Episode 313: Greenland at a Crossroads with Dr Gabriella Gricius

Greenland is not for sale. That was the message from Denmark and Greenland after the White House summit on the 14th January. Meanwhile, President Trump says the US needs to “own” Greenland for national security, to stop Russia and China in the Arctic. How did an island of 57,0000 people suddenly get flung into the spotlight of international relations, and how could it reshape how we think of the Arctic? 

To unpack this critically important topic, we are joined by Dr Gabriella Gricius, a Senior Research Associate at the Arctic Institute. She is also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Konstanz in Germany, and a Fellow and Media Coordinator with the North America and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN). Dr Gricius GRISHIS is an expert in Arctic and Nordic Security,

The International Risk Podcast brings you conversations with global experts, frontline practitioners, and senior decision-makers who are shaping how we understand and respond to international risk. From geopolitical volatility and organised crime, to cybersecurity threats and hybrid warfare, each episode explores the forces transforming our world and what smart leaders must do to navigate them. Whether you’re a board member, policymaker, or risk professional, The International Risk Podcast delivers actionable insights, sharp analysis, and real-world stories that matter.

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Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe’s business leaders. Dominic is the go-to business advisor for leaders navigating risk, crisis, and strategy; trusted for his clarity, calmness under pressure, and ability to turn volatility into competitive advantage. Dominic equips today’s business leaders with the insight and confidence to lead through disruption and deliver sustained strategic advantage.

Transcript

Greenland is not for sale. And that was the message from Denmark and Greenland after the White House summit on the 14th of January. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump says that the US needs to own Greenland for national security to stop Russian and Chinese activities in the Arctic.

So we have to ask, how did an island of less than 60,000 people suddenly get flung into the spotlight of international relations? And how could it shape how we think of not just the Arctic, but also NATO and some of our closest alliances. I’m Dominic Bowen, host of the international risk podcast. And to unpack this critically important topic, we’re joined by Dr. Gabriella Gricius.

She’s a senior fellow at the Arctic Institute. And she’s also a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Konstanz in Germany, and a fellow and media coordinator with the North American Arctic Defence and Security Network. Dr. Gricius is an expert on Arctic and Nordic security.

And I’m really excited for our conversation today. Dr. Gricius, welcome to the international risk podcast. Thanks for having me.

I’m excited to be here to talk about Greenland. Yeah, it’s a topic that has really caught so many people by surprise, really, not just this week. But you know, this isn’t the first time Donald Trump has mentioned Greenland.

And it’s not the first time the US President has talked about buying Greenland, and we’ll come to that. But I think, you know, you received your PhD from Colorado State University, the political science department. And if our research was correct, your dissertation was about the prevalence of low tension discourse in Greenland.

And I wonder when you were doing your PhD, obviously, you were interested in the topic. But did you ever realise it would really put you at the centre of the NATO alliances and geopolitics as we see it today? Not at all. So when I was first looking at trying to understand the Arctic, looking at Greenland, I mostly came at it from looking at the role of Russia and understanding Russia, UN tensions, how did they emerge in the Arctic.

And so Greenland, for me was something quite interesting and had nothing to do with Russia or any normal issues. But it was just a fascinating island. Definitely is a fantastic island.

And I’d be really interested to look at the tourism stats over the next six to 12 months. I imagine there’ll be more people visiting, but we’ll certainly see how that plays out. More importantly, for now, that high stakes summit between the White House, foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark, meeting with Marco Rubio and JD Vance, that took place on Wednesday the 14th of January.

And from your perspective, how significant was this meeting? Because the initial readouts that we’ve seen don’t seem to have achieved a lot. And I guess, what should we understand about Greenland? An island that’s largely covered by ice, but is suddenly really such an important piece of real estate. So I think from my perspective, when I looked at the meeting between the US and Denmark and Greenland, it wasn’t so much that I was expecting the solution to be 100% solved.

In fact, both of the statements after to me said, this isn’t a question of solving the problem. But rather, let’s have a high level meeting where we can actually talk about and deescalate the situation. So I understood it as let’s start a conversation and bring the temperature down.

