My Take on Greenland US Agreement. Post Mortem Thoughts
This was a comment I just wrote in r/greenland so I thought I'd post it here. TLDR: I'm still very much in mourning over the agreement. Mourning for Greenland.
The thing that concerns me is that people are buying the cheap narrative that this is the same. It's not the same deal from 1951 by any means. I am American. I have worked in investment banking and oil and gas for over a decade unfortunately. I know what happens when money and resources are on the line. It's ruthless. Especially now that people are feral and only out for themselves.
I spend a lot of time in Greenland since I left the oil business five years ago. I spent a lot of time there before but only on holiday. Now, it's a calling to concentrate on Greenland for me. It's not about money but it's about what's right for the benefit of the people that live there especially in the remote towns that I am passionate about. Two of those towns are located near a current base and a future base / oil leases.
We have a lot of wisdom that keeps us alive in Greenland. You don't go out when there is a storm and bad weather. You stay in and wait until it's safe. This agreement was struck during the craziest storm imaginable. Why you'd make it prior to reviewing it with your own parliament and without your people's input right before the midterm elections is beyond me. There was no immediate threat that necessitated the agreement to be signed right now. People from DK keep telling me that they had no choice and they had to do something. Why now though? Why not do the vague working group indefinitely and actually inform the public of the progress.
This is just the beginning. It's the floor and not the ceiling. It will be revised and expanded. It will be broken or ignored if the investors or priorities needs change. That's business. It isn't personal. In oil, we budgeted to pay the EPA fines. It's too expensive to retool and reconfigure the refinery to comply so we just break the rules and pay the fine and that's what will happen here... except wait. There are no fines or institutional capacity to enforce anything in Greenland. The taxes aren't even enforced properly. The airports were built incorrectly. On and on. It's a young country (self government was only enacted in 2009) and needs time to institute enforcement and guidelines and gain experience to do this.
The mechanisms needed to be built first. The house needed to be cleaned up. There is a lot of work to do to get things in order within the kingdom before inviting a new player to come in.
https://www.knr.gl/da/nyheder/usa-faar-naesten-frie-toejler
What's going to happen in Greenland where there is no enforcement capacity? And now the enforcement will be the US policing itself in Greenland. That's great for the US but terrible for Greenland.
They just couldn't be patient and wise and wait for the storm to clear. They had to go out during the least certain moment in time and sign away everything for nothing in return besides defense, which really wasn't the main issue. The resources are the main issue and always have been since contact with the outside world (European) 700 years ago followed by the formal colonization 300 years ago.
I don’t know who this is but he nailed the analysis. Spot on:
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2102606070694937075
The leverage opportunity that Greenland had to get its house in order is what I'm mourning more than anything else. I was shocked this summer from my trip that I just returned home from on Wednesday.
The conditions in Qeqertat and Hiroapaluk in particular will never leave me. I thought Tasiilaq, Kulusuk and Ittoqqortoormiit were forgotten and neglected. They are not trapped the way the people are in the far north. In East Greenland you can fly to Iceland for maybe $500 or less if you qualify for a certain fare. In Qaanaaq, the flights are $2000 one way per person to Nuuk.
Numbers don't lie. This is just a tiny example of the type of inequality we are dealing with in an overseas territory that is 3x the size of Texas.
Greenland is an expensive place to operate in and profits are not easy. Capitalism does not work here or anywhere in the Arctic. Look at Nunavut and Alaska and the average person living there. It's not like the reality TV shows. $30 for baby formula that sells out and isn't available for months gets old.
The minerals that are left are not easy to get. Neither is the oil that's there. Greenland has been mined to death for centuries. The totally nonexistent infrastructure and relatively poor concentration of the minerals that are so sought after are not competitive on the commodity market if they have to compete with minerals that are easier to obtain. Are they gonna refine them somewhere nearby? What's the plan? Will AI magically make drilling more accurate?
All of it is just too much too fast. Dominate, then obfuscate, and finally eliminate. We are entering the obfuscation phase because nothing makes any sense yet.
So yes, as an American citizen, my fellow countrymen don't even know how good of a deal this is for them yet. The media is spinning nonsense. But as a wannabe Greenlander, it's devastating. It will be worse than anyone can contemplate for Greenland and absolutely amazing for the shareholders, beneficiaries, and broligarchs and that just kills me. The logic in DK and GL is high trust and high transparency society with a free press. It's not like that in the US at all. Now the third party with a totally different worldview is coming in not to protect but to extract for its own gain because that's the mentality drilled into us from birth here. The psychological impact of this change will be what I'm watching. It won't happen overnight but in 5 years time or less, it will be very apparent.
I hope people brace themselves for the greed and dog eat dog mentality that will now be the law of the land. The communal sharing and cooperation that enabled Greenlanders to survive impossible climate and conditions will not be viable in the new system. I have been researching the traditional knowledge and sharing culture for years, but now it's game over and I need to find something else to do with my time. I would love to see reunification of Greenlanders and Canadian Inuit and Alaskans in my lifetime. There are so many opportunities to strengthen Inuit Nunaat. The entire homeland. There is the Inuit Circumpolar Council but one of my long term goals was to co-found a foundation or institution that allowed Greenlanders a guaranteed free trip to somewhere in Nunavut at a minimum and maybe Alaska as well once in the lifetime. Reconnect with each other and accelerate the healing process. It was a long term project that I want to spend the next 40 years on.
Perhaps I should start thinking about that again once the shock wears off. want to reach those without leadership potential and polish. Just average people that deserve to meet others that share similar ancestry and traditions in the Inuit homeland that have been separated from each other by arbitrary colonial borders. Inspiration came from the meaning of ice project and apparently the Uummannaq Children’s Home has been thinking about this for quite some time.
In a week or two, the shock will wear off and more analysis will bubble up to the surface. I’ve been largely offline for the past 7 weeks as well so it’s been an adjustment as well.