My President Donald J. Trump threatens to take Greenland and does not rule out force to do so. A conflict emerges between the current United States’ administration and the people of Greenland and Denmark. My loyalities as an American citizen lie with the U.S. Constitution and the people of Denmark and Greenland. I worry about my government’s malicious incompetence when it interacts with friends and allies of more than 100 years such as Denmark. This tiny NATO country (half the size of South Carolina) of 6 million people (like Wisconsin or Minnesota) supported us during our 20-year long war in Afghanistan. Their price in blood (people killed) was as high as ours relative to their population [Source]. Hence I consider the statement of my current Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth malicious, incompetent, and shameful when he responds to my Vice-President J.D. Vance that “… I fully share your loathing of the European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC …” [his caps, not mine].
Greenland to scale over USA (left), Europe (center), and Asia (right).
Greenland is large, but only 55,000 people live there. Its northern reaches have been mapped only about 100 years ago by small groups of Danish explorers, scientists, and Inuit hunters moving by dog-sleds. Some died, but most survived. Even today, the Danish military patrols the northern reaches by dog sleds and satellite phones. These Sirius patrols consist of six teams of 2 Special Forces soldiers each who cover an area about the size of New England without encountering another person during months of steady traveling.
I traveled to Greenland 1997, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021 and, hopefully, again in 2025. As a polar scientist my work relates to the physics of oceans and glaciers. All this work involves ships and people from the United States of America as well as Canada, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. So I spent about 12 months of my life on ships in the coastal waters of Greenland, but in 2017 I also lived for 6 weeks at Thule Air Base which is now called Pituffik Space Base. We then surveyed the coastal waters and glaciers via daily snowmobile trips on the 1-3 feet thick sea ice. I met Inuit hunters both on the sea ice working and on base visiting. I met Danish Soldiers in Thule/Pituffik who in prior lives climbed out of the torpedo tubes of U.S. submarines and stormed beaches in Somalia and/or Yemen in joint military missions. I met Danish dentists, grocers, barristas, carpenters, policemen, cooks, electricians, and plumbers. They all support shared values of democracy, freedom, and respect for each other. They are our friends, not our enemies. They are good people, they are European, and they are not “PATHETIC” as current U.S. government officials call them.
Greenland near Thule Air Base or Pituffik Space Base in the fall of 2015 and spring of 2017.
More than 400 Danes and Greenlanders operate the base such as providing heat, water, food, plumbing, snow removal, civil administration, medical services, and general repair of all things non-military. They also form the experienced backbone of the base, because most of them have worked here for 5, 10, 20, or more years. In contrast, the U.S. soldiers rotate in and out every year as did my former father-in-law when Thule housed up to 11,000 US soldiers during the Cold War.
Today my Vice-President visits this Pituffik in North-West Greenland for a few hours. I do not know, but I doubt he will even spent the night where about 150 Americans operate large radar installations as well as an large airport and deep water seaport. I also doubt he, his wife, or National Security Advisors will gain understanding of people, place, or culture during their brief fly-by. They did get the firm message from the leaders of both Danish and Greenlandic governments, however, that they are not wanted. The uninvited U.S. officials changed plans and visited a remote military base at Pituffik rather than to expose themselves to Greenlanders and Danes in public at the central population center of Sisimut during a national sport’s event.
Two weeks ago almost 2% of Greenland’s population took to the streets in their capital Nuuk to expressed their views regarding their country [Source]. Relative to population, this would be the same, as if 6 million Americans would march in Washington, DC. Perhaps we need such a march to prevent the ongoing “Russification of the USA” where the malicious incompetence of my current government shreds the Law and undermines the Constitution of our United States of America.
Icy Seas 