[music] -War and Peace, a podcast by the International Crisis Group. -Welcome back to War and Peace, a podcast of the International Crisis Group. I'm your host, Olga Olokur, speaking to you from London and flying solo without a co-host for this one. But what a guest, so I'm not entirely solo. Today, we are talking about the Arctic, the US push to acquire Greenland, great power interest in the Arctic region, and what this means for European security and Arctic security. Trump raised the idea of the US somehow taking ownership of Greenland, which was a territory of Denmark back in his first term. He came back to the topic again at the start of his second term. And previously, until early 2026, every time he raised this idea, he then seemed to move on to something else, and people breathed a sigh of relief because they didn't really know what to do with it. But in early 2026, the way that Trump and his senior officials were talking about it was different, notably because they were doing things like not ruling out the possibility of using force to acquire the island and pairing the idea that the United States somehow be gained control of Greenland with chair of threats to allies. If you take a look outside of Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place. We're not going to have Russia or China occupy Greenland, and that's what they're going to do if we don't. So we're going to be doing something with Greenland either the nice way or the more difficult way. So perhaps not too surprisingly, this caused a shockwave across Europe, a continent that has been buffeted by shockwaves in recent years. But in this case, Washington's allies were trying to figure out what to do about an ally that was threatening another ally. And what to do about it given that there wasn't a clear logic to it, right? Trump was talking about the U.S. needing to own the island in part to protect it, but the United States already has really broad space to operate military and Greenland under longstanding defense arrangements. In late January, just within the weeks of this crisis flaring, the World Economic Forum trumped things down a little bit by saying that he would not use force. And then he announced that there was a framework for a future deal that had been worked out with the NATO Secretary General Mark Grutter regarding Greenland. And since then, there have been some so-called technical talks going on between U.S. Danish and Greenland officials, which are presumably about Arctic security and Greenland's defense posture, though it's really hard to know it's actually going on. And thus hard to know how much of this is real and how much of a fig leaf to cover up for the fact that the crisis was a very confusing one and no one is quite sure that it's over. But while the U.S. designs on Greenland specifically may boggle minds across the world, Arctic security and geopolitical competition in the Arctic region are actually topics that have been preoccupying decision makers for quite some time. With climate change rendering the resource-rich region more accessible, there is a prospect for lucrative new shipping routes. Russia, which is the geographically biggest Arctic country, has poured money into ports and energy projects looking to this future. Chano, which is not in the Arctic, has started describing itself as a near-artic state and looking to play more of a role, including through the prospect of trade. Meanwhile, with Moscow and NATO member states viewing one another as adversaries, military planners are surely thinking about the prospects for the risk of conflict, and NATO has announced a new mission to bolster security in the region. So what does one do in this situation of melting ice, heavily armed neighbors, and an unpredictable United States? To talk it through, I am delighted to welcome Gabriella Grosius. Gabriella is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Constance, a senior fellow at the Arctic Institute, and a fellow and the media coordinator with the North American and Arctic Defense and Security Network. She's been researching and writing on Arctic and Northern European security issues for quite some time, so she is a perfect guest for this episode. Gabriella, welcome to "Worn Peace." Thanks for having me. So let's see if we can start with basics. What do people mean when they say Arctic security? I think the problem with this is that we mean a lot of different things when we talk about Arctic security. It might mean on the one hand climate change, which is the largest threat to people actually living in the Arctic, but we might also mean geopolitical competition as you've just outlined with tensions rising between the US, Russia, and China globally, which of course have downstream impacts in the Arctic, and of course changing economic security concerns as well. So Arctic security, I think, covers this catch all term that, depending on who you are and what conversation you're in, you might use it differently. So you might be worried about people's lives, you might be worried about their livelihoods, you might be worried about your economic potential, and you might be worried about war, right? Exactly. And do you see these as interrelated and derivative one another, or are they operating in something of stovepipes? No, I think they operate really closely with one another. The Arctic from a military security perspective has actually been relevant since the Cold War, where the region was described as the shortest aerial route between the US and the Soviet Union. And so that was how security was talked about during the Cold War, but after that, we began to think of the Arctic as the zone of peace. And it wasn't until around the mid 2000s that prospects started to rise about what would it mean that Russia planted a titanium Russian flag on the Arctic Ocean floor? What does it mean? I mean, do we care? I think at the time we didn't care about the fact that Russia did this because of course it was part of this broader mission to potentially extend the continental shelf claims that Russia had. And now I think in hindsight, we look back and we say, oh, was this the start of something that we could have potentially predicted? And this cooperation agenda, right, for a long time, that was actually the message that this is one of the few regions where there is cooperation. And where the interests don't always fall in line with traditional geostrategic alignments. Has that changed? I think