Greenland’s big political gamble

From his purchase of New Jersey casinos to his proposed acquisition of Greenland, United States President Donald Trump’s real estate deals have always been plagued by bad timing. The US could probably have bought Greenland from Denmark in 1917, when it did buy the US Virgin Islands from the Danes, but Trump is a century too late.

Nevertheless, his latest bad idea shines a light on what has been happening in Greenland. Trump may not know – since he rarely reads intelligence reports – but in November 2017 Greenland premier Kim Kielsen led a government delegation to Beijing to seek Chinese investment.

Greenland, the world’s biggest island, is not fully independent but it is autonomous from Denmark in everything except foreign affairs and defence. Kielsen was looking for Chinese investment in mining but he was also interested in attracting a Chinese bid to build three airports on the island, which depends on World War II-era airstrips. This set off a panic in Nato, involving visions of Greenland getting so deep in debt to Chinese banks that it would end up letting China, which has comically declared itself a ‘‘near-Arctic nation’’, operate military aircraft from those airports. The US military, which has an air base in Greenland, took fright. The US strongly urged the Danish government, which provides two-thirds of Greenland’s budget revenue, to nip this in the bud.

Denmark had previously refused to fund the new airports but suddenly came up with lowinterest loans for them. End of panic.

By then Kielsen’s government had collapsed but his Siumut Party came out ahead in the election last April and he is back in power. And the issue of Chinese mines in Greenland is still on the table.

There already is one in southern Greenland, producing uranium and rare earths for a ChineseAustralian consortium. Other projects potentially involving Chinese capital, and Chinese workers, are under discussion, including an open-cast ironore mine, a zinc mine, and both offshore and onshore oil and gas leases.

For the 56,000 Greenlanders, 90 per cent of whom are Inuit, the geostrategic implications of Chinese investment are irrelevant – and they are probably right about that. What worries them, and occupies a central place in Greenland politics, is the cultural and social implications of foreign investment by anybody, Chinese or not.

The Greenland Inuit are one of the few indigenous societies that has full or almost full control over their own destiny but the impact of the modern world on their traditional culture has been as destructive as it has for all the others: depression and other psychological illnesses, alcoholism and drug use, and an epidemic of suicides. So they face a choice. Do you go on trying to preserve what is left of the old Arctic hunting and fishing culture, although it is already so damaged and discouraged that it has the highest suicide rate on the planet? Or do you seek salvation in full modernisation through high-speed economic growth, while keeping your language and what you can of your culture?

The decision was made in 2013, when the Siumut Party took power. It believes modernisation has gone too far to turn back now.

Better to gamble on solving the social problems by enabling everybody to live fully modern, prosperous lives. It makes little difference to Greenlanders where the foreign investment comes from so long as they have political control – but they certainly don’t want to become Americans.

The ‘‘Greenland Purchase’’ is not going to happen.