If you wish to get a glimpse of the lengthy and sophisticated historical past between the US and Greenland, Narsarsuaq is an effective place to start out.
Narsarsuaq, inhabitants 141, a village in southern Greenland, is tucked deep inside a fjord valley, subsequent to a runway constructed as a part of a U.S. army base throughout World Battle II. It served as a cease for plane on their method to Europe, amongst different issues — the results of a wartime protection pact that preceded the present safety settlement amongst Denmark, Greenland’s authorities and the US.
Even on this hard-to-reach a part of the world, there’s the identical form of acute uncertainty concerning the previous and the long run — what the U.S.-Greenland relationship meant earlier than and the place it’s heading — that individuals in and out of doors America are feeling two months into President Trump’s second time period.
“We’ve this connection and historical past,” stated J.J. Simonsen, who works for a tour firm that operates in Narsarsuaq. “There’s some stains on this tapestry — many, many stains. You can also make it optimistic and unfavourable. There’s all the time one aspect or the opposite.”
For months, Trump’s intensifying fixation on buying Greenland — and his refusal to rule out pressure to get it — has angered Danes and Greenlanders, a majority of whom need independence from Denmark and definitely don’t need to be People. This month Greenlanders gathered within the capital, Nuuk, and marched to the U.S. Consulate, carrying red-and-white Greenlandic flags and cardboard indicators that learn, “We aren’t on the market!”
Enter JD Vance. The vp’s scheduled go to to the Pituffik Area Base in Greenland on Friday — alongside along with his spouse, Usha; the nationwide safety adviser, Michael Waltz; Vitality Secretary Chris Wright; and Senator Mike Lee of Utah — appears unlikely to go far in bridging the rising hole, regardless of the pleasant and informal tone of Vance’s announcement. It could go higher than the earlier plan would have, through which Usha Vance was set to attend a well-liked nationwide dog-sled race. Pituffik is the one remaining U.S. army base in Greenland, in a extra distant a part of the island.
However it could nonetheless really feel, to many, like a present of pressure. I traveled to Greenland final week, and the Trump administration’s consideration prior to now two months didn’t really feel particularly pleasant or informal to the individuals I spoke to. Some even stated that Trump’s feedback — this week he advised reporters, “We’ll go so far as now we have to go” — have introduced an finish to many years of excellent relations. Greenland’s prime minister, Mute Bourup Egede, lately advised the Greenlandic paper Sermitsiaq that Greenland had trusted America as a buddy and ally however that that point was now over.
Others agree. “We really feel betrayed. We thought that we have been mates,” Aqqaluk Lynge, a former politician who has lengthy been a part of the island’s drive towards independence, stated in an interview. “There’s loads of alternatives for the U.S. authorities — or others who’re — to speak to us on what they need. However posturing like this has left us in a scenario the place we’re saying, ‘Effectively, then, we’re not mates anymore.’ So what will we do?”
Greenlanders’ theories about what Trump truly needs from all of this — and whether or not it’s good for them — range extensively. Some imagine the president is taking a maximalist place to ease the best way for an expanded protection settlement or extra American funding within the island’s trove of uncommon earth parts and different crucial minerals. Some fear U.S. troops may in the future be on the best way. And nonetheless others see the eye, whereas unwelcome, as an opportunity to get nearer to the impartial nation they need to be — politically, socially, economically.
“There are Greenlanders who imagine that it’s damaging one thing,” stated Simonsen, standing in entrance of one of many previous U.S. air base buildings in Narsarsuaq. “In my eyes, it’s not. It’s publicity. It’s good for us. It’s creating debate.”