it's certainly changed since 2022. I would argue since around 2019, when Mike Pompeo went to an Arctic Council meeting and he called the region a space of geopolitical competition. So I think while there are areas to still cooperate and to my mind, we should cooperate on questions like climate change, transparently environmental challenges, geopolitics have made that much harder. So on the one hand, people talk about cooperating on climate change on the other, they want to exploit the climate change, the effects of the climate change, right? It means they can put more ships through this region. That means that there might be opportunities for trade, these kind of mixed incentives to what extent do you see that complicating cooperation on climate change? Certainly in the Russian context. So while minus the United States, the other six Arctic states see climate changes, this large threat to the region, there are of course, substate interest interested in economic exploitation. But for Russia, actually climate change is great news for their Arctic approach. That means they can exploit LNG, right? Easier. They could ship easier. Melt baby melt, right? Melt baby melt. I mean, seriously, though, this is definitely how I think they understand this and it's allowed them to pursue a closer relationship with China, for example, now that they're largely isolated from the rest of the international community. So I want to come back to the Russians and the Chinese, but first I want to address the American elephant in the room and ask whether the Trump threats to Greenland and the escalation at the beginning of this already. Very busy year, really changed the way that other states within the Arctic look at the Arctic and more broadly, what you think about the long term impacts for European security. Yeah, I think there was huge downstream impacts from this. I think of the US is this really reactive Arctic state where it kind of avoided the Arctic region because there wasn't a lot of insights for it in the region since after the Cold War. And it wasn't until Russia and China started really expressing a lot of interest that the US suddenly sat up and said, hey, we want to be involved in this conversation too. This hugely unpredictable behavior that we've seen from the US and the Trump administration, now a lot of European allies are saying not only is the US reactive, but now we don't know how it's going to react. So is there any logic to the things that Trump and his officials were saying about Greenland or is it all just completely bizarre and fanciful. So the justifications about Trump meeting Greenland, I would say are 100% fanciful. It's a manufactured crisis about Russian and Chinese ships in Greenland, a waters. What is true is that the US has a long standing defense relationship with the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland within that when it comes to aerospace maritime surveillance and space surveillance. And I think for the US and Canada as well Greenland is a really important partner to have. Which doesn't and it's an important partner that they do have. So this idea of ownership is coming from somewhere completely different. Exactly. Yeah, I think that's what's so frustrating.
to a lot of people in the Arctic community is that we say, yes, we all understand the importance of Greenland for North American security, but owning Greenland, threatening Greenland, the kingdom of Denmark and Europe is actually making things much worse for Europeans and Americans. You know, it's hard to predict the future, especially when the future concerns the Trump administration. But if you were to place a bet, would you say Trump has got to come back to this? I do. I don't think it's off his mind. I think he was deterred in a way through the conversation with Margrita. I think he got a lot of pushback potentially domestically about this, but as we know with Trump, often we never know when he's going to bring things up or in what way. So to be quite honest, I'm waiting for what other international crisis will happen that Trump wants to divert attention from. Yeah, I mean, that's quite the juggling act. So do we know anything about these discussions between the US, Denmark and Greenland? Not really. We've heard conflicting information. So at the onset, it seemed like they were having meetings in order to de-escalate, but then there was that press conference where it seemed that from the US side, they were in talks to acquire Greenland and from the Danish and Greenland side. It was supposed to be about talks to figure out a defense arrangement for the future. Since then, I don't think we've seen too much that fact. I think we've potentially seen that there hasn't been Greenland representation in these meetings, which is very concerning, but apart from that, it's been largely kept out of the headlines. And how dangerous do you think it is for Denmark and Greenland and for Denmark's allies to behave as though they're giving Washington what it wants? And I guess conversely, how dangerous is it not to? Yeah, I think that's the real question, right? Is how much do we want to appease? I hesitate to use the word, but appease the United States, but on the other hand, understanding that the US is core for European security. And so how do you balance those things in two different hands? I don't think we have an answer to that right now, but I do think that Denmark is relying on the support from a lot of European allies and really going in and explaining to the Trump administration anything you want from a defense perspective, whether that's putting more bases, having more presence, we can do that. You do not need to own Greenland if your goal is more Arctic surveillance. Right, but that's that's rational. And there's no reason to think that his desire to own Greenland has anything to do with rationality. So back to kind of the rational bit, NATO launched this mission to improve security in the high north, which as I understand it, this preceded the January round of Trump threats. This was already in motion, but it got ramped up in an effort to demonstrate to the United States. I think that the Nordics were on top of this. And then you can debate whether the point of that was to deter the United States or to reassure it. I think different people had different goals and sometimes the same people had different goals all at once. But it kind of raises the question, what exactly is Arctic sentry deterrent? How