And I think that’s really important because when the unthinkable and when the abnormal becomes normalised, this really changes geopolitics. And it’s such a significant issue. And I think this renewed focus on Greenland has really come just weeks after the US’s really controversial actions in Venezuela.

And so I wonder if Venezuela has actually set a precedent that the Greenlanders are now fearful of. When you look at the pattern of international relations and politics today, to what extent do you think that we should see Greenland as part of a broader pattern of how the Trump administration is thinking about power, about territory, about its role in the world, and what some people have unfortunately started to dub the Donro Doctrine? Yeah, I think it’s unfortunate. When I first read the news about what happened in Venezuela, it was a shock to think that this would happen.

And then to hear the remarks from Trump about Greenland, you can’t ignore the similarities and how he talks about resources. So when you look at Venezuela, I think the first thing that comes up is he talks about the oil and gas companies from the US that are going to be invited into Venezuela to do business. And of course, we know that Greenland is the home to a lot of critical minerals that are necessary for things like F-35s, other defence material, electric vehicles, our smartphones.

And so to me, it’s hard to ignore the similarities here. And I think even if Trump claims that this is all about national security, is it really? Or is it really about resources and imperialism? We have to use the word. Yeah, it’s very interesting when we look at that.

And I guess the national security and critical resources, I think many in the Trump administration would say that they are one and the same. We do need to secure these critical resources in order to maintain national security. And I know to really further the national security argument, you know, President Trump and others like J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio have been arguing that the US needs to own Greenland in order to stop Russia and China from taking it.

Now, we know that Russia does have its own military build-up in the Arctic. And we know that China has interest in the area and its reference to the polar silk road. And China has previously sought stakes in Greenlandic mining and airports and research facilities.

But I think many of the high-profile projects were blocked by Denmark and local authorities over security concerns. So China’s presence today does remain modest. With your backgrounds in Arctic security and international relations, how credible do you see the threat from Russia and China in Greenland today? I see it as highly uncredible.

And this is what’s, I think, so shocking about what’s going on, is that when you look at the justifications, the first one is Russian and Chinese ships are very close to Greenland. They’re not. They’re in the Bering Strait, which is on the opposite side of the US.

So if anything, this calls for a build-up in infrastructure in Alaska and focussing on how do we build up an Arctic security presence in this part of the US or the only part of the US Arctic. And there are indeed Russian and Chinese ships practising together in the Bering Strait. So sure, this is a problem.

No one’s arguing that the security situation hasn’t changed, but it’s in the wrong area. The Trump administration then really shifted the argument to saying, ah, now Russian and Chinese troops or some sort of incursion could happen in Greenland. Again, through what passage, through what mechanism? It’s so far away.

And there’s no real purpose, to my mind, for either Russia or China to do this. More recently, Trump has talked about this being necessary to buy the island for the Golden Dome. And this, again, doesn’t make a lot of sense because there already was talk about constructing the Golden Dome.

So this is part of a ballistic missile defence of the US trying to detect against possible weapons coming from Russia or China. But the infrastructure for the Golden Dome is meant to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And it’s sort of this Star Wars, Reagan-esque project that might happen someday, but it’s so far in the future.

And the US already has ballistic missile protection on Pitufik Space Base, which is a US base on Greenland. And the US has had these bases. I mean, the US has had presence there since World War Two and that 1951 Denmark-US agreement.

The US has extensive military access to the island already. So why doesn’t the US just increase its military footprint on Greenland? They could, they could immediately. I’ve spoken to my colleagues from Denmark.

And I think the problem, and that’s just so frustrating, is that any ask from the Trump administration in terms of increasing presence or whatever would need to happen would be accepted by Denmark and Greenland. There’s an unspoken agreement, let’s say, that yes, currently, the 2004 renegotiated agreement has the only defence area as being truly now Pitufik Space Base, but they could expand that at any time. So we’ve touched on a little bit, but if we really go straight onto the critical resources, I mean, Trump has been very explicit about economic interests, particularly critical minerals.

