for the Greenlandic people.
I think, you know, since its inception, it's always belonged
to someone else in a sort of broader strategic sense.
But the destiny for the Greenland people has always been
(05:47):
independence. It's just a matter of how they
get there these days. Since 2023 when they inked their
own constitution or draught constitution.
Sorry, it's a case of not when. Yep.
Just how? Right.
So, so there are indigenous Inuit, yeah.
From Greenland. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(06:08):
Vikings at some point inhabited it, and then in sometime in the
1800s, it became, you know, formerly part of Denmark.
Yeah, it came into a Kingdom, right?
Came into a realm. And then we had the kind of
broader wave of sort of, I don'twant to say Anglesea, but we had
the broader wave of the Europeanreach come to being.
(06:31):
But what's really interesting aswell about Greenland is if
Greenland itself wasn't discovered, right?
And this is the Vikings part of my book that I talk about.
Eric the Red. Yep.
Who was sent for murder into exile there, killed his
neighbour. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, various neighbours
apparently, right. It depends on, you know, what
part of the North stories. You believe a dispute over a
(06:52):
fence or something like that? About a number of different
neighbourly disputes. Yes, yes, yes.
Had his son Leaf there in Greenland and when he was old
enough to, you know, set sail, he actually discovered what's
today the North American continent.
So in America they actually havean October.
The, the, you have to Fact Checkme.
October, the 9th or the 10th is the Leif Ericsson Day.
It's a national holiday in the US.
(07:13):
Is that right? Yes, pre Columbus I.
Know Columbus Day, but? Pre Columbus, I didn't know
there was a leaf. Day.
It's a leaf. It's the Norsk, you know, day.
So Greenland, what I'm saying isthrough the book I I highlight
sort of three different vignettes, the relationship that
Greenland has always had to the US and to the North American
continent. All right, well, let's get on to
that. Because I mean, when, when Trump
declared that he wanted it, it felt more than random.
(07:37):
It felt, I mean, unnecessarily provocative.
I mean, as, as, as can be the case.
I mean, he, he, I think the, thestate of the union you
mentioned, he said he'd get it one way or another.
Now it turns out that US interest and involvement goes
back centuries, and there's nothing random about it at.
All. Not at 2 in the Cold War, but
(07:57):
even before that. Just tell us the back story
there. So buying or owning or taking
Greenland has been kind of a preoccupation for the US state
since 18, 46 or so. We had, you know, the what we
call the Seward Folly, which wasPresident Lincoln's Secretary of
State basically looked at a map and said, OK, our strategic
(08:19):
interests are going to lie out there on our back doorstep with
that huge island, Greenland, right?
So the political military dimension of Greenland for the
US absolutely came about in World War 2.
And that's where I think most people's point of history comes
into play when they want to understand Greenland's
(08:42):
significance to global security.So obviously Denmark fell under
German occupation, German rule. And so it was really fun
watching and reading through theUS archives, all of the letters
that were sent to King Christianof Denmark from President
Roosevelt at the time saying, wehave your, you know, Danish
(09:04):
ambassador here in DC in exile. And he has a mighty great plan
for what we can do with Greenland.
We'll occupy it and keep it under sort of safeguard while
you're unable to do so. And yeah, the back and forth
through the letters was amazing to to sort of witness this slow
kind of creep of US interest into Greenland, which was
(09:24):
really, really underscored in the Cold War.
Right, so, but the the the Danish leader said no thanks.
Yeah, so King Christian at the time in these letters, you know,
think about it, back then, we'vetaken 9 or 10 days just to get a
response to these heartfelt letters in which he was begging,
you know, terms like dear friend, you, you must understand
(09:44):
and accept that this is our sovereign territory.
You know, my my views of you as a friend and as a as a partner
will indeed shift if you do moveforward with not listening to
our wishes. And, you know, explicitly saying
Ambassador Kaufman, who was the Danish ambassador to the US at
(10:05):
the time, you know, he is persona non granted.
He no longer speaks for our interests.
So at the time, the argument in sort of Roosevelt circle there
was, well, we can't be sure thatthis is his wish, sure he's
under occupation. I mean, you're occupied by the
Nazis. Exactly.
So there was a little bit of Riggle room there, yeah.
(10:25):
Right. OK.
Yeah, We asked him, Mr. President, and he said no, but
it was called Seward's Folly. Did you say yes?
Why was it a folly? Yes, because people didn't
understand spending money US treasure.
They bought. They bought Alaska.
At that point, yeah, they had just after.
So he was kind of picking off right, I guess the map.
And also, let's be fair, it's not it was not something new to
(10:47):
say. Let's buy Danish territory.
They'd also purchased the US Virgin Islands from Denmark.
But Alaska is seen as a masterstroke today, isn't it?
But I mean, presumably. I mean, surely.
They got it cheap. It would be called Seaward's
brilliance today if they had actually bought.
It and that's part of what my book tries to look at and
unpack. You know, history tells us a lot
of tells us a lot about what personal ambitions were and what
(11:10):
politics of the day were. And I think it's super
fascinating because yes, Alaska was purchased by the US, but
other sort of smaller rocks and islands around their Rangel
Island is very, very important to the Russians today.
And arguably, that was also US at one time.
Right. So maybe, yeah, maybe some sort
(11:30):
of improved cooperation might bemight be the way forward and
we'll we'll come. To the island training.
So let's talk about the value ofGreenland today.
And I want to start with the strategic importance because of
its geography. I mean, the US clearly sees a
strategic risk if it doesn't control Greenland.
And it's it's made that pretty clear to the Danes.
In fact, Vice President JD Vanceaccused Denmark of failing to
(11:52):
secure it from threats of from threats from Russia and China.
First of all, is is Washington right to be concerned?
Yeah, I think we need to unpack the Vance comments that he made
at the Bidufic Air. Sorry, Bidufic space, space,
change the name of that one. It was in the time where there
was huge US pressure for NATO countries to lift their
(12:14):
spending. So the back story here is that
the Danes for decades have pointed to Greenland and said
here is our contribution to North Atlantic security.
We let you base forces, we let you utilise this sovereign
territory for the needs of the alliance and of U.S. defence
(12:34):
planning. So in many ways it has been a
little bit of a free pass. It's allowed.
The Danes do not have to spend as much because they've got this
incredible asset. I think we've made that argument
about northern Australia right in a in a slightly more subtle.
Way we have, we have. It's weird, it's half, half work
for the Danes. They've still had to invest more
(12:55):
and they are earmarking, earmarking, sorry, more funds
for Greenland, but these aren't going into healthcare and
education for the 57,000 people that live in Greenland.
Again, it's going into force posture initiative.
So it's not necessarily what theGreenlandic people want.
So there's another level of social kind of bilateral tension
there between the Danish people and the Greenlandic people.
(13:18):
So Trump taking Greenland and that was I guess the headline
everywhere was great for interest in the story.
And I'm really happy that he threw those terms out there.
But at the end of the day, in the book, I talk about some of
the lessons that he wrote in TheArt of the Deal, and I've kind
of applied them to this maximalist approach he's taken
(13:43):
about what you mentioned before,having Greenland one way or the
other. Arguably, I don't, I don't think
that that's the end goal for Trump.
I think it's about utilising Greenland.
And so if he's moved the goal posts away from taking Greenland
by military force, even though he says he won't rule it out,
perhaps some agreement somewherein the middle about being able
(14:04):
to base more forces or to have more square footage.
So, so 40. Two US forces.
The art of the deal in the senseof, you know, make an ambit bid
and then settle. See where you land, see where
you land and you can't change geography and and Greenland is a
North American island. It's not European.
(14:26):
Which you need to you need to look at the I.
Mean you need to glow, we need amap.
Is no, is no. We need a map.
And, and in fact, I, I, I think we will actually, we like to be
able to project a map for, for our YouTube.
Viewers and then I can answer the question about the strategic
value, right? It's not only that kind of
defence relationship, it's also look at a basic map and you can
see how large this island is, how far it reaches up into the
(14:49):
Arctic Ocean. It itself affords Denmark the
identity of being an Arctic Rim nation.
There's all sorts of offshore seabed minerals, oil and gas,
critical minerals, uranium. So they're of key interest.
Fisheries are also really big one for the EU, so the waters of
(15:10):
Greenland, so for food security,but one that's really taken my
eye and I didn't cover as much in the book, mainly because so
much is changing so rapidly in the last kind of four weeks is
to do with the opening up of theArctic Sea route.
Yeah. OK.
Actually I do want to come back to that.
So I'm, I'm going to get you to pause there for a moment.
But just in, in let's say in sort of defence strategic terms,
(15:35):
you know, we have, we have longer range missiles now, we
have, you know, UAVs, we have all sorts of defence
capabilities either either in action already or you know, over
the near horizon, which would presumably make the geographic
(15:56):
proximity of Northern America toGreenland highly relevant from
the United States's position. Just so just the.
Continental defence, Greenland has always been critical.
It is their front doorstep, their back doorstep, their side
doorstep, right. And so the original masses of
investment that were in the ColdWar era in Greenland, it was
(16:19):
crucial, it was a linchpin for North American continental
defence when if there was an early warning system for if you
knew what we call the B moves now, but if you knew if Icbms
were about to fly into your intoyour country, so you, you.
Would know. You would know from Greenland.
There was an early warning system still still active today.