is Arctic sentry improving security? What's its point other than calming the US? I think I'm on the side where I see it as calming the US because right now we don't have details of where that presence is going to be. I think we do need more presence from a NATO perspective in the Arctic, but the Arctic is big. Do we mean the North American Arctic? So around Canada, Greenland and the Barung Strait? Or do we mean the European Arctic, which is the area above Northern Europe? I think distinguishing where is Arctic sentry happening will tell us a lot about how effective it would be, because there are not really any traditional military threats in the North American Arctic, whereas we are seeing hybrid threats and other types of under-the-threshold challenges in the European Arctic where presence would be really useful. So if the threats are not traditional military threats, what's a NATO mission going to do to help mitigate them? What's the problem they're trying to fix? And again, as you say, we don't know exactly what tools are being deployed to wear, but in your view, what is the problem and how would you go about fixing it? One of the problems that I would point to is that there's been an increase in surveillance by shadow fleet over critical infrastructure across certain parts of Northern Europe. And so they could, for example, have increasing monitoring missions around some of these cables that are key for communications or for oil and gas on the other hand. So I think setting up a rotating presence in there could be useful or deterring maritime or even aerial incursions, which we have certainly seen in the Baltic Sea. So I think that's what I think presence is really useful for, and for explaining to Russia that NATO is in fact in the Arctic and it's not just some theoretical exercise for them. And how much of the Arctic activity that we've seen over the last couple of years is NATO is such how much of it is the Nordic Baltic 8, how much of it is other kind of subsets of allies cooperating and coordinating? So most of the activity we've seen has actually been led by individual Nordic states, particularly Norway, who is long called for NATO to be more present in the Arctic. So actually you may have seen news about the cold response or Nordic response exercises that take place every other year in Northern Norway. And so the largest one was in 2018, which was well tried and juncture, which had 50,000 ally troops practicing. But these have been happening since 2006. So I would say it's certain Nordic states that have been kind of pushing for more involvement. But at the same time, NATO is a challenge, right? Because it's a consensus organization. And I think for a lot of Nordic states, they say, you know, we know it would take time for allied reinforcements to arrive to help us. And so they're rolling on other mechanisms like the joint expeditionary force. So what's the war scenario? And what's the fear, right? What the Russians are going to grab Arctic territory from somebody else to what end? And then you have to fight them off on skis. I mean, what are people actually thinking is plausible? I've seen a couple of different scenarios. So some you may have seen also that Russia could see Svalbard, which is an Norwegian archipelago. This I'm hesitant that I could see this happening, because Norway and Russia do continue to cooperate on fisheries. And I think for Russia, it still serves their national interest to do so. And seizing Svalbard would be such a huge act of aggression. On the other hand, we now have the really long Finland border with Russia. So perhaps Russia will engage more in hybrid confrontation, instrumentalized migration, incursion, sabotage. They're usual toolkit that they like to use in central and eastern Europe. So I certainly see that. And then the other final scenario that comes up a lot is Russia's Bastion strategy, which it uses now. Essentially, the idea that they want to create a large area of protection around their secondary strike capability on the coal peninsula. And so they exercise. And how do we practice that? How do we make sure that we can create this area where allied forces cannot enter? And does that include part of other Arctic states or Baltic states? And so figuring out, I think how to combat that is really key. Or figuring out how to let it go, right? Because I mean, some of this is about Russia feeling secure enough, right? I mean, the coal peninsula is, it's a base for Russia's nuclear submarines. They're not crazy to be nervous about it, right? Or it's security. No, not at all. I think they absolutely should be practicing this. But I think the question for me is how far does that anti-access area denial, the area that they want to protect extend? Yeah. And making sure that that doesn't include NATO member states. I mean, one of my pet peeves is that we use A2AG as a way to hide the fact that what we're really talking about is an adversaries defense of itself, right? We call it A2AG, but what do we mean is an adversary preventing us from operating at will in environments that they control or they seek to control, which is, you know, when we do it, it's defense when they do it, it's A2AG. You know, for me, the question is at what point do their activities that are entitled to be defensive make other states nervous about something other than their own ability to operate in that space? Yeah, absolutely. And you could flip that the other way around too, right? So for Russia now, all the other seven Arctic states are NATO states, and this was the nightmare for Russian defense military planner, but it's happened now. So how do we balance out these two opposition sides being like they rightfully want to protect their security? They have a right to be where they are. So where do those lines bump up against one another? And this is one of the things that's happened since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, right? That Sweden and Finland have decided, you know, what we're going to join NATO? To what extent do you see the Russians having shifted their Arctic posture other than, you know, this colopinin solar point that we've been discussing just in these last four years of full-scale war? They've certainly changed their, I think we have operating in the Arctic. So for a long time since 2014, there were very much this kind of compartmentalization strategy where they would say we still want to cooperate in the Arctic. The Arctic is a zