The Greenland Question
By Louis Perez y Cid
Through this text, I salute Peter, his wife Kirsten, Lars, and our other former legionnaires living in Denmark.
Through this text, I salute Peter, his wife Kirsten, Lars, and our other former legionnaires living in Denmark.
A world we talk about without ever listening to those who inhabit it
In June 1951, after many months spent among the Inuit of northwest Greenland, Jean Malaurie* witnessed an unreal vision emerge from the tundra: a city of metal, hangars, and smoke. Where silence and hunting still reigned, the secret American base of Thule had just been born. For the explorer, this emergence marked an irreversible shift, that of the Inuit world.
In one summer, the United States deployed 12,000 men and an entire fleet to build, on frozen ground, one of its largest military bases abroad.
The threat of a Soviet attack via the polar route served as justification. For the Inuit, it was a silent annexation, the brutal intrusion of a world of machines, speed, and nuclear weapons into a world governed by hunting and the rhythms of life.
In one summer, the United States deployed 12,000 men and an entire fleet to build, on frozen ground, one of its largest military bases abroad.
The threat of a Soviet attack via the polar route served as justification. For the Inuit, it was a silent annexation, the brutal intrusion of a world of machines, speed, and nuclear weapons into a world governed by hunting and the rhythms of life.
The American Presence
The American presence in Greenland, however, did not begin with the Cold War. As early as 1941, after the Nazi occupation of Denmark, the United States established several bases there to secure the North Atlantic and air routes to Europe. The defense agreement signed in 1951 between Washington and Copenhagen formalized this presence and allowed for the construction of Thule.
In 1953, the shock became a wrenching experience. To secure the base, the authorities forcibly relocated the Inuit population to Qaanaaq, severing the vital link between this people and their hunting grounds. Malaurie sees in this the collapse of a social, symbolic, and moral order; the harpooner was not defeated by mistake, but by an excess of power.
The fracture was lasting. Accelerated sedentarization, forced urbanization, and the breakdown of cultural transmission mean that ancient practices survive, but no longer structure life.
In 1968, the crash of an American bomber carrying thermonuclear bombs tragically sealed this history. The ice floe was contaminated, and the local populations were barely considered. Thule, now Pituffik Space Base, remains a major strategic hub for American space surveillance.
“To stay with the polar Inuit,” wrote Malaurie, “is to refuse to let entire worlds disappear not in a crash, but in silence.” This silence still weighs heavily. Greenland is now largely urbanized; more than a third of its 56,500 inhabitants live in Nuuk, and almost the entire population is settled on the coasts. Social indicators—suicides, alcoholism, violence—still bear witness to the violence of this imposed transition.
In 1953, the shock became a wrenching experience. To secure the base, the authorities forcibly relocated the Inuit population to Qaanaaq, severing the vital link between this people and their hunting grounds. Malaurie sees in this the collapse of a social, symbolic, and moral order; the harpooner was not defeated by mistake, but by an excess of power.
The fracture was lasting. Accelerated sedentarization, forced urbanization, and the breakdown of cultural transmission mean that ancient practices survive, but no longer structure life.
In 1968, the crash of an American bomber carrying thermonuclear bombs tragically sealed this history. The ice floe was contaminated, and the local populations were barely considered. Thule, now Pituffik Space Base, remains a major strategic hub for American space surveillance.
“To stay with the polar Inuit,” wrote Malaurie, “is to refuse to let entire worlds disappear not in a crash, but in silence.” This silence still weighs heavily. Greenland is now largely urbanized; more than a third of its 56,500 inhabitants live in Nuuk, and almost the entire population is settled on the coasts. Social indicators—suicides, alcoholism, violence—still bear witness to the violence of this imposed transition.
Greenland is once again a central geopolitical issue.
Today, Greenland is back at the heart of the geopolitical game with the Golden Dome missile defense project. It's worth remembering that Greenland is not a member state of the European Union, but rather the territory of an EU member state, the Kingdom of Denmark, with a population of 6 million.