Now can you tell the story of Camp Century?
(16:39):
Because this is French. Is my favourite.
Story. I've never heard of this before.
But really, had you heard of Project Icelam?
No, of course not. No.
Oh gosh, like I said, I I basically knew that Greenland
was a BLOB on the map and that was about it.
So tell. So a few things.
Anyone interested in a kind of 6minute overview of what Camp
Century was, which was an underground ice camp and it
(17:01):
sounds really James Bondy but itactually happened.
Anyone interested, pop onto YouTube and literally Google
Camp Century because the US government put out this amazing
kind of public awareness broadcast about what the men
were doing there back in the early days of open source,
(17:22):
trying to explain why they were up there.
Essentially, it took them a few months and they had built an
underground city. There was a Barber shop, there
was a bowling alley, and the whole thing was run with a
nuclear power reactor. For what purpose?
Well, to heat so you could have hot showers, but why did they
(17:43):
build the underground? The underground?
You mean there's more to this USplan underground city
essentially there were very, youknow, top secret missile testing
plans under Kennedy there and the archives haven't uncovered
(18:05):
enough like they haven't shared any information to the depths,
I'd hope because obviously national security reasons I'd
hazard a guessed as to perhaps more actually occurred there and
might still be occurring there. But it was a storage facility of
sorts for US nuclear arsenal, right?
OK, which is really fascinating considering the Danish position
(18:26):
on nuclear weapons at the time. And, and in 2016, there was an
inquest basically from the Danish government and they
opened up all of their own archives and they shared with
the Danish public for the first time that during the Cold War,
well, they suspected there was some kind of nuclear weapon
storage occurring in Greenland. Absolutely.
(18:47):
They knew that the US governmentwas storing, maintaining,
utilising nuclear weapons out ofGreenland.
Because the US told them, or because they found out through
their own means? Or so this is a story that I
tell in the book as well. And it's basically the story of
a piece of a scribbled letter shared in the halls of
(19:08):
Washington DC from the then Danish ambassador to his State
Depart, US State Department equivalent.
Basically saying if we go back to the early treaties that we
agreed, when we have the Hulay Air Base opening and agreeing to
have US force posh to there in the defence of Greenland Treaty,
(19:31):
you never actually stipulated what you would be storing there.
And so we are inferring that there are military grade
activities and storage facilities, but we never asked
and we never asked you to tell and you never told us.
So as far and it's literally word for word in the archives
now sitting with the Danish government, we are of the view
(19:53):
that since we haven't asked and you haven't said anything,
there's nothing to talk about. And the only reason this all
came about the nuclear weapon question was because of a a
crash AUS asset crashed. Wow.
So killer armed air, so I shouldsay he.
He was essentially saying we know, but we're gonna do you a
(20:16):
favour by pretending that we don't know.
Yes, that sounds to me, yes. And, and was it storage with an
intention to launch? Were they looking at building
launching? Yes, launching capability as
well. Absolutely, right.
Absolutely. And then?
But that didn't happen. What we know publicly, we don't
know. We know that within 6 or so
(20:37):
months it was deemed unnecessaryto have that kind of military
footprint and those facilities there.
And so I think it was NASA few years ago found Camp Century by
accident with a fly over becauseof the ice melt found also of
the ingresses and wondered what was there and under, under,
under ice facility. Wow, so one this.
(20:59):
Is how you pull a thread on it. One US agency didn't know that
it was. It sounds a lot like Canberra,
right? I'm not going to go there, but
witty, OK, so it was. It was strategically very
important even back in the 60s, presumably even more so now.
(21:20):
So what I mean? More so now so that that central
sort of U.S. forces footprint inGreenland is the Batufic Space
Base. So what's interesting is that
they've changed the name from the Tule Air Base to Batufic
Space Base because of by space age, right?
So all of the capabilities that require places like Greenland,
(21:41):
Australia has its own experiences.
Antarctica, if you've got limited thermal interference,
then you've got a really clear shot to space.
You've got a really good picture.
So This is why places like Greenland, thermal interference
comes from houses, from cars, from people, from populations,
why they're really interesting spots of the world and why, you
know, countries like China who have very congested and thermal
(22:03):
interference problems are looking to places like Svalbard,
like Greenland, like Antarctica.So cold and empty gives you a
very very good view of space. Cold and empty is very good,
right? So.
Please don't ask me to go into the kind of space physics
because I can't want to want it.No, that's OK.
(22:25):
But but what I'm, what I'm taking from this is that there
would be enormous value across arange of motivations for either
China or Russia to control Greenland.
Not so much for Russia because of if you think of where they
are strategically located, anywhere in the Arctic.
They've got neighbouring islands, so I guess island
(22:46):
Arctic chains, you could call them.
But it's about being able to discourage any broader US
footprint on its own back doorstep.
So Russia would be entirely happy with the Danes trying to
curtail limit US expansion therein Greenland, right?
OK, OK, interesting. But China, I mean, is it?
(23:07):
Different story. Is it, well, is it, is it
plausible or is it, I mean, is it, is it excessive for the US
to be worrying about a Chinese takeover of Greenland, for
instance? Yeah, really good question.
Because in Northern Europe, the discussion about China and its
interest in Greenland has reallybeen limited to early Chinese
(23:28):
interest in building and operating new airports for
Greenland. So it was an infrastructure
problem, right? There was questions around why
the Chinese would offer to fund and to build them.
And obviously they'd want clauses to access, right?
But through the work that ASP does, which is so critical in
terms of the China Defence University tracker like that has
(23:49):
been critical in trying to get Northern Europe to understand
that it's more the Chinese investment in higher education
in Denmark and in Greenland to do with, you know, polar
research and scientific researchare the things you need to be
monitoring. So you've had an announcement in
the last year of the bricks grouping green light in a polar
(24:11):
research initiative, which will be housed out of Yellow River
Station, which is China's Arcticstation in Svalbard, which is
near Greenland. So there's all these other kind
of secondary games, games afoot.But that was the point about the
strategic value of Greenland. It's not just something that
Trump's US wants. It's also something that, from
(24:34):
the Danish point of view, they don't like to talk about because
it triggers a whole lot of social discussions back at home
about what they've done to thesepeople.
So any way you cut it, there's astrategic win and a strategic
loss when it comes to Greenland.And, and again, we'll come back
to the current state of politicsbecause I do think that's
(24:55):
interesting, particularly how it's shifted over the past,
well, a few months, but going back to to 2019.
So, so just let's just quickly cover off on some of those other
factors. So I mean, you've talked about
space, the resources you touchedon as well.
Is it, is it very resource rich?Are these resources accessible?
Are they becoming more accessible as ice melts, for
(25:18):
instance? They are.
If we talk about on the islands,on Greenland, they absolutely
are. They run into a problem around
manpower, so we're 50,057 thousand people.
Over half of those that are ableto work are already employed by
either the Greenlandic or Danishgovernments as that issue.
(25:40):
But they've also got an ageing population.
So resource extractive industries are really labour
intensive. So first of all they're going to
have to bring in the labour. Where does that come from?
How does an infrastructure, you know, it's a chicken and egg
issue. They want to be independent, but
they need to have a sustainable economic base to do so.
(26:00):
So they need to pivot away from these kinds of industries like
resources. So this is where interest in
tourism or in education researchcomes to play or foreign direct
investment. And it will need to come from
other actors. The Danes, you know, they inject
most if not all 80% of their of the social budget.
(26:24):
They cover that, but it's in a coercive way.
Your health cares, your education, everything's looked
after by the Danish purse. But at the same, at the same
time, if they want to be independent, they need to be
sustainable. So they need to diversify away
from that. And it's really interesting
reading the fine print about howthat will happen because the
Danes say, you know, there's a cap of X millions of dollars
(26:48):
that the Danish can earn, sorry,the Greenland that people can
earn. And then the benefits that the
Danes inject start to decrease. So it has to be sustainable.
And This is why, you know, as anAustralian, I found it so
interesting. The political discourse in
Greenland was looking for external investment.
And it's looking at the EU, it'slooking at the US and it will
(27:10):
start looking at China. I'm right in thinking there are
critical mineral deposits or they're believed.
I mean, so it doesn't it make a whole lot of sense if you want
to, I mean for you know, quote unquote the West that is looking
to have resilient diversified supply chains of critical
minerals to be investing in something like.
(27:35):
Absolutely. And the Chinese interest in
Green Line, yes, it's the minerals and these resources
first and foremost. But second of all, it's space.
There is so much space there in this island, so you can start
dealing with, I guess, the processing problem of critical
minerals. So you've have actually getting
(27:56):
your hands on the resources, butthen to actually process and
refine them into a usable product, you need space so.
Land. Here, land not as in space as
in, yeah, space. So there's there's that.
So they could extract and process.
Exactly. And then you can, you can trans,
you have transshipment hubs downinto Europe.
So again, think of hopefully geta map up here, but think of
(28:18):
think of the Arctic, you'll comedown from the North Pole.
The strategic gains are not onlyin resources, they're fisheries.
It's also in shipping. Yeah, so.
And that's the one I wanted to talk about.
So let's get on to. That Let's go shipping, yeah.
We will put up a map at this point, mate.
Nate, our, our tech genius, assures me that it's possible.
So at the moment we've got the Northern Sea Route controlled by
(28:39):
Russia, we've got the Northwest Passage controlled by Canada.