And I know this isn’t just in Greenland. We’ve seen US pressure across so many different areas when it comes to critical minerals. So I know this is a genuine concern from a national security point of view for the administration.

And we know that Greenland hosts 25 of the European Union’s 34 critical raw materials. I think it really underscores not just the depth, but the breadth, as well as volume of resources that Greenland has. And by one estimate, the raw geological value of Greenland’s mineral resources is over 4 trillion US dollars, which is obviously quite a bit of money and would go a significant way to reducing US’s debt.

But at the same time, Greenland’s own foreign policy, this is something that was put together in 2025, emphasise a strong interest in attracting investment and trade from like-minded partners like the United States. So the question that remains unanswered is if the goal is access to resources, why does the Trump administration need to push for sovereignty rather than just investment or partnership, which it seems Greenland has largely welcomed with some caveats around environment protection. But why would there be this need to push for ownership as opposed to investment if Greenland is looking for partners? Well, you’re absolutely right that Greenland has traditionally been really interested in working with the United States.

There are lots of reasons for this. But I think most importantly to say is that right now, Greenland receives a block grant from the Kingdom of Denmark, accounting for around 50 percent of its GDP. And so independence aspirations are somewhat premised on the fact that where are we going to make up the rest of this money to ensure that our citizenry has a good enough welfare.

And so working with the US would conceivably be a way to do this through investing in critical mineral mining. I think the stopgap here is that it costs a lot of money, environmental regulations, it’s going to take time, it’s really challenging in the Arctic conditions in the northern part of Greenland. Ownership to me, why do you need ownership in order to do this? The only logic that I can find out from these statements has to do with the fact that Trump wouldn’t want to be stuck on the whims of Denmark.

Perhaps there would be some political line that he would need to go over or regulations that would need to do. And if the US owned Greenland, that might not be the case. Your regulation would most likely be a sticking point.

And as you’ve mentioned, there is this long relationship between the US and Greenland. And I think the US has quite overtly recognised the strategic importance of Greenland since the acquisition of Alaska. One of the main reasons being the geography and the location and these talks of buying Greenland, as I alluded to earlier, and not actually new.

Previous US administrations have shown interest in acquiring Greenland for varying dollar figures. Can you talk to us a little bit about this history of US Greenland relations, the origins of US military presence in Greenland, and how does that take us to where we are today? Well, it started during World War II, when a Danish representative was concerned about Greenland falling under Nazi control. And so he went to the US and essentially signed this agreement with the US administration without the backing of the full Danish government, saying that the US could have access to Greenland in order for the ability to defend it against possible incursions.

This was fully negotiated in 1951 in the context of the Cold War, because the US was concerned about making sure that it maintained military access to Greenland. And homeland defence has always been a very important part of US presence here. And this has to do again with detecting ballistic missiles, any sort of weapons coming from adversaries.

And in the initial stages of the Cold War, this was an aerial question. So how do we defend against missiles coming over the North Pole all the way to the US? We need a series of warning systems. And this was initially known in Canada as the North Warning System, where the Canada and the US worked closely together.

And they had this string of radar stations through Canada, through Greenland, through Alaska, to defend and detect against possible missiles. Later in the Cold War, this moved towards maritime protection as nuclear submarines became more and more common. And the only way for Russian submarines to exit the Arctic is to go through the GI-UK gap, so the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap.

Again, a really important place for the US to be able to monitor and detect against this. But the US pulled back in the 1990s, right? The end of the Cold War came. There was no need for the US to continue investing in this space, which is why today we only have Pitufik space base.

But the radar was actually upgraded in 2004 in the renegotiation of the defence agreement to also be more capable of looking for more advanced types of missile technologies and space surveillance as well, which is an increasingly important area of weapons development. Thanks for highlighting that. And I think there’s all really, really important points.

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Polling data from Greenland shows that most Greenlanders want greater independence from Denmark, but even more Greenlanders overwhelmingly reject becoming part of America. And I think it’s about 85%, according to a poll published by the Greenlandic and Danish media carried out last year. So how are Greenlandic leaders and even indigenous communities navigating this moment? They’re caught for this desire for self-determination, but at the same time, there’s this unprecedented external pressure from different countries.

So I think I would say first, it’s important to start with the independence aspirations. Everyone understands this will take a lot of time. So Greenlanders themselves have said, we want independence.

There’s no two ways about it. They want to become an independent sovereign state. And if you speak to Greenlanders on the ground or colleagues in Copenhagen, they also say, yes, this is something that will happen at some point.

But as I talked about with the Block Grant, there are some challenges to that right now. And Greenland would need to be fully financially sufficient in of itself before fully gaining independence. And some people have actually said, well, there’s concerns.

How would Greenland get this funding from China, for example, or from another state, which points to some of the concerns that perhaps the U.S. might be having about this. But everyone understands that this is a long-term process. And hearing Greenlandic politicians speak on this, they share this understanding that this will take time, but that they do want it to happen.

We have to separate this then from what’s been going on with the U.S. And at first, you know, when these comments first came up in 2019, colleagues, friends would say, you know, this is ridiculous, right? Why are we listening to this nonsense? And then again in 2025, and again in 2026, and you’re seeing more and more actual concern of what’s going to happen. Do we expect a unilateral military incursion? I think the consensus amongst everyone I know is no, we don’t expect to see this. But as you said, the abnormal has become normal.

So do we need to be prepared for this? I mean, the leader of one of the main opposition parties in Greenland is Pelle Broberg. And I think he’s one of the leading voices for independence in Greenland. And he’s really pushed for Greenland to actually negotiate directly with the U.S. without the presence of Denmark.

And so I can’t help but wonder when I hear Pelle Broberg speaking, is he just trying to seek political points to raise his own profile? Or does he actually have local support for his ideas? No. So the vast majority of Greenlanders, 85%, are not interested in being a part of the U.S. The Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, has very assertively said that an attack by the U.S. on Greenland would simply mark the end of the NATO Transatlantic Alliance. Of course, that makes perfect sense.

You’ve said that anyone you’ve spoken to says that the risk of a, you know, troops on the ground, traditional invasion is quite low. So do you think this is just posturing? Or do you think this is something we need to take seriously with the Trump administration? That’s a hard question. I think we do need to take it seriously, because not doing so would not be understanding and taking Trump as his word.

And he’s shown in his first and second administration that we should take seriously what he says, even if it seems outlandish, and even if the crises that he points to are 100% manufactured. So I think we do need to pay attention to what he says. But at the same time, Danish experts in Copenhagen and colleagues have said everyone knows that Denmark is not going to be able to defend against a U.S. military incursion, right? This is ridiculous to consider.

But I think it’s about deterring and signalling to the U.S. what is not possible to think about. So that’s why, to my mind, we’re seeing German, Swedish and French military personnel on the ground. It’s less to do with, we actually think we can defend a U.S. military attempt, and more to do with showing it’s not just a Denmark and U.S. and Greenland situation, it’s a NATO alliance situation.

And a good colleague of mine, Lynn Mortensen, has said that NATO is really important for Denmark, for all of the Nordic states, but also for the United States. And in such an aggressive move, they would actively downplay U.S. national security that they seek to gain by owning Greenland. It’s quite interesting you talk about that.

I mean, these small mixed contingents of soldiers from Germany, the UK, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, I mean, they’re showing political alignment with Denmark. And I think this collective refusal to treat the Trump administration’s language about taking Greenland is something that actually could be done. How do you think we should be interpreting these recent, now they might just be symbolic, but these actually deployments of small numbers of troops from NATO allies to Greenland in the last couple of days? I see it as if the U.S. were to do the unthinkable and there were only Danish troops on the ground and Greenlandic population, it would remain a U.S.-Denmark-Greenland situation that many of the other allies in NATO could distance themselves from if they wished.

And they might, right? If we think about the strategic calculus of this, it’s not good for the EU and European states to be in conflict with the U.S. It has direct benefits for Russia, for other adversaries, because now Europe is left a bit alone. But by putting German, British, Norwegian, all of these different countries there, it becomes to my mind, this precautionary signalling tool of, you’re not just attacking us, this would immediately involve many other allies as well. Yeah.

I wonder what it’s like for the soldiers and officers that have been deployed there for that reason, that they’re there, that if we get killed, our country gets dragged into war as well. But there really is a changing tune in Europe at the moment. And the European leaders in the last year, not only have they agreed to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, but NATO is now talking about setting up an Arctic sentry, similar to the Baltic one, which is definitely necessary.

And the British government is really leading talks regarding this possible deployment of military force to Greenland to bolster NATO’s presence there. And I think one thing that the Danes, at least outwardly, have been able to see eye to eye with, with the Trump administration, is a recognition. And then being an element of truth, I think was what Danish politician said, that the security should be increased, security should be bolstered in order to counter Russian and Chinese interests in the Arctic, not necessarily Greenland, but across the Arctic.

So I wonder, do you think this is necessary, an adjustment to the new realities? And is there a risk that we end up militarising the Arctic and ending up in another arms race? I think the Arctic, in a way, is already seeing this persistent increase of military activity. I wouldn’t necessarily call it militarisation, because to me, that has this inherent escalation language that goes along with it. And Arctic states increasing their exercising capability isn’t militarising, it’s about being prepared to fight where you expect a battle to be.

And so increasing military activity is just signalling as well to Russia, I think most importantly, to say, we know that you don’t want a conflict here, but we would be prepared if you were to do so. So in terms of whether Arctic century is useful at all, I think it is not so much useful when we’re talking about if there’s actual threats in Greenland, or in that part of the Arctic, but it’s an important signalling tool to the Trump administration, who is an important Arctic ally. So having Arctic century there is, to my mind, the Danish attempt to show Trump, we take your concerns seriously.

We can make this a NATO question and not something else. But I just want to say something quickly here as well, is we’re talking about the Arctic, we talk about it as this one broad part, everything above the 66 parallel. But really, there are three different Arctics that have lots of different strategic realities.

So there is the North American Arctic, which is Alaska, much of the Canadian North and Greenland. And there’s not a lot of infrastructure, communities are rural spread about, but we’re not seeing a lot of the same types of hybrid threats that we’re seeing in the European Arctic, where there is many more people, a lot more connectivity, but a lot more threat from Russia and engagement from under the threshold possibilities. And then there’s the Russian Arctic, which of course is its own situation.

And so I think we just need to be clear that when we’re talking about changes in the Arctic, where are we seeing changes in the Arctic? What type of threats? Are they kinetic? Are they under the threshold? Are they something like an influence campaign? Specificity is really important. No, I think that’s a fantastic point. And thanks for raising that, Gabriella.

And I wonder if America was to do the unthinkable things that we wouldn’t imagine possible, and they did invade, they did take over Greenland, I think one of the biggest concerns, obviously, there’d be the breach of the rule of law, there’d be the risk to the people living in Greenland and what it would do to NATO. But I think something that would concern me immediately would be the precedent that it sets for Russia and in other places in the Arctic, like you just mentioned, and like Svalbard. What would that mean if U.S. continues? And I think most legal scholars agree that America’s actions in Venezuela were a breach of international law.

I think we recognise that the pretext for invading Iraq back in 2003 was a breach of international law. If these things continue, what does that do? What does that allow countries like Russia to do who might have other interests in the Arctic? I think it’s great news for countries like Russia and China, if they can look at the U.S. and see them doing unilaterally illegal international actions, that allows China and Russia to do a lot of the same. I don’t necessarily see China doing so in the Arctic context, because China’s quite careful in how it acts in the Arctic.

And I think rightly so. Its concerns are commercial, and it has to do with international status. So an expert on China in the Arctic, Erdem Lamazzov, he has talked about how important it is for China, who sees the Arctic as the strategic frontier.

