A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Trump keeps saying that he wants the U.S. to take over Greenland, which is a semi-autonomous territory that's part of the kingdom of Denmark. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with Danish officials this week. So what's the Trump administration's strategy behind all of this? Rebecca Pincus is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. She studies Arctic security and geopolitics. Pincus told me that Greenland's main appeal for Trump is its location.
REBECCA PINCUS: It's a forward location for the United States to monitor for intercontinental missiles coming across the Arctic from Europe and Eurasia. And it's been important in that regard for decades since the Cold War. And the U.S. base in northwestern Greenland has been a place where the U.S. has maintained advanced radar systems and other sensors to serve that early-warning homeland-defense domain-awareness type of mission.
MARTÍNEZ: What more would the United States be able to do in Greenland if it actually acquired it?
PINCUS: The U.S. has been shedding bases and decreasing its position in Greenland for the last few decades. So you could imagine an outcome here where the U.S. is granted additional defense areas in Greenland, but I haven't seen specific asks. And that's what's a little bit confusing about this situation, because right now, there is no obstacle to the U.S. enhancing its military presence in Greenland.
MARTÍNEZ: I'm wondering how might Russia or China respond to a takeover of Greenland? Would they see it possibly as a threatening or hostile act to them?
PINCUS: It wouldn't be a direct threat because they don't have significant interests there. You know, Russia has never particularly expressed interest in Greenland, aside from fishing. China is certainly interested in Greenland's resources, but it's not sort of on the shortlist of top Chinese priorities. So I don't think it would be in substance, particularly threatening to either of those countries, but I do think the process could be seen as setting an example for potentially more sensitive areas closer to home.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, Greenland does have a lot of natural resources, mostly untouched - copper, nickel, zinc, rare earth minerals. How long would it take for the U.S., actually, to start exploiting those and mining those things if they wanted to?
PINCUS: Many years. There are numerous obstacles to bringing those minerals to market that have forestalled development up until now. The first among those is the physical environment. It's an incredibly harsh operating environment, and there is virtually no infrastructure. So the costs of extraction are enormously high. In addition, Greenland has a very protective regime with regards to mineral leases because protection of the natural environment is a high priority for Greenlanders, so it's unlikely that environmental regulations are going to be sort of tossed out wholesale. It would probably take 10 or 20 years just to get a mine open. And mining companies, again, because they're sort of making these investments that are going to pay out over the course of decades, they're making long-term bets about the future, and they want certainty and stability. And what's happening now is very uncertain.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, with the north part of Alaska, the United States already has a presence in the Arctic. What would it mean to have a larger one with Greenland as part of the United States territories?
PINCUS: It would be expensive (laughter) is what it means. You know, Alaska is a state that gets a lot of federal spending and has, you know, a fair amount of need. You know, if you look at sort of social indicators in Alaska, it's a high need state, and there's a lot of federal spending going in there for a variety of things, including military. Greenland is a big territory that would require a lot of U.S. spending, not just the sort of annual support that the Danish government currently provides to the Greenlandic government, which is about a little over half a billion dollars of direct support. Certainly, Greenlanders wouldn't, I think, accept compromised standards of living. So there's an enormous amount of money that would need to be spent there, and it would just - it would be a long-term sustained cost. If the U.S. military took an enhanced presence in Greenland, that would be really expensive itself.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Rebecca Pincus. She's a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute. Rebecca, thanks.
PINCUS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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