The United States already has a presence in Greenland. What it now seeks is to secure control of the country from Denmark, in order to exploit it as it sees fit, turning it into a veritable Swiss cheese to extract the potential "rare earths" and other minerals essential for cutting-edge technologies and AI. This reserve is strategic in the context of a confrontation with China, which currently holds nearly 90% of these resources.
What is Europe doing? It feigns sovereignty, makes numerous declarations of principle, and hides its paralysis behind law and regulations. The continent neither wants to nor can defend what is strategically important to it; Greenland strikes no vital nerve. Europe has locked itself into a state of willful impotence because it was built without a state, without an army, without a unified political people, but rather as a commercial coalition of independent nations.
This incapacity is not new. From de Gaulle to the French New Right, by way of Aron and Zaki Laïdi, the criticism remains the same: Europe confuses rules with power, law with force.
Today, transatlantic dependence is plain for all to see. The potential loss of Greenland would not only be strategic; it would be a moment of truth.
It would reveal that Europe cannot defend its interests, that it exists only as a docile periphery.
Greenland, marginal for Europe but central for the United States, could become the catalyst for a reckoning. An alliance that survives only at the cost of denial and impotence is no longer an alliance; it is submission.
Note: Read this excerpt from Victor Hugo's speech at the Peace Congress, Paris, 1849.
"In the past, Normandy waged war on Brittany, Burgundy on Champagne, Provence on Dauphiné. Today, there is no longer wars between these provinces; they are all united and fused into the homeland. The same will one day be true for Europe... The United States of Europe. Who knows? Necessity knows no law.
*Jean Malaurie (1922–2024) was a French ethno-historian, geographer, specializing in geomorphology, and writer.
**The bomber is carrying four thermonuclear bombs. The conventional explosives of nuclear bombs, intended to initiate the reaction, detonate on impact. There is no nuclear explosion, but the blast disperses plutonium, uranium, americium, and tritium over a vast area.
The United States already has a presence in Greenland. What it now seeks is to secure control of the country from Denmark, in order to exploit it as it sees fit, turning it into a veritable Swiss cheese to extract the potential "rare earths" and other minerals essential for cutting-edge technologies and AI. This reserve is strategic in the context of a confrontation with China, which currently holds nearly 90% of these resources.
What is Europe doing? It feigns sovereignty, makes numerous declarations of principle, and hides its paralysis behind law and regulations. The continent neither wants to nor can defend what is strategically important to it; Greenland strikes no vital nerve. Europe has locked itself into a state of willful impotence because it was built without a state, without an army, without a unified political people, but rather as a commercial coalition of independent nations.
This incapacity is not new. From de Gaulle to the French New Right, by way of Aron and Zaki Laïdi, the criticism remains the same: Europe confuses rules with power, law with force.
Today, transatlantic dependence is plain for all to see. The potential loss of Greenland would not only be strategic; it would be a moment of truth.
It would reveal that Europe cannot defend its interests, that it exists only as a docile periphery.
Greenland, marginal for Europe but central for the United States, could become the catalyst for a reckoning. An alliance that survives only at the cost of denial and impotence is no longer an alliance; it is submission.
Note: Read this excerpt from Victor Hugo's speech at the Peace Congress, Paris, 1849.
"In the past, Normandy waged war on Brittany, Burgundy on Champagne, Provence on Dauphiné. Today, there is no longer wars between these provinces; they are all united and fused into the homeland. The same will one day be true for Europe... The United States of Europe. Who knows? Necessity knows no law.
*Jean Malaurie (1922–2024) was a French ethno-historian, geographer, specializing in geomorphology, and writer.
**The bomber is carrying four thermonuclear bombs. The conventional explosives of nuclear bombs, intended to initiate the reaction, detonate on impact. There is no nuclear explosion, but the blast disperses plutonium, uranium, americium, and tritium over a vast area.