All across Arctic North America, from Alaska in the west to Greenland in the east, there has emerged in recent decades an ongoing dialectic between pro-development and pro-subsistence/sustainability factions within each community. This dialectic oscillates like a pendulum across the generations — sometimes stopping big projects (such as Alaska’s Project Chariot to blast a deep water port with atomic weapons along the northwest Arctic coast, and Project Rampart to dam the Yukon River in the 1950s), sometimes greenlighting them in exchange for concessions (such as the Alaska Pipeline in the 1970s; and the N.W.T. diamond mines in the 1990s), and sometimes both (such as Canada’s Mackenzie Valley pipeline, first rejected in the 1970s but later approved in the 2000s, only to linger undeveloped ever since; and the vast rare earth- and uranium-rich Kvanefjeld (Kuannersuit) mineral deposit in south Greenland, first approved by the more development-friendly, social-democratic Siumut party when in power, but later rejected by the more eco-friendly, democratic socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party in 2021).
Since then, Greenland has been ruled by a coalition led by IA, which in contrast to Siumut is perceived to be less pro-development but has over time, much like all progressives once in power, adopted a tolerance for market economics, particularly if sustainably pursued. It rose to power in large part for its vocal opposition to the Kvanefjeld mine, tapping into widespread popular sentiment, leading to Siumut's downfall. While Kvanefjeld is home to one of the richest rare earth mineral deposits (said to be the world’s second largest), it is also chock full of uranium (said to be the world’s sixth largest deposit), and it has a long history being associated with nuclear power. IA’s decision to pull the plug on Kvanefjeld and to ban uranium mining in November 2021 (it had first been banned in 1988, before Nuuk warmed up to the idea and reversed the ban 25 years later in 2013) — just a few months after it banned future offshore oil exploration in July — suggests that an independent Greenland may prove less “open for business” than its leadership first asserted during Trump’s 2019 overture (under Siumut’s rule) and which it has reiterated in recent weeks (under IA rule).
The intensity of Nuuk’s opposition to Kvanefjeld development may reflect more specifically the ubiquity of anti-nuclear sentiment that is felt so strongly and deeply around the circumpolar world, from Point Hope ever since Project Chariot planned to blast a deep water port out of northwest Alaska’s coast with atomic bombs, a project so dangerous to Alaska’s environment that it helped unify environmental activists and native rights activists (which more often find themselves at loggerheads) to spearhead the land claims movement; to Deline, in the NWT, where mining uranium during the Second World War at the Eldorado Mine at Port Radium left a deadly legacy; all the way to Narsaq, Greenland, where Niels Bohr imagined Denmark’s nuclear future (a future that was ultimately rejected).
Resource extraction, as part of a broader conversation on both the energy side and the strategic/critical mineral side of the resource extraction industry, remains an underlying catalyst for the current geopolitical storm over Greenland, adding luster to America’s renewed interest in gaining sovereign possession of the island. And, as noted in my earlier columns, this reflects a maturation of the Trump administration’s views on climate change. Trump 1.0 largely adopted a denialist position, though its 2019 overture to purchase Greenland was driven in large measure by Greenland’s strategic resource potential. Trump 2.0 appears to accept that climate change is very real, so real that it’s prepared to clash with its own North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, allies in order to benefit from emergent opportunities of Arctic climate change through its America First/Greater United States vision for the Arctic region.
This is very different from Trump 1.0, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in Rovaniemi, Finland at the 2019 Arctic Council ministerial, publicly lambasted China for its audacity to describe itself as a “Near-Arctic” power, while at the same time rebuking America’s very own Arctic Council partners for their progressive views on the climate emergency. The Trump 2.0 team appears to be smarter, more ambitious, more tech-savvy and more open to the opportunities of a warming planet this time around — seeking to position America to benefit from the many emergent and lucrative energy and mineral opportunities that result from climate change.
At the same time, we also see in Trump’s renewed Greenland policy his continued enjoyment derived from annoying allies while finding common cause with their domestic rivals, as we saw in Afghanistan with his historic peace treaty with the Taliban that led to the reverse-regime change of America’s very own ally and comrade-at-arms in a replay of the Paris Peace Talks that brought an end to America’s role in the Vietnam War and the consequent fall of its ally and military partner in South Vietnam. In Trump’s muscular courtship of Greenland, we can see a potential tilt away from NATO to an expanded North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) as a possible outcome, with Greenland potentially emerging independent and in charge of the island (albeit, more akin to a Pacific island state with a compact of free association than a self-defending, fully sovereign entity capable of its own self-defence.) Just as we saw in Afghanistan with the government in Kabul and in Vietnam with the government in Saigon, there is no place in the new order for America’s ally, Denmark, and its continued rule of Greenland from Copenhagen.
One problem that American sovereignty over Greenland can solve is that of its collective land ownership, which greatly inhibits free enterprise capitalism from taking root. The absence of private property tends to favour state-led development, with a more collectivist approach that can suppress the fires of capitalism unleashed by private property ownership. But as we saw historically with efforts to turn Native Americans into yeoman farmers through very flawed Indian Treaties that ended up displacing more than developing native economies, a more balanced approach is needed. That was one of the innovations and strengths of the pioneering Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971 that became central to all of Canada’s subsequent Arctic land claims treaties: creating native corporations at both the local and regional level.
The exclusion of robust subsistence protections by ANCSA led in Alaska to a movement to retribalize lands (Thomas Berger’s Alaska Native Review Commission recommendation in the 1980s) as well as to federal intervention to protect subsistence hunting, trapping and fishing through the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980. But in Canada it led to the adoption of a sustainable development model that allowed the above-noted dialectic between pro-subsistence and pro-development factions within the native community to play out democratically, with subsistence protected by new co-management boards and defended by hunters and trappers committees, and development encouraged by new native corporations. The results were mixed but largely successful, even if the pace of development has been slow and uneven, with projects like the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline never quite taking off (the strength and intergenerational momentum of historic grassroots opposition, as we also see with Kvanefjeld, has proven stubborn to put into reverse.)
Barry Scott Zellen, PhD is a research scholar in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut, and a senior fellow (Arctic Security) at the Institute of the North. He is author, most recently, of Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation in a Contested World (Lynne Rienner Books, 2024). He lived in the North in the 1990s, residing in Inuvik (1990-93), Yellowknife (1994-1998) and Whitehorse (1989-90, 1998-2000).