And the likelihood that Arctic melting would mean the
transpolar sea route or an almost kind of mythical third
route, basically right across the North Pole could open up and
that could change everything andit would go straight past
Greenland. So.
Tell us. OK.
(29:00):
So all three would go straight or around close to Greenland
again. Thanks Nate, you amazing person
for the for the map, the trans polar route, which is the one if
you think just right through themiddle is unlikely to be
feasible just because of the insurance cost.
So if you think about the Arctic, you've got months at a
time where it is pitch black. So search and rescue
(29:21):
capabilities are expensive to field.
So that is going to add insurance premium onto those
goods. It doesn't make it economically
viable. NE passage you can upset all the
Americans listing for saying it's Canadian.
Oh no, you said it was Canadian controlled.
Northwest Passage. Good.
Good, good. Yes, sorry, Northwest Passage.
(29:42):
In fact, the only real bilateralArctic dispute at the moment is
between Canada and the US and it's over the status of that
waterway, which the Canadians say is internal waters and the
US says no, no, no internationalwaters.
So that'll be interesting to follow.
The one that I wanted to talk about is the Northern Sea Route.
(30:04):
That is a section of the Northeast Passage, NSA section,
because there's an entire, again, if you're having a look
at the map, the Northwest, the Northern Sea Route is, I guess
the best way to describe it is it's a political being.
It's a political framing that looks after the Russian Arctic
(30:25):
waters or the Russian Arctic zone.
These are by international law. And this is the fun part about
the Arctic Great race or the Arctic Carver.
The largest legitimate stakeholder is the Russian up is
the Russian Federation right by our own, unclosed by our own
international law and norms. So that is a section that has
its own Russian domestic laws applied to it.
(30:48):
So the route goes across the topof Russia.
Yes. It hugs the Russian Arctic coast
and then it kind of comes down into the Barents Sea through
Norway and then out into the North Atlantic.
I see. And there's also a section when
you're entering the Northern Searoute that you're going up
through the Bering Strait at thetop of the Pacific Ocean.
So that's international. Between Alaska and Russia, yes.
(31:10):
Yes, yes, yes. So the Chinese have started to
invest heavily in Russia's Northern sea route, so ports,
transshipment hubs to utilise this.
And when, when you mentioned just before that the shipping,
the Arctic shipping dynamic of this security problem has really
come online recently. It absolutely has.
(31:30):
And I'm talking in the last couple of months, you've got now
I think it's three Chinese shipping companies who have
secured deals to send, you know,cargo, cargo using the Northern
Sea route. 6 months ago to a year ago, we were talking about
only month by month access and you needed an ice breaker.
(31:53):
Less likely now. It's compounded by the fact that
China is now building Ice Breakers indigenously.
We expect a nuclear powered ice breaker to be announced by the
Chinese government in the next year, which is huge.
Doesn't So we need, you know, nuclear ice breaking support
from the Russians. They still will have to pay a
fee to use this. But if you can get goods on a
(32:18):
superhighway from Asia to Europein 40% less time, you're saving
fuel, but you're saving insurance, your saving fee,
You're, you're, you know, your customer wants to work with you
more. So it's a game changer.
And another one in the last month has been South Korea.
They're now legislating to turn north and start utilising an
(32:41):
Arctic shipping route. So where Greenland comes into
play here is you have the Greenland, Iceland, United
Kingdom gap. So it's a choke point.
That was a, you know, a historical, I guess, relic, you
could say, of the Cold War. So one of the key concerns for
NATO was it needed to be able totrack Soviet Subs that have to
(33:06):
go through the GI UK gap to get out into the North Atlantic,
right? So they had all sorts of sensors
there that fell into disrepair and now they're getting repaired
slowly and surely. So you have the potential,
should you want to, to frustrateChinese transportation, the next
superhighway. Whether or not you want to do it
(33:26):
remains to be seen. So it is a kind of strategic
domino effect with the Arctic opening up for Australia.
And this brings me to the point where some people say why would
an Australian write a book aboutGreenland?
And here I am saying that these ends of the Earth is so much
more connected than we realise, right.
(33:47):
We want to focus on the Indo Pacific as our primary strategic
theatre. But the roof or the ceiling and
the floor of that theatre, they're the polar regions.
What's going on at the ends of the Earth does matter.
But take shipping, for example. If you start reorientating
global shipping artilleries through the north, through the
Arctic, between Asia and Europe,that takes a lot of pressure off
(34:10):
the Malacca Strait, off the South China Sea.
It makes Australia a very priceymarket to resupply for all of
our importation needs. And it also makes regional
Southeast Asian economies like Singapore.
It puts them into very, very dire straits budget wise if the
(34:32):
majority of their economy relieson being a, you know, shipping,
shipping nation of the region. Let me just make sure that I've
got this correct. In a nutshell then at the moment
basically trade and and shippingbetween the Pacific and Atlantic
Oceans goes really through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal,
(34:54):
Indian, Indian Ocean, Malacca Strait, South China Sea.
Yes, this is a you basically go over the top of the world to the
north of Russia, which Russia essentially controls.
Apologies to the flat earthers, but yes, you go.
Right over the top of the world that's cheaper, faster, and
becoming more feasible. Viable.
(35:15):
Yes, in various ways. China's showing a strong
interest in this. Other countries are showing a
strong. Interest India has just
announced as well an Arctic policy Yep utilising shipping DP
World, which is the top sort of UAE shipping conglomerate around
the world. They're also looking at
transshipment hubs as well alongthe Northern Sea route.
And this would completely upend global seaborne trade absolutely
(35:39):
all sorts of ways, including in a way that affects Australia,
because basically a huge proportion of global shipping
would come nowhere near Australia and therefore we would
become very difficult to get to.You'd have to pay more to get
the goods right that come by sea, which is pretty much
everything. And to bring it back to
Greenland. Greenland sits at one end of
this enormous arc and therefore could be used in all sorts of
(35:59):
ways, either to help or to hinder other people.
'S exactly, so Greenland becomesin itself a foothold for
potentially coercing the next iteration of global trade.
Right, right. So presumably the China Russia
no limits partnership, you know,factors into this as well in
that you know, Russia is going to look fondly on or or at least
(36:21):
be be increasingly willing to toassist China's economic and
strategic. Absolutely.
And the interest here is, is fascinating because for the
Russians, they would want to seemore Chinese footprint in
Greenland throughout throughout that kind of Scandinavian
region. Because while it might not be,
(36:42):
you know, an alliance, I don't think it's an alliance.
There's more that brings them together.
And especially when it looks at when you're looking about, when
you're talking about the Arctic or the high N, the more that,
that you can limit US NATO ability to choke or control what
goes on in the Arctic, which Greenland is a, you know, one of
(37:05):
the major entry points into the Arctic.
It's it's good news. It's fascinating.
It's really. Really, so long as they can, as
no long as the Russians can be sure that they can control
Chinese access to the Northern Sea route.
And that's the big question which we won't know the answer
to sure. Sure, right?
Right now, they probably feel like they don't have a lot of
(37:27):
choice. But right now the Chinese are
paying their tolls, their pre warning of planned pilotage.
And you know, that's great. But we also know that history
says it's not a, it's not a great relationship.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, really interesting.
All right, let's just, we've gotto cover off on a couple of
other things. One is just, OK, how does the
(37:49):
politics look now in, you know, in the latter end of of 2025
after everything that's gone on?And we've seen some pretty, you
know, some pretty tetchy diplomacy between the US and
Denmark. So I was looking at a Wall
Street Journal story from earlier this year that the Trump
administration directed the CIA to start looking at people who
(38:13):
both in Greenland and and Denmark, who would be
sympathetic to US objectives forGreenland.
Denmark a few weeks ago summonedthe the US acting ambassador for
the second time over this issue.Just explain the state of the
current sort of tug of war between the US and Denmark and,
and in particular, how is it shifted in response to Trump's
(38:35):
more, I suppose, you know, provocative remarks about
Greenland. It's almost the relationship is
almost one that you kind of wonder if it merits a kind of
Real Housewives of Greenland andDenmark storyline, because so
much happens each day, right? And you have to understand the
dynamics between green light andDenmark before you can then kind
(38:58):
of superimpose why your, your, your assumptions as to why green
Denmark is responding to Trump'sAmerica in the way that it is.
So first of all, it was fascinating to see, yes, I read
the same article. And to see this play out, it
brings to bear a reality that foreign influence is something
(39:24):
that happens everywhere. We, I think for some people, it
was kind of shocking to to to read that an ally or a partner,
a good democratic nation was, you know, doing things that were
potentially untoward in in a friendly's back garden.
But I mean, this happens every day.
The funniest story I have about that is a byproduct of of this
(39:48):
in of this exact story you're talking about with the
ambassador being summonsed to kind of explain why the CIA
might be digging and digging around in Nuke, which is the
capital of Greenland. The fact that it was all kind of
kicked off because a someone reported that the US embassy had
set up kind of a table of US books at the National Library.
(40:13):
In nuke and it said, you know, sponsored by the US embassy,
American politics, American geography great, you know,
people of history's past. So that is also the level of I
don't want to say, oh, it's a word.
That's the level of sensitivity.I think anything is seen as
interference, right, And potentially influenced.
