Greenland in U.S.-Denmark-China Relations

Trans-Pacific View author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into the U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Jonas Parello-Plesner – executive director at Alliance of Democracies Foundation and senior fellow (non-resident) at the German Marshall Fund – is the 206th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

Explain the strategic significance of Greenland to the United States. 

For the United States, Greenland has since the Second World War and especially during the Cold War been a military strategic asset. In 1941, the U.S. agreed with Denmark, represented by its freewheeling Ambassador Kaufmann in Washington (Denmark was under German occupation from 1940), to U.S. bases on Greenland, a territory part of the Kingdom of Denmark. For the U.S., Greenland was a necessary pitstop for out- and ingoing long-distance flights as well as a first line of defense for detecting planes and missiles approaching the U.S. territory from the north. Since the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force has maintained the Thule Air Base in Northwestern Greenland.