Dr. Ole Wæver: ‘Nothing Can Be Ruled Out’

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During a speech in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum in January, President Donald Trump ruled out using military force to acquire Greenland; however, Dr. Ole Wæver said people in Denmark and Greenland have concluded, “nothing can be ruled out.”

“Trump is sufficiently unpredictable, irrational, doesn’t really care for what is in the U.S. long-term interest, but pursues whatever is in his own personal interest and what he thinks works in the short term,” Wæver said. “Therefore, the fact that he would be completely crazy to do it is not an argument, because crazy is definitely an option.”

Wæver is a professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo. He founded CAST, the Centre for Advanced Security Theory, and is the Director of the CRIC, the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts. Wæver has been published in multiple journals and has written books about international relations, affairs and security.

The most recent United States attempt to acquire Greenland was at the start of Trump’s second term, “radically” changing opinions about America in Denmark and around the world, according to Wæver.

“I think that Cuba and others are doing global surveys, and they’re quite striking that the U.S. has really plummeted over these years,” Wæver said. “Denmark is one of those where it has fallen the most strong, and that is because Denmark was exceptionally pro-American.”

Wæver said the U.S. has been a “big protector” of Denmark during World War II and the Cold War, but the protection has gone both ways, with Denmark sending “more soldiers per capita than most to Afghanistan, [and] to Iraq” following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Danish leadership “really embraced” President George W. Bush’s view on the Global War on Terror, according to Wæver.

“The disappointment from Denmark in what has happened is probably more brutal than anywhere else, because we were maybe the most naive in embracing an alliance with the U.S., making it quite emotional and deep,” Wæver said.

Each of the three global superpowers, the U.S., China, and Russia, has a history in Greenland and the Arctic region. The U.S. has had a military base in Greenland since 1951: the Pituffik Space Base, formerly the Thule Air Base.

Wæver said Russia is the “biggest Arctic power,” because “half the Arctic coastline is Russian.” He also said China had ideas of expanding its presence in the Arctic region roughly 10 years ago, potentially building an airport or mining. That Chinese interest was a concern to the U.S., and it subsequently asked Denmark to do something about it.

“In several cases, you got something a bit like a triangular drama, where the Chinese would knock on the door to Greenland, then the Americans would say, ‘Oh no, not good,” Wæver said. “Then they [Americans] would knock on the door in Copenhagen and say, ‘hey, you Danes, you better control those Greenlanders because otherwise they might be doing this thing with the Chinese.’ Then Copenhagen would go to Nuuk and say, ‘Hey, this is very bad. Be aware of what you’re doing with the Chinese,’ and so on.”

Wæver said that Greenlanders are “much less naive now than they were maybe 10 years ago.” He said Greenlanders are aware of keeping China “at bay,” and released a foreign security strategy plan two years ago that made it “very clear” that Greenland sees it as an ally with the West and NATO.

At the World Economic Forum, Trump told world leaders that the U.S. interest in Greenland centers around national and international security. He said it has been a policy for “hundreds of years” to prevent outside threats from entering the Western Hemisphere.

“This enormous unsecured island [Greenland] is actually part of North America on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere,” Trump said. “That’s our territory. It is therefore a core national security interest of the United States of America.”

Neutralizing outside threats, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, towards the Western Hemisphere is why an arrangement known as the Defense of Greenland Agreement was put into place, according to Wæver.

“This whole mess we have now is really starting from a situation where the U.S. has and can get whatever it wants,” said Wæver.

Recent developments and increasing interest in Greenland among global superpowers have overshadowed a long and connected relationship between Greenland and Denmark. Wæver said the connection is “emotional, symbolic, identity” driven rather than something “tangible.”

“It’s a part of who we are,” Wæver said. “It makes Denmark a bit more grand and interesting than we otherwise would be. We would feel that we lost a part of ourselves if we lost this element.”

It is common for Greenlanders to travel to Denmark for education, employment, family ties, and health care due to limited access in Greenland. But Wæver said it is also common for Danes to travel to Greenland.

“If I talk to people from Denmark, I often find that people have a Greenland element in their life history,” Wæver said. “That they were born in Greenland because their parents were there as schoolteachers or whatever, or that they went there for a few years.”

As the connection between the two has evolved, so has the increasing political presence Greenlanders have in the Danish Parliament and Greenland’s self-rule. Out of the 179 seats in the Danish Parliament, two seats are represented by Greenland; however, Wæver said “at least half” of the laws passed by the parliament do not apply to Greenland, leaving it up to Greenlandic politicians to make their own laws.

“A lot of the decisions are actually separate, but they [Greenlanders] have a presence,” Wæver said. “In essence, they [Greenlanders] get to vote one more time than the rest of us [Danes]. Like Scotland, if you’re in Scotland, you both have your own parliament in Scotland, but you also vote for the parliament in London.”

Despite the connection between Greenlandic people and Danes, Wæver said the relationship has been “complicated” in recent decades, with Greenlanders expressing their displeasure with how they have been treated, feeling they have experienced “problematic colonial history or disrespectful Danish behavior.” Conversely, “Danes think it’s annoying that the Greenlanders always complain about us [Danes] having treated them badly.”

“It’s emotionally quite complex at the moment,” Wæver said. “It’s tension-filled, but still, most Danes and most Greenlanders hope that the relationship can hold and evolve without any big vulture. So, kind of gradually giving Greenland more and more independence and staying connected somehow.”

This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into Greenland’s people, history, and culture. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available on Edge of the Arctic: Greenland, the Land of the People.

This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club, and a private donor.