(40:35):
Sure, sure. A point about the dynamics as
they are today that I think should be fleshed out more is
this statistic that was put out that said the majority of
Greenlandic people, 85% do not want to be part of Trump's
America. And I think we really need to
(40:57):
interrogate the data a bit more.So that was only 2700 people in
that in that poll of Greenlandicpeople.
But it's not the right question because it was posed.
And you only understand this if you'd like me talk to people
from Greenland. It was posed in terms of either
or. So it was either you want to be
part of Trump's America or Denmark.
So it's better the devil they know.
(41:17):
OK. So of course, they said no.
The next question, which wasn't published by The Wall Street
Journal, was do you want independence from Denmark?
And that was also a resounding majority.
So there's that. That always plays plays in the
background, I think. But the current state of affairs
(41:40):
between Denmark and Greenland has been really difficult to
navigate. I think for Denmark, because
they've got on one hand this, you know, larger than life U.S.
President who is shining a spotlight on as a part of their
realm that is equal parts really, really significant to
(42:07):
its current political standing. It makes it an Arctic player.
You know, it's it's territory. But then there's this, you know,
pervasive historic atrocities that anyone who's a modern day
Dane, who has this kind of outlook on life about Heidi and
Scandinavian democracy and equality and universal rights
(42:29):
would be horrified to know exists.
Yeah, sure. It's a really weird tension.
Yeah. Yeah, OK.
Well, on that front, how's the How's your book been received in
Denmark? Yeah, thank you for asking.
It's been really interesting. I have not been able to secure a
Danish publisher. It did go to a couple and I I
got some wild feedback, which I do have essentially a what about
(42:53):
ISM when I spoke about a couple of the historical stories about
the relationship between Denmarkand Greenland.
The first one was the forced contraception that was given as
healthcare because the Danes runGreenlandic healthcare to young
Inuit girls without their knowledge.
Their mothers didn't know either.
(43:14):
They, yeah, there's a whole class action suit about that
today that's coming out in the wash, and the Danish government
have kind of paid a lot of moneyfor it to go away.
Is that story in the second story was the Danish Queen
Margarethe took 10 Inuit children and basically selected
(43:35):
them in Greenland, brought them back to the Danish Kingdom, gave
them out to her friends, advisors, and they wanted
basically to do a 7UP or whatever the British equivalents
called to see if they could turnthese Inuit children into Danish
citizens. It didn't work out well.
It lasted about 12 months and then they tried to return the
children and of the 10 or so, I think they were part of the
(43:58):
programme, there's only two or three alive today.
So huge psychological issues there.
It is interesting because the What about?
ISM? It was basically framed to me by
one publisher as well as an Australian author.
How dare you talk about these really bad historical things on
(44:20):
our book if you haven't even discussed what you've done to
your own Indigenous population. And I just thought, you know,
that's not the point. Not a book about.
That funny that in a book about Greenland and it's relations.
With so there's a deep psychological shame at the heart
of this and the I do wonder how much in your history books later
in time when we can look back and see won't be me.
(44:42):
Hopefully my kids will want to do it look at the archives and
see what the Danish discussions were in government.
But I wonder how much of the anger and pushback against the
Trump interest in Greenland is to do with keeping their own
very spotty history silent. One huge point that are that
already underscores that is the fact that under the Washington
(45:05):
Treaty, so NATO alliance Article4, where we can have a
discussion, Article 5, you know the mutual defence treaty, but
Article 4 we can have a discussion about someone in the
alliance feeling threatened. Denmark has not triggered that
has not triggered any of those discussions, despite there being
a number of statements now made by the US government about
(45:28):
intent or planning to take sovereign territory.
Why? Because that that wasn't a body
that was, you know, established to defend from within the hen
house. It's from the outside.
Would be a bit weird calling, calling NATO to right to respond
to another NATO member, right? And I I mean, yeah, I mean you,
(45:49):
I mean Trump. Also all of European defence,
you know, Kit is US as well, so sure, it's a whole lot of
problems. It would be a strange thing to
do. So, so a bit, but, but I guess
the to to the, the point is thatthat basically Greenland is
don't really, I mean taking thatpoll, I mean, acknowledging what
you said about the the either orbinary, that's always a little
(46:11):
bit tricky with polling. I think I mean to to defend the
poll. It sounds like they polled about
4.5% of the Greenland population, which is polls go
is, is actually a fairly large slice.
If you did that in Australia, itwould be over 1,000,000 people.
But but the obviously the binaryis a problem.
But I think we can reasonably say that the majority that most
Greenlanders don't want to be incorporated into the United
States of America, but nor do they necessarily appreciate the
(46:35):
current relationship they have with Denmark.
Do they actually just want to become independent?
They do so recognise that the economic viability of that in
the short term. Is for the sustainability of the
independence. Yes, it's a chicken.
As I said, it's a chicken and egg thing.
They need to have the economic sorted so they can actually
prosper as a country. But then it's such an impossible
issue because then if you dig into the sort of the Self
(46:57):
Government 2009 Self Governance Act for Greenland that the
Danish parliament passed, it says the end goal where we're
all working to get to is for notautonomy, but complete
independence of the Greenlandic nation.
Then there's the fine print, which says Greenland must hold a
(47:18):
referendum on this, which they've done twice now.
And it's astoundingly yes. But the fun little fine print
which brings us back to this impossible problem is that the
results of the referendum must, quote, be approved by the Danish
parliament. Why would Denmark sever
(47:40):
Greenland? It's like taking off your
healthy leg. It gives you vast resources to
the in the Arctic. It's a bounty gold mine.
It makes you a relevant Arctic player.
And there are serious concerns that if Greenland was to be
given, you know, it's exit, the Faroe Islands would follow suit.
Without the Faroe Islands, you then don't have a Kingdom, you
(48:04):
just have Denmark, right? So this is huge.
So, so independent. OK, so independence looks
unlikely then. Really.
I mean, this, this. It's very hard to imagine
Denmark. Yeah.
So I think it'll be kind of a managed autonomy, right, You
know, colonisation light and. They already have.
So I mean effective self rule other than foreign policy and.
(48:24):
Foreign policy, not defence policy.
I think there's a little bit more control over the currency,
but it's, it's a really, it's a coercive relationship, you know,
to be and it's, as I said, it's an impossible situation to be
sustainable, to be their own country.
They need to pick and choose whois investing in their country,
(48:44):
what partnerships they're inking.
But they cannot do that without the Danish approval.
OK, fascinating. All right, Well, look, we will
watch with great interest. Congratulations again on the
book, Liz. Thank you Rush out and bias.
Incredibly timely and I do recommend it to our to our
audience. It's thanks so much.
I I learned a hell of a lot. It's an extremely easy read.
It's an entertaining but informative read.
(49:06):
Thanks so much for coming on. Thank.
You. Thanks for listening, folks.
We'll be back next week with another episode of Stop the
World.
Stop the world. Welcome to Stop the World, the
Aspy Podcast. I'm Olivia Nelson.
And I'm David Rowe. Now, Dave, to be honest, how
much did you know about Greenland before Donald Trump
talked about taking it over? Fair question.
I knew my dad worked there as a summer job doing geological
mapping in the late 1960s. I knew that the Makata map,
(00:24):
which is the one that turns the three dimensional globe into A2
dimensional flat map, enlarges everything close to the polls,
including Green Lane. So it's actually smaller than it
looks on a McKay to map. Beyond that, bugger all.
I have to say I'm about the same, or maybe even less, but
here we are having recorded a whole episode on it because it
turns out there's an amazing history that explains what
(00:44):
seemed a pretty out there proposal from the US President.
And Dave, you asked me to inserta Viking joke here, but I got
nothing. I know right?
I I went looking online for Viking jokes and there aren't
any. There are at least no good ones.
The tireless research efforts tostop the world podcast no stone
left on thanks we go to concerned any who.
So this week we've got Aspy senior resident fellow doctor
(01:06):
Elizabeth Buchanan. She's joining you for a
conversation on Greenland, a topic she delves into in her
book. So you want to earn Greenland
lessons from lessons from the Vikings to Trump.
Yeah, it's a great crash course on the island.
It's history, including the mysterious disappearance of the
Vikings in the 1400s, it's role in the world, the two world
wars, plus the Cold War. And also, of course, it's in
(01:28):
importance today. You covered a lot of ground in
this chat, Dave. Some might say you dived deep
Hundreds of years of history, Arctic shipping routes, space
and prospects for polar launch. Liz also points out that the US
interest in Greenland is really not new, and she tells you about
the mysterious Project Ice firm.It's a really fascinating one.
It describes a an underground ice city built by the US, which
(01:48):
had a Barber shop, a bowling alley.
It was powered by a nuclear reactor.
We still don't know the full details of what it was used for.
It was all classified, and it's come out in dribs and drabs.
But it's, yeah, it's a really fascinating story.
Amazing stuff. I learned a lot this episode,
not just on the history of Greenland and Denmark too, but
the strategic importance. It's really importance to space
(02:09):
and the history, increasing strategic competition and
demographic challenges Greenlandfaces.
Yep, no, it was a cracker. And I thoroughly recommend the
chat and also, of course, that listeners grab.
I have a copy of Liz's book. Let's hear from Liz.
Congratulations on the new book.Thanks for coming on Stop the
World. Thank you for having me.
So I had given, I confess, very little thought to Greenland
(02:32):
until Trump declared that he wanted it.
I suspect I wasn't Robinson Crusoe there, but now I realise
I was missing a cracking yarn the entire time, not studying
the history, or at least gettingmy head around Greenland.
You obviously weren't suffering from the same problems.
So you've written this book. Just tell me about why you wrote
the book. And give us a sense of what
would an average reader take away from it?
(02:55):
What value are they going to getabout their understanding of
Greenland? It's probably the nerdiest story
as to why I wrote the book, but it starts with starting a PhD.
So my PhD is in Russian Arctic warfare, So in the early stages
of studying for that, I had to understand all of the Arctic
stakeholders, all of their foreign policy interests and I
guess all their dirty laundry. So, you know, I've got a nice
(03:15):
little bit of compromise on all Arctic stakeholders.
And the one that was there for the Danes was obviously its
relationship with Greenland, which it uses to make itself an
Arctic nation, so gets its seat at the table when it comes to
the Arctic. So I guess you could say I was
gleeful that I had an opportunity to kind of unbox all
these really useless facts that had been stored away after years
(03:38):
of study. So that was the first kind of
reason I wrote the book. And second of all, I was driven
by a real sense of, I guess, frustration at how disingenuous
the discussion about Greenland really was.
It was framed in a kind of anti Trump narrative, which for me
(03:58):
was really interesting because the relationship between the US
and Greenland was, you know, decades if not centuries longer
than the Trump relationship. So I yeah, I kind of wanted a
bit of a fact telling. Book great right which?
Is what I've end up with. So, so you must have been saying
thank you, Donald, for putting Greenland in the newspaper,
because now I can actually, I can use all of this.
(04:19):
Information, I think I'd alreadyinked the contract for the book
and then he went and did the state Union address in which he
actually even called out the Greenlanders.
So I've missed the chance to putan extra zero or two on my on
your contract. Yes, right.
All right, we'll, we'll, we'll get to the, the current
strategic logic of the whole thing, but let's, let's whiz
through the relevant history because the history really is
(04:39):
important here. And as you say, there's a,
there's a lot of back story thatthat most people don't
appreciate first. I mean, most people will know
that Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Explain how that came about first.
So without going back to 5000 BC.
Yeah, I was like, do we have farback?
Do you want to go, Dave? So let's go back Treaty of Keel
(05:02):
days. So 1814 is when we're starting
with the Kingdom of Denmark. So before that it was the
Kingdom of Denmark, Norway. So they were together and
Greenland, Faroe Islands, they actually set under Norway.
So there was a huge kind of shift around on the on the chess
board of pieces when you had theTreaty of Kiel, end of the
Napoleonic Wars and you had, youknow, Sweden come out, Kingdom
(05:26):
of Norway, Kingdom of Denmark. So the relationship has been
fraught for the Greenlandic people.
I think, you know, since its inception, it's always belonged
to someone else in a sort of broader strategic sense.
But the destiny for the Greenland people has always been
(05:47):
independence. It's just a matter of how they
get there these days. Since 2023 when they inked their
own constitution or draught constitution.
Sorry, it's a case of not when. Yep.
Just how? Right.
So, so there are indigenous Inuit, yeah.
From Greenland. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(06:08):
Vikings at some point inhabited it, and then in sometime in the
1800s, it became, you know, formerly part of Denmark.
Yeah, it came into a Kingdom, right?
Came into a realm. And then we had the kind of
broader wave of sort of, I don'twant to say Anglesea, but we had
the broader wave of the Europeanreach come to being.
(06:31):
But what's really interesting aswell about Greenland is if
Greenland itself wasn't discovered, right?
And this is the Vikings part of my book that I talk about.
Eric the Red. Yep.
Who was sent for murder into exile there, killed his
neighbour. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, various neighbours
apparently, right. It depends on, you know, what
part of the North stories. You believe a dispute over a
(06:52):
fence or something like that? About a number of different
neighbourly disputes. Yes, yes, yes.
Had his son Leaf there in Greenland and when he was old
enough to, you know, set sail, he actually discovered what's
today the North American continent.
So in America they actually havean October.
The, the, you have to Fact Checkme.
October, the 9th or the 10th is the Leif Ericsson Day.
It's a national holiday in the US.
(07:13):
Is that right? Yes, pre Columbus I.
Know Columbus Day, but? Pre Columbus, I didn't know
there was a leaf. Day.
It's a leaf. It's the Norsk, you know, day.
So Greenland, what I'm saying isthrough the book I I highlight
sort of three different vignettes, the relationship that
Greenland has always had to the US and to the North American
continent. All right, well, let's get on to
that. Because I mean, when, when Trump
declared that he wanted it, it felt more than random.
(07:37):
It felt, I mean, unnecessarily provocative.
I mean, as, as, as can be the case.
I mean, he, he, I think the, thestate of the union you
mentioned, he said he'd get it one way or another.
Now it turns out that US interest and involvement goes
back centuries, and there's nothing random about it at.
All. Not at 2 in the Cold War, but
(07:57):
even before that. Just tell us the back story
there. So buying or owning or taking
Greenland has been kind of a preoccupation for the US state
since 18, 46 or so. We had, you know, the what we
call the Seward Folly, which wasPresident Lincoln's Secretary of
State basically looked at a map and said, OK, our strategic
(08:19):
interests are going to lie out there on our back doorstep with
that huge island, Greenland, right?
So the political military dimension of Greenland for the
US absolutely came about in World War 2.
And that's where I think most people's point of history comes
into play when they want to understand Greenland's
(08:42):
significance to global security.So obviously Denmark fell under
German occupation, German rule. And so it was really fun
watching and reading through theUS archives, all of the letters
that were sent to King Christianof Denmark from President
Roosevelt at the time saying, wehave your, you know, Danish
(09:04):
ambassador here in DC in exile. And he has a mighty great plan
for what we can do with Greenland.
We'll occupy it and keep it under sort of safeguard while
you're unable to do so. And yeah, the back and forth
through the letters was amazing to to sort of witness this slow
kind of creep of US interest into Greenland, which was
(09:24):
really, really underscored in the Cold War.
Right, so, but the the the Danish leader said no thanks.
Yeah, so King Christian at the time in these letters, you know,
think about it, back then, we'vetaken 9 or 10 days just to get a
response to these heartfelt letters in which he was begging,
you know, terms like dear friend, you, you must understand
(09:44):
and accept that this is our sovereign territory.
You know, my my views of you as a friend and as a as a partner
will indeed shift if you do moveforward with not listening to
our wishes. And, you know, explicitly saying
Ambassador Kaufman, who was the Danish ambassador to the US at
(10:05):
the time, you know, he is persona non granted.
He no longer speaks for our interests.
So at the time, the argument in sort of Roosevelt circle there
was, well, we can't be sure thatthis is his wish, sure he's
under occupation. I mean, you're occupied by the
Nazis. Exactly.
So there was a little bit of Riggle room there, yeah.
(10:25):
Right. OK.
Yeah, We asked him, Mr. President, and he said no, but
it was called Seward's Folly. Did you say yes?
Why was it a folly? Yes, because people didn't
understand spending money US treasure.
They bought. They bought Alaska.
At that point, yeah, they had just after.
So he was kind of picking off right, I guess the map.
And also, let's be fair, it's not it was not something new to
(10:47):
say. Let's buy Danish territory.
They'd also purchased the US Virgin Islands from Denmark.
But Alaska is seen as a masterstroke today, isn't it?
But I mean, presumably. I mean, surely.
They got it cheap. It would be called Seaward's
brilliance today if they had actually bought.
It and that's part of what my book tries to look at and
unpack. You know, history tells us a lot
of tells us a lot about what personal ambitions were and what
(11:10):
politics of the day were. And I think it's super
fascinating because yes, Alaska was purchased by the US, but
other sort of smaller rocks and islands around their Rangel
Island is very, very important to the Russians today.
And arguably, that was also US at one time.
Right. So maybe, yeah, maybe some sort
(11:30):
of improved cooperation might bemight be the way forward and
we'll we'll come. To the island training.
So let's talk about the value ofGreenland today.
And I want to start with the strategic importance because of
its geography. I mean, the US clearly sees a
strategic risk if it doesn't control Greenland.
And it's it's made that pretty clear to the Danes.
In fact, Vice President JD Vanceaccused Denmark of failing to
(11:52):
secure it from threats of from threats from Russia and China.
First of all, is is Washington right to be concerned?
Yeah, I think we need to unpack the Vance comments that he made
at the Bidufic Air. Sorry, Bidufic space, space,
change the name of that one. It was in the time where there
was huge US pressure for NATO countries to lift their
(12:14):
spending. So the back story here is that
the Danes for decades have pointed to Greenland and said
here is our contribution to North Atlantic security.
We let you base forces, we let you utilise this sovereign
territory for the needs of the alliance and of U.S. defence
(12:34):
planning. So in many ways it has been a
little bit of a free pass. It's allowed.
The Danes do not have to spend as much because they've got this
incredible asset. I think we've made that argument
about northern Australia right in a in a slightly more subtle.
Way we have, we have. It's weird, it's half, half work
for the Danes. They've still had to invest more
(12:55):
and they are earmarking, earmarking, sorry, more funds
for Greenland, but these aren't going into healthcare and
education for the 57,000 people that live in Greenland.
Again, it's going into force posture initiative.
So it's not necessarily what theGreenlandic people want.
So there's another level of social kind of bilateral tension
there between the Danish people and the Greenlandic people.
(13:18):
So Trump taking Greenland and that was I guess the headline
everywhere was great for interest in the story.
And I'm really happy that he threw those terms out there.
But at the end of the day, in the book, I talk about some of
the lessons that he wrote in TheArt of the Deal, and I've kind
of applied them to this maximalist approach he's taken
(13:43):
about what you mentioned before,having Greenland one way or the
other. Arguably, I don't, I don't think
that that's the end goal for Trump.
I think it's about utilising Greenland.
And so if he's moved the goal posts away from taking Greenland
by military force, even though he says he won't rule it out,
perhaps some agreement somewherein the middle about being able
(14:04):
to base more forces or to have more square footage.
So, so 40. Two US forces.
The art of the deal in the senseof, you know, make an ambit bid
and then settle. See where you land, see where
you land and you can't change geography and and Greenland is a
North American island. It's not European.
(14:26):
Which you need to you need to look at the I.
Mean you need to glow, we need amap.
Is no, is no. We need a map.
And, and in fact, I, I, I think we will actually, we like to be
able to project a map for, for our YouTube.
Viewers and then I can answer the question about the strategic
value, right? It's not only that kind of
defence relationship, it's also look at a basic map and you can
see how large this island is, how far it reaches up into the
(14:49):
Arctic Ocean. It itself affords Denmark the
identity of being an Arctic Rim nation.
There's all sorts of offshore seabed minerals, oil and gas,
critical minerals, uranium. So they're of key interest.
Fisheries are also really big one for the EU, so the waters of
(15:10):
Greenland, so for food security,but one that's really taken my
eye and I didn't cover as much in the book, mainly because so
much is changing so rapidly in the last kind of four weeks is
to do with the opening up of theArctic Sea route.
Yeah. OK.
Actually I do want to come back to that.
So I'm, I'm going to get you to pause there for a moment.
But just in, in let's say in sort of defence strategic terms,
(15:35):
you know, we have, we have longer range missiles now, we
have, you know, UAVs, we have all sorts of defence
capabilities either either in action already or you know, over
the near horizon, which would presumably make the geographic
(15:56):
proximity of Northern America toGreenland highly relevant from
the United States's position. Just so just the.
Continental defence, Greenland has always been critical.
It is their front doorstep, their back doorstep, their side
doorstep, right. And so the original masses of
investment that were in the ColdWar era in Greenland, it was
(16:19):
crucial, it was a linchpin for North American continental
defence when if there was an early warning system for if you
knew what we call the B moves now, but if you knew if Icbms
were about to fly into your intoyour country, so you, you.
Would know. You would know from Greenland.
There was an early warning system still still active today.
Now can you tell the story of Camp Century?
(16:39):
Because this is French. Is my favourite.
Story. I've never heard of this before.
But really, had you heard of Project Icelam?
No, of course not. No.
Oh gosh, like I said, I I basically knew that Greenland
was a BLOB on the map and that was about it.
So tell. So a few things.
Anyone interested in a kind of 6minute overview of what Camp
Century was, which was an underground ice camp and it
(17:01):
sounds really James Bondy but itactually happened.
Anyone interested, pop onto YouTube and literally Google
Camp Century because the US government put out this amazing
kind of public awareness broadcast about what the men
were doing there back in the early days of open source,
(17:22):
trying to explain why they were up there.
Essentially, it took them a few months and they had built an
underground city. There was a Barber shop, there
was a bowling alley, and the whole thing was run with a
nuclear power reactor. For what purpose?
Well, to heat so you could have hot showers, but why did they
(17:43):
build the underground? The underground?
You mean there's more to this USplan underground city
essentially there were very, youknow, top secret missile testing
plans under Kennedy there and the archives haven't uncovered
(18:05):
enough like they haven't shared any information to the depths,
I'd hope because obviously national security reasons I'd
hazard a guessed as to perhaps more actually occurred there and
might still be occurring there. But it was a storage facility of
sorts for US nuclear arsenal, right?
OK, which is really fascinating considering the Danish position
(18:26):
on nuclear weapons at the time. And, and in 2016, there was an
inquest basically from the Danish government and they
opened up all of their own archives and they shared with
the Danish public for the first time that during the Cold War,
well, they suspected there was some kind of nuclear weapon
storage occurring in Greenland. Absolutely.
(18:47):
They knew that the US governmentwas storing, maintaining,
utilising nuclear weapons out ofGreenland.
Because the US told them, or because they found out through
their own means? Or so this is a story that I
tell in the book as well. And it's basically the story of
a piece of a scribbled letter shared in the halls of
(19:08):
Washington DC from the then Danish ambassador to his State
Depart, US State Department equivalent.
Basically saying if we go back to the early treaties that we
agreed, when we have the Hulay Air Base opening and agreeing to
have US force posh to there in the defence of Greenland Treaty,
(19:31):
you never actually stipulated what you would be storing there.
And so we are inferring that there are military grade
activities and storage facilities, but we never asked
and we never asked you to tell and you never told us.
So as far and it's literally word for word in the archives
now sitting with the Danish government, we are of the view
(19:53):
that since we haven't asked and you haven't said anything,
there's nothing to talk about. And the only reason this all
came about the nuclear weapon question was because of a a
crash AUS asset crashed. Wow.
So killer armed air, so I shouldsay he.
He was essentially saying we know, but we're gonna do you a
(20:16):
favour by pretending that we don't know.
Yes, that sounds to me, yes. And, and was it storage with an
intention to launch? Were they looking at building
launching? Yes, launching capability as
well. Absolutely, right.
Absolutely. And then?
But that didn't happen. What we know publicly, we don't
know. We know that within 6 or so
(20:37):
months it was deemed unnecessaryto have that kind of military
footprint and those facilities there.
And so I think it was NASA few years ago found Camp Century by
accident with a fly over becauseof the ice melt found also of
the ingresses and wondered what was there and under, under,
under ice facility. Wow, so one this.
(20:59):
Is how you pull a thread on it. One US agency didn't know that
it was. It sounds a lot like Canberra,
right? I'm not going to go there, but
witty, OK, so it was. It was strategically very
important even back in the 60s, presumably even more so now.
(21:20):
So what I mean? More so now so that that central
sort of U.S. forces footprint inGreenland is the Batufic Space
Base. So what's interesting is that
they've changed the name from the Tule Air Base to Batufic
Space Base because of by space age, right?
So all of the capabilities that require places like Greenland,
(21:41):
Australia has its own experiences.
Antarctica, if you've got limited thermal interference,
then you've got a really clear shot to space.
You've got a really good picture.
So This is why places like Greenland, thermal interference
comes from houses, from cars, from people, from populations,
why they're really interesting spots of the world and why, you
know, countries like China who have very congested and thermal
(22:03):
interference problems are looking to places like Svalbard,
like Greenland, like Antarctica.So cold and empty gives you a
very very good view of space. Cold and empty is very good,
right? So.
Please don't ask me to go into the kind of space physics
because I can't want to want it.No, that's OK.
(22:25):
But but what I'm, what I'm taking from this is that there
would be enormous value across arange of motivations for either
China or Russia to control Greenland.
Not so much for Russia because of if you think of where they
are strategically located, anywhere in the Arctic.
They've got neighbouring islands, so I guess island
(22:46):
Arctic chains, you could call them.
But it's about being able to discourage any broader US
footprint on its own back doorstep.
So Russia would be entirely happy with the Danes trying to
curtail limit US expansion therein Greenland, right?
OK, OK, interesting. But China, I mean, is it?
(23:07):
Different story. Is it, well, is it, is it
plausible or is it, I mean, is it, is it excessive for the US
to be worrying about a Chinese takeover of Greenland, for
instance? Yeah, really good question.
Because in Northern Europe, the discussion about China and its
interest in Greenland has reallybeen limited to early Chinese
(23:28):
interest in building and operating new airports for
Greenland. So it was an infrastructure
problem, right? There was questions around why
the Chinese would offer to fund and to build them.
And obviously they'd want clauses to access, right?
But through the work that ASP does, which is so critical in
terms of the China Defence University tracker like that has
(23:49):
been critical in trying to get Northern Europe to understand
that it's more the Chinese investment in higher education
in Denmark and in Greenland to do with, you know, polar
research and scientific researchare the things you need to be
monitoring. So you've had an announcement in
the last year of the bricks grouping green light in a polar
(24:11):
research initiative, which will be housed out of Yellow River
Station, which is China's Arcticstation in Svalbard, which is
near Greenland. So there's all these other kind
of secondary games, games afoot.But that was the point about the
strategic value of Greenland. It's not just something that
Trump's US wants. It's also something that, from
(24:34):
the Danish point of view, they don't like to talk about because
it triggers a whole lot of social discussions back at home
about what they've done to thesepeople.
So any way you cut it, there's astrategic win and a strategic
loss when it comes to Greenland.And, and again, we'll come back
to the current state of politicsbecause I do think that's
(24:55):
interesting, particularly how it's shifted over the past,
well, a few months, but going back to to 2019.
So, so just let's just quickly cover off on some of those other
factors. So I mean, you've talked about
space, the resources you touchedon as well.
Is it, is it very resource rich?Are these resources accessible?
Are they becoming more accessible as ice melts, for
(25:18):
instance? They are.
If we talk about on the islands,on Greenland, they absolutely
are. They run into a problem around
manpower, so we're 50,057 thousand people.
Over half of those that are ableto work are already employed by
either the Greenlandic or Danishgovernments as that issue.
(25:40):
But they've also got an ageing population.
So resource extractive industries are really labour
intensive. So first of all they're going to
have to bring in the labour. Where does that come from?
How does an infrastructure, you know, it's a chicken and egg
issue. They want to be independent, but
they need to have a sustainable economic base to do so.
(26:00):
So they need to pivot away from these kinds of industries like
resources. So this is where interest in
tourism or in education researchcomes to play or foreign direct
investment. And it will need to come from
other actors. The Danes, you know, they inject
most if not all 80% of their of the social budget.
(26:24):
They cover that, but it's in a coercive way.
Your health cares, your education, everything's looked
after by the Danish purse. But at the same, at the same
time, if they want to be independent, they need to be
sustainable. So they need to diversify away
from that. And it's really interesting
reading the fine print about howthat will happen because the
Danes say, you know, there's a cap of X millions of dollars
(26:48):
that the Danish can earn, sorry,the Greenland that people can
earn. And then the benefits that the
Danes inject start to decrease. So it has to be sustainable.
And This is why, you know, as anAustralian, I found it so
interesting. The political discourse in
Greenland was looking for external investment.
And it's looking at the EU, it'slooking at the US and it will
(27:10):
start looking at China. I'm right in thinking there are
critical mineral deposits or they're believed.
I mean, so it doesn't it make a whole lot of sense if you want
to, I mean for you know, quote unquote the West that is looking
to have resilient diversified supply chains of critical
minerals to be investing in something like.
(27:35):
Absolutely. And the Chinese interest in
Green Line, yes, it's the minerals and these resources
first and foremost. But second of all, it's space.
There is so much space there in this island, so you can start
dealing with, I guess, the processing problem of critical
minerals. So you've have actually getting
(27:56):
your hands on the resources, butthen to actually process and
refine them into a usable product, you need space so.
Land. Here, land not as in space as
in, yeah, space. So there's there's that.
So they could extract and process.
Exactly. And then you can, you can trans,
you have transshipment hubs downinto Europe.
So again, think of hopefully geta map up here, but think of
(28:18):
think of the Arctic, you'll comedown from the North Pole.
The strategic gains are not onlyin resources, they're fisheries.
It's also in shipping. Yeah, so.
And that's the one I wanted to talk about.
So let's get on to. That Let's go shipping, yeah.
We will put up a map at this point, mate.
Nate, our, our tech genius, assures me that it's possible.
So at the moment we've got the Northern Sea Route controlled by
(28:39):
Russia, we've got the Northwest Passage controlled by Canada.
And the likelihood that Arctic melting would mean the
transpolar sea route or an almost kind of mythical third
route, basically right across the North Pole could open up and
that could change everything andit would go straight past
Greenland. So.
Tell us. OK.
(29:00):
So all three would go straight or around close to Greenland
again. Thanks Nate, you amazing person
for the for the map, the trans polar route, which is the one if
you think just right through themiddle is unlikely to be
feasible just because of the insurance cost.
So if you think about the Arctic, you've got months at a
time where it is pitch black. So search and rescue
(29:21):
capabilities are expensive to field.
So that is going to add insurance premium onto those
goods. It doesn't make it economically
viable. NE passage you can upset all the
Americans listing for saying it's Canadian.
Oh no, you said it was Canadian controlled.
Northwest Passage. Good.
Good, good. Yes, sorry, Northwest Passage.
(29:42):
In fact, the only real bilateralArctic dispute at the moment is
between Canada and the US and it's over the status of that
waterway, which the Canadians say is internal waters and the
US says no, no, no internationalwaters.
So that'll be interesting to follow.
The one that I wanted to talk about is the Northern Sea Route.
(30:04):
That is a section of the Northeast Passage, NSA section,
because there's an entire, again, if you're having a look
at the map, the Northwest, the Northern Sea Route is, I guess
the best way to describe it is it's a political being.
It's a political framing that looks after the Russian Arctic
(30:25):
waters or the Russian Arctic zone.
These are by international law. And this is the fun part about
the Arctic Great race or the Arctic Carver.
The largest legitimate stakeholder is the Russian up is
the Russian Federation right by our own, unclosed by our own
international law and norms. So that is a section that has
its own Russian domestic laws applied to it.
(30:48):
So the route goes across the topof Russia.
Yes. It hugs the Russian Arctic coast
and then it kind of comes down into the Barents Sea through
Norway and then out into the North Atlantic.
I see. And there's also a section when
you're entering the Northern Searoute that you're going up
through the Bering Strait at thetop of the Pacific Ocean.
So that's international. Between Alaska and Russia, yes.
(31:10):
Yes, yes, yes. So the Chinese have started to
invest heavily in Russia's Northern sea route, so ports,
transshipment hubs to utilise this.
And when, when you mentioned just before that the shipping,
the Arctic shipping dynamic of this security problem has really
come online recently. It absolutely has.
(31:30):
And I'm talking in the last couple of months, you've got now
I think it's three Chinese shipping companies who have
secured deals to send, you know,cargo, cargo using the Northern
Sea route. 6 months ago to a year ago, we were talking about
only month by month access and you needed an ice breaker.
(31:53):
Less likely now. It's compounded by the fact that
China is now building Ice Breakers indigenously.
We expect a nuclear powered ice breaker to be announced by the
Chinese government in the next year, which is huge.
Doesn't So we need, you know, nuclear ice breaking support
from the Russians. They still will have to pay a
fee to use this. But if you can get goods on a
(32:18):
superhighway from Asia to Europein 40% less time, you're saving
fuel, but you're saving insurance, your saving fee,
You're, you're, you know, your customer wants to work with you
more. So it's a game changer.
And another one in the last month has been South Korea.
They're now legislating to turn north and start utilising an
(32:41):
Arctic shipping route. So where Greenland comes into
play here is you have the Greenland, Iceland, United
Kingdom gap. So it's a choke point.
That was a, you know, a historical, I guess, relic, you
could say, of the Cold War. So one of the key concerns for
NATO was it needed to be able totrack Soviet Subs that have to
(33:06):
go through the GI UK gap to get out into the North Atlantic,
right? So they had all sorts of sensors
there that fell into disrepair and now they're getting repaired
slowly and surely. So you have the potential,
should you want to, to frustrateChinese transportation, the next
superhighway. Whether or not you want to do it
(33:26):
remains to be seen. So it is a kind of strategic
domino effect with the Arctic opening up for Australia.
And this brings me to the point where some people say why would
an Australian write a book aboutGreenland?
And here I am saying that these ends of the Earth is so much
more connected than we realise, right.
(33:47):
We want to focus on the Indo Pacific as our primary strategic
theatre. But the roof or the ceiling and
the floor of that theatre, they're the polar regions.
What's going on at the ends of the Earth does matter.
But take shipping, for example. If you start reorientating
global shipping artilleries through the north, through the
Arctic, between Asia and Europe,that takes a lot of pressure off
(34:10):
the Malacca Strait, off the South China Sea.
It makes Australia a very priceymarket to resupply for all of
our importation needs. And it also makes regional
Southeast Asian economies like Singapore.
It puts them into very, very dire straits budget wise if the
(34:32):
majority of their economy relieson being a, you know, shipping,
shipping nation of the region. Let me just make sure that I've
got this correct. In a nutshell then at the moment
basically trade and and shippingbetween the Pacific and Atlantic
Oceans goes really through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal,
(34:54):
Indian, Indian Ocean, Malacca Strait, South China Sea.
Yes, this is a you basically go over the top of the world to the
north of Russia, which Russia essentially controls.
Apologies to the flat earthers, but yes, you go.
Right over the top of the world that's cheaper, faster, and
becoming more feasible. Viable.
(35:15):
Yes, in various ways. China's showing a strong
interest in this. Other countries are showing a
strong. Interest India has just
announced as well an Arctic policy Yep utilising shipping DP
World, which is the top sort of UAE shipping conglomerate around
the world. They're also looking at
transshipment hubs as well alongthe Northern Sea route.
And this would completely upend global seaborne trade absolutely
(35:39):
all sorts of ways, including in a way that affects Australia,
because basically a huge proportion of global shipping
would come nowhere near Australia and therefore we would
become very difficult to get to.You'd have to pay more to get
the goods right that come by sea, which is pretty much
everything. And to bring it back to
Greenland. Greenland sits at one end of
this enormous arc and therefore could be used in all sorts of
(35:59):
ways, either to help or to hinder other people.
'S exactly, so Greenland becomesin itself a foothold for
potentially coercing the next iteration of global trade.
Right, right. So presumably the China Russia
no limits partnership, you know,factors into this as well in
that you know, Russia is going to look fondly on or or at least
(36:21):
be be increasingly willing to toassist China's economic and
strategic. Absolutely.
And the interest here is, is fascinating because for the
Russians, they would want to seemore Chinese footprint in
Greenland throughout throughout that kind of Scandinavian
region. Because while it might not be,
(36:42):
you know, an alliance, I don't think it's an alliance.
There's more that brings them together.
And especially when it looks at when you're looking about, when
you're talking about the Arctic or the high N, the more that,
that you can limit US NATO ability to choke or control what
goes on in the Arctic, which Greenland is a, you know, one of
(37:05):
the major entry points into the Arctic.