So they don’t want to militarise it and take territory or act illegally. They just want to have a stake in what they see as a really important part of the international system. But who’s to say that they wouldn’t use that rationale for Taiwan? I think that’s the quick jump that we all make when we talk about U.S. Greenland, China, Taiwan.

For Russia, it’s a bit complicated as well. So when I look at Russia in the Arctic, while of course there has been increasing militarisation since 2015, a lot of it is what we call dual-use buildup. So when they look at the Arctic, they say oil and gas resources, hugely important for our national economic security, and shipping, the northern sea route.

And so bringing militarisation there is not good for business. And so why and how would they want to do something like take over Svalbard, for example, which is a part of NATO, which has much different ramifications than Trump taking over Greenland, although of course both are a part of the NATO alliance. You mentioned China, and I think China has described itself as a near Arctic state, which is, I love that title, a near Arctic state.

I think you’ve spoken about this before. How is China likely interpreting this moment? I think China understands this moment as a wait-and-see approach. So they’re observing what’s happening in Greenland.

And the way that the international community is reacting to how Trump behaves, I think tells China a lot about what is and is not permissible other places in the world. So back in the 2010s, China engaged what’s called wolf warrior diplomacy, where they would be quite aggressive in their stances to Nordic states. And they would say, yeah, we want to work with you, but you can’t work with Taiwan, or very wolfish behaviour in the Arctic.

And this was received quite poorly by Nordic states. And China really had to retreat and rethink, well, how should we readapt our approach to this region? And I think they’ve taken a lot of lessons from that. So I wonder with these lessons, and I think your research has looked at the discourse, the discussions and the risks around securitisation in the Arctic, with this rhetoric, and with what we’ve discussed about the US, NATO, China, Russia, are we witnessing the end of the high north, low tension era? Or is there still space to pull us back and desecuritize the Arctic? It’s almost as though you had the title of my dissertation in your hand.

Yes, I think there is still space to desecuritize. I think it’s less possible now than it has been in the past. But the way that an interviewee spoke to me one time in Norway, as they said, high north, low tension was the reality for a very long time.

Now it’s an aspiration. We’re no longer perhaps in an era where low tension is how we’re conducting ourselves. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still try to achieve low tension through working bilaterally, working multilaterally, focussing on things that we all share as concern in the Arctic, like climate change, the most important security threat in the region.

So I see it as perhaps not the reality, but something that we should still aspire to and still try to bring the temperature down, both on broad Arctic things, but also very specific areas like Greenland or Svalbard, or understanding how shipping works in the Arctic. I think for the last five years, I’ve been really working with large companies across Europe. And one of the key messages I’ve been trying to convince business leaders is the ability to predict the future is increasingly not possible.

And anyone that gives you a prediction is increasingly guessing. What we’re much better doing is doing scenario planning, looking at most likely, most dangerous scenarios, looking at a few other types of scenarios in between and working at what would that mean for our company, for our community, for our government agency, and working through those different scenarios. So I wonder when you look ahead and you think about the potential scenarios and how the current situation will unfold, which scenario worries you the most and which do you think is the most realistic? Hmm.

I think what worries me the most is a return to 19th century imperialist thinking by all states. So right now we’re certainly seeing that from the U.S. and I think we already see that from Russia and Ukraine and have been observing this since 2014. But for now, what’s been limited is I think that Russia and the U.S. think this way, perhaps China thinks this way too, but it’s not acting in this way in the Arctic.

But what would happen if suddenly all of the eight Arctic states said in order to counter this aggression, it needs to be everyone for themselves and everyone would stop acting with one another. And I don’t see this as a possibility in the Nordic space, I want to say, but to see that happening, the fragmentation of states that are already building such close community, security, military interoperability there would, I think, be really highly damaging. But more realistic, I would say, is that I imagine that the European Arctic states need to do something much closer together and they understand that as well.

