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, 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 seemed a pretty out there proposal from the US President.

And Dave, you asked me to insert a 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 to stop 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 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 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 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 and the history, increasing strategic competition and demographic challenges Greenland faces.

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 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 getting my 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?

What value are they going to get about 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 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 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 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.

Information, I think I'd already inked 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 put an 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 important here.

And as you say, there's a, there's a lot of back story that that 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 far back?

Do you want to go, Dave?

So let's go back Treaty of Keel 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 the Treaty of Kiel, end of the Napoleonic Wars and you had, you know, Sweden come out, Kingdom 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 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.

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't want to say Anglesea, but we had the broader wave of the European reach come to being.

But what's really interesting as well 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 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 have an October.

The, the, you have to Fact Check me.

October, the 9th or the 10th is the Leif Ericsson Day.

It's a national holiday in the US.

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 is through 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.

It felt, I mean, unnecessarily provocative.

I mean, as, as, as can be the case.

I mean, he, he, I think the, the state 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 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 was President Lincoln's Secretary of State basically looked at a map and said, OK, our strategic 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 significance to global security.

So obviously Denmark fell under German occupation, German rule.

And so it was really fun watching and reading through the US archives, all of the letters that were sent to King Christian of Denmark from President Roosevelt at the time saying, we have your, you know, Danish 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 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've taken 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 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 move forward with not listening to our wishes.

And, you know, explicitly saying Ambassador Kaufman, who was the Danish ambassador to the US at 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 that this 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.

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 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 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 of improved cooperation might be might be the way forward and we'll we'll come.

To the island training.

So let's talk about the value of Greenland 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 Vance accused Denmark of failing to 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 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 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 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 the Greenlandic people want.

So there's another level of social kind of bilateral tension there between the Danish people and the Greenlandic people.

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 The Art of the Deal, and I've kind of applied them to this maximalist approach he's taken 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 somewhere in the middle about being able to base more forces or to have more square footage.

So, so 40.

Two US forces.

The art of the deal in the sense of, 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.

Which you need to you need to look at the I.

Mean you need to glow, we need a map.

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 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 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 the Arctic 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, 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 proximity of Northern America to Greenland 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 Cold War era in Greenland, it was 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 into your 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?

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 6 minute overview of what Camp Century was, which was an underground ice camp and it sounds really James Bondy but it actually 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, 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 build the underground?

The underground?

You mean there's more to this US plan underground city essentially there were very, you know, top secret missile testing plans under Kennedy there and the archives haven't uncovered 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 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.

They knew that the US government was storing, maintaining, utilising nuclear weapons out of Greenland.

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 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, 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 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 should say he.

He was essentially saying we know, but we're gonna do you a 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 months it was deemed unnecessary to 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 because of the ice melt found also of the ingresses and wondered what was there and under, under, under ice facility.

Wow, so one this.

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.

So what I mean?

More so now so that that central sort of U.S.

forces footprint in Greenland 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, 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 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.

But but what I'm, what I'm taking from this is that there would be enormous value across a range 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 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 there in Greenland, right?

OK, OK, interesting.

But China, I mean, is it?

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 really been limited to early Chinese 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 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 research are 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 research initiative, which will be housed out of Yellow River Station, which is China's Arctic station 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 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 these people.

So any way you cut it, there's a strategic win and a strategic loss when it comes to Greenland.

And, and again, we'll come back to the current state of politics because I do think that's 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 touched on as well.

Is it, is it very resource rich?

Are these resources accessible?

Are they becoming more accessible as ice melts, for 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 able to work are already employed by either the Greenlandic or Danish governments as that issue.

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.

So they need to pivot away from these kinds of industries like resources.

So this is where interest in tourism or in education research comes 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.

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 how that will happen because the Danes say, you know, there's a cap of X millions of dollars 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 an Australian, I found it so interesting.

The political discourse in Greenland was looking for external investment.

And it's looking at the EU, it's looking at the US and it will 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.

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 your hands on the resources, but then 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 down into Europe.

So again, think of hopefully get a map up here, but think of think of the Arctic, you'll come down from the North Pole.

The strategic gains are not only in 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 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 and it would go straight past Greenland.

So.

Tell us.

OK.

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 the middle 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 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.

In fact, the only real bilateral Arctic 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 international waters.

So that'll be interesting to follow.

The one that I wanted to talk about is the Northern Sea Route.

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 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.

So the route goes across the top of 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 Sea route that you're going up through the Bering Strait at the top of the Pacific Ocean.

So that's international.

Between Alaska and Russia, yes.

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.

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.

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 superhighway from Asia to Europe in 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 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 to track Soviet Subs that have to 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 frustrate Chinese transportation, the next superhighway.

Whether or not you want to do it 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 about Greenland?

And here I am saying that these ends of the Earth is so much more connected than we realise, right.

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 the Malacca Strait, off the South China Sea.

It makes Australia a very pricey market 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 majority of their economy relies on 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 shipping between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans goes really through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, 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.

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 along the Northern Sea route.

And this would completely upend global seaborne trade absolutely 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 ways, either to help or to hinder other people.

'S exactly, so Greenland becomes in 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 be be increasingly willing to to assist China's economic and strategic.

Absolutely.

And the interest here is, is fascinating because for the Russians, they would want to see more Chinese footprint in Greenland throughout throughout that kind of Scandinavian region.

Because while it might not be, 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 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 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 got to cover off on a couple of other things.

One is just, OK, how does the 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 both in Greenland and and Denmark, who would be sympathetic to US objectives for Greenland.

Denmark a few weeks ago summoned the 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 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 and Denmark storyline, because so much happens each day, right?

And you have to understand the dynamics between green light and Denmark before you can then kind of superimpose why your, your, your assumptions as to why green Denmark is responding to Trump's America 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 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 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.

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.

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 interrogate the data a bit more.

So that was only 2700 people in that in that poll of Greenlandic people.

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.

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 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 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 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 ISM when I spoke about a couple of the historical stories about the relationship between Denmark and Greenland.

The first one was the forced contraception that was given as healthcare because the Danes run Greenlandic healthcare to young Inuit girls without their knowledge.

Their mothers didn't know either.

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 money for it to go away.

Is that story in the second story was the Danish Queen Margarethe took 10 Inuit children and basically selected 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 turn these 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 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 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.

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 Treaty, so NATO alliance Article 4, 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 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, 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 that that basically Greenland is don't really, I mean taking that poll, I mean, acknowledging what you said about the the either or binary, that's always a little 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, it would be over 1,000,000 people.

But but the obviously the binary is 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 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 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 not autonomy, but complete independence of the Greenlandic nation.

Then there's the fine print, which says Greenland must hold a 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 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 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.

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 who is investing in their country, 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.

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.