It's it's good news. It's fascinating.
It's really. Really, so long as they can, as
no long as the Russians can be sure that they can control
Chinese access to the Northern Sea route.
And that's the big question which we won't know the answer
to sure. Sure, right?
Right now, they probably feel like they don't have a lot of
(37:27):
choice. But right now the Chinese are
paying their tolls, their pre warning of planned pilotage.
And you know, that's great. But we also know that history
says it's not a, it's not a great relationship.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, really interesting.
All right, let's just, we've gotto cover off on a couple of
other things. One is just, OK, how does the
(37:49):
politics look now in, you know, in the latter end of of 2025
after everything that's gone on?And we've seen some pretty, you
know, some pretty tetchy diplomacy between the US and
Denmark. So I was looking at a Wall
Street Journal story from earlier this year that the Trump
administration directed the CIA to start looking at people who
(38:13):
both in Greenland and and Denmark, who would be
sympathetic to US objectives forGreenland.
Denmark a few weeks ago summonedthe the US acting ambassador for
the second time over this issue.Just explain the state of the
current sort of tug of war between the US and Denmark and,
and in particular, how is it shifted in response to Trump's
(38:35):
more, I suppose, you know, provocative remarks about
Greenland. It's almost the relationship is
almost one that you kind of wonder if it merits a kind of
Real Housewives of Greenland andDenmark storyline, because so
much happens each day, right? And you have to understand the
dynamics between green light andDenmark before you can then kind
(38:58):
of superimpose why your, your, your assumptions as to why green
Denmark is responding to Trump'sAmerica in the way that it is.
So first of all, it was fascinating to see, yes, I read
the same article. And to see this play out, it
brings to bear a reality that foreign influence is something
(39:24):
that happens everywhere. We, I think for some people, it
was kind of shocking to to to read that an ally or a partner,
a good democratic nation was, you know, doing things that were
potentially untoward in in a friendly's back garden.
But I mean, this happens every day.
The funniest story I have about that is a byproduct of of this
(39:48):
in of this exact story you're talking about with the
ambassador being summonsed to kind of explain why the CIA
might be digging and digging around in Nuke, which is the
capital of Greenland. The fact that it was all kind of
kicked off because a someone reported that the US embassy had
set up kind of a table of US books at the National Library.
(40:13):
In nuke and it said, you know, sponsored by the US embassy,
American politics, American geography great, you know,
people of history's past. So that is also the level of I
don't want to say, oh, it's a word.
That's the level of sensitivity.I think anything is seen as
interference, right, And potentially influenced.
(40:35):
Sure, sure. A point about the dynamics as
they are today that I think should be fleshed out more is
this statistic that was put out that said the majority of
Greenlandic people, 85% do not want to be part of Trump's
America. And I think we really need to
(40:57):
interrogate the data a bit more.So that was only 2700 people in
that in that poll of Greenlandicpeople.
But it's not the right question because it was posed.
And you only understand this if you'd like me talk to people
from Greenland. It was posed in terms of either
or. So it was either you want to be
part of Trump's America or Denmark.
So it's better the devil they know.
(41:17):
OK. So of course, they said no.
The next question, which wasn't published by The Wall Street
Journal, was do you want independence from Denmark?
And that was also a resounding majority.
So there's that. That always plays plays in the
background, I think. But the current state of affairs
(41:40):
between Denmark and Greenland has been really difficult to
navigate. I think for Denmark, because
they've got on one hand this, you know, larger than life U.S.
President who is shining a spotlight on as a part of their
realm that is equal parts really, really significant to
(42:07):
its current political standing. It makes it an Arctic player.
You know, it's it's territory. But then there's this, you know,
pervasive historic atrocities that anyone who's a modern day
Dane, who has this kind of outlook on life about Heidi and
Scandinavian democracy and equality and universal rights
(42:29):
would be horrified to know exists.
Yeah, sure. It's a really weird tension.
Yeah. Yeah, OK.
Well, on that front, how's the How's your book been received in
Denmark? Yeah, thank you for asking.
It's been really interesting. I have not been able to secure a
Danish publisher. It did go to a couple and I I
got some wild feedback, which I do have essentially a what about
(42:53):
ISM when I spoke about a couple of the historical stories about
the relationship between Denmarkand Greenland.
The first one was the forced contraception that was given as
healthcare because the Danes runGreenlandic healthcare to young
Inuit girls without their knowledge.
Their mothers didn't know either.
(43:14):
They, yeah, there's a whole class action suit about that
today that's coming out in the wash, and the Danish government
have kind of paid a lot of moneyfor it to go away.
Is that story in the second story was the Danish Queen
Margarethe took 10 Inuit children and basically selected
(43:35):
them in Greenland, brought them back to the Danish Kingdom, gave
them out to her friends, advisors, and they wanted
basically to do a 7UP or whatever the British equivalents
called to see if they could turnthese Inuit children into Danish
citizens. It didn't work out well.
It lasted about 12 months and then they tried to return the
children and of the 10 or so, I think they were part of the
(43:58):
programme, there's only two or three alive today.
So huge psychological issues there.
It is interesting because the What about?
ISM? It was basically framed to me by
one publisher as well as an Australian author.
How dare you talk about these really bad historical things on
(44:20):
our book if you haven't even discussed what you've done to
your own Indigenous population. And I just thought, you know,
that's not the point. Not a book about.
That funny that in a book about Greenland and it's relations.
With so there's a deep psychological shame at the heart
of this and the I do wonder how much in your history books later
in time when we can look back and see won't be me.
(44:42):
Hopefully my kids will want to do it look at the archives and
see what the Danish discussions were in government.
But I wonder how much of the anger and pushback against the
Trump interest in Greenland is to do with keeping their own
very spotty history silent. One huge point that are that
already underscores that is the fact that under the Washington
(45:05):
Treaty, so NATO alliance Article4, where we can have a
discussion, Article 5, you know the mutual defence treaty, but
Article 4 we can have a discussion about someone in the
alliance feeling threatened. Denmark has not triggered that
has not triggered any of those discussions, despite there being
a number of statements now made by the US government about
(45:28):
intent or planning to take sovereign territory.
Why? Because that that wasn't a body
that was, you know, established to defend from within the hen
house. It's from the outside.
Would be a bit weird calling, calling NATO to right to respond
to another NATO member, right? And I I mean, yeah, I mean you,
(45:49):
I mean Trump. Also all of European defence,
you know, Kit is US as well, so sure, it's a whole lot of
problems. It would be a strange thing to
do. So, so a bit, but, but I guess
the to to the, the point is thatthat basically Greenland is
don't really, I mean taking thatpoll, I mean, acknowledging what
you said about the the either orbinary, that's always a little
(46:11):
bit tricky with polling. I think I mean to to defend the
poll. It sounds like they polled about
4.5% of the Greenland population, which is polls go
is, is actually a fairly large slice.
If you did that in Australia, itwould be over 1,000,000 people.
But but the obviously the binaryis a problem.
But I think we can reasonably say that the majority that most
Greenlanders don't want to be incorporated into the United
States of America, but nor do they necessarily appreciate the
(46:35):
current relationship they have with Denmark.
Do they actually just want to become independent?
They do so recognise that the economic viability of that in
the short term. Is for the sustainability of the
independence. Yes, it's a chicken.
As I said, it's a chicken and egg thing.
They need to have the economic sorted so they can actually
prosper as a country. But then it's such an impossible
issue because then if you dig into the sort of the Self
(46:57):
Government 2009 Self Governance Act for Greenland that the
Danish parliament passed, it says the end goal where we're
all working to get to is for notautonomy, but complete
independence of the Greenlandic nation.
Then there's the fine print, which says Greenland must hold a
(47:18):
referendum on this, which they've done twice now.
And it's astoundingly yes. But the fun little fine print
which brings us back to this impossible problem is that the
results of the referendum must, quote, be approved by the Danish
parliament. Why would Denmark sever
(47:40):
Greenland? It's like taking off your
healthy leg. It gives you vast resources to
the in the Arctic. It's a bounty gold mine.
It makes you a relevant Arctic player.
And there are serious concerns that if Greenland was to be
given, you know, it's exit, the Faroe Islands would follow suit.
Without the Faroe Islands, you then don't have a Kingdom, you
(48:04):
just have Denmark, right? So this is huge.
So, so independent. OK, so independence looks
unlikely then. Really.
I mean, this, this. It's very hard to imagine
Denmark. Yeah.
So I think it'll be kind of a managed autonomy, right, You
know, colonisation light and. They already have.
So I mean effective self rule other than foreign policy and.
(48:24):
Foreign policy, not defence policy.
I think there's a little bit more control over the currency,
but it's, it's a really, it's a coercive relationship, you know,
to be and it's, as I said, it's an impossible situation to be
sustainable, to be their own country.
They need to pick and choose whois investing in their country,
(48:44):
what partnerships they're inking.
But they cannot do that without the Danish approval.
OK, fascinating. All right, Well, look, we will
watch with great interest. Congratulations again on the
book, Liz. Thank you Rush out and bias.
Incredibly timely and I do recommend it to our to our
audience. It's thanks so much.
I I learned a hell of a lot. It's an extremely easy read.
It's an entertaining but informative read.
(49:06):
Thanks so much for coming on. Thank.
You. Thanks for listening, folks.
We'll be back next week with another episode of Stop the
World.
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