There’s been increasing moves to pull not only Finland and Sweden into the alliance, but also how do the Nordic states come together as a whole and try to build a stronger norms, military, environmental presence in the region. And so I see the actions of the U.S., which traditionally has been all of the Nordic’s number one security partner, that’s still there. That security guarantee is always going to be there.

But how the U.S. is acting is, I think, forcing a lot of Nordic politicians and policymakers to say, OK, what if the U.S. wasn’t there? How are we going to react to changes in our environment? And if you were advising the foreign office in Denmark and Greenland today, what would you be urging them to prioritise today? The million-dollar question. I think I would be doing what they’re doing now, which is going around to individual members of Congress, trying to build a rapport. Because how Trump is talking, and I think everyone in the Arctic community understands this, is so divorced from the reality on the ground.

And much of the Trump administration, perhaps some of the Republicans, have just been going on in this way of speaking about the Arctic, and I think going to the U.S., really meeting one-on-one with people and saying, let’s educate you. Perhaps not in such condescending language, but let’s explain to you what’s actually happening. Why what some of the Trump administration says, those motivations about increasing presence might be true, but what’s not true? And what can we do to bridge that gap between one another? Because even though we might seek to distance ourselves from the U.S. because we don’t agree with some of the policies, the way that the Trump administration is conducting itself in the world, that doesn’t change the fact that structurally the U.S. is Denmark’s and, of course, Greenland’s very close security cooperator. And we can’t just throw that out the window.

And Gabriella, when you look around the world, i mean, we’ve spoken obviously about the Arctic and Greenland quite a lot today. But when you look around the world, what are the international risks that concern you the most?

Not just in the Arctic?

Not just in the Arctic. Yeah, it’s standard question we ask all of our guests on the podcast.

Well, I think what’s happening in Ukraine is, of course, a huge risk. We see it devolving into a bit of a slower, unstable conflict. But I think the risk is just there of how will Russia continue to act in this space? We don’t know. So as you said, it’s hard to predict the future. I have no idea how Russia is going to act in the next one or five or 10 years in Ukraine. So that’s risky to me. That’s worrying.

And I think in general, the Trump administration as a whole and the U.S. domestic political situation as an American, i can say I’m always worried about what’s happening at home, but it seems to be getting more polarized, more unstable. And the U.S. has traditionally been this really important player in the global international order. And so should we rely on the U.S. in the same way? and what’s the risk of that?

And I think then one final concern I have has to do with climate change as a structural risk and Because it’s just changing what we know about how the world works, how our businesses can operate on the ground, how ships move through the water. It’s not just a military question or how people are actually living in different parts of the world, but it has a real impact on everything. And one example that I think is notable here that I didn’t know about until recently has to do with India. And so India,of course, has climate change challenges like everyone else. And we think of them in terms of heat waves, that it’s getting much hotter there. People are really experiencing challenges like in the book, The Ministry of the Future. But what’s also happening is sea level rise because the monsoon season and is getting even more unpredictable. And so that means much of the coastline of India is in danger. It’s many islands, it’s agricultural capacity. And so there are just these big like threat multiplier challenges that you can’t divorce.

That’s huge. Yeah, between what’s happening domestically in America, Ukraine, of course, an absolute tragedy. And then, yeah, the world’s most populous country with massive, massive climate change risks ahead of it.

Thanks for explaining that. And thank you very much for coming on the podcast today, Gabriella.

Thanks for having me. It was a great conversation.

Well, that was a really interesting and insightful conversation with Dr. Gabriella Griscius. She’s a senior fellow at the Arctic Institute, and I really appreciated hearing Gabriella’s insight on how Greenland and other foreign actors are and navigating this current geopolitical crisis. I think her insights made clear to me just how high the stakes are and how many uncertainties remain about what happens next for Greenland and ultimately the direction of Arctic security. Please remember to go to our website and subscribe to our email list to make sure that you’re getting our newsletter in your inbox every second week. Today’s podcast was produced and coordinated by Anna Kumulstedt.

I’m Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks very much for listening. We’ll speak again in the next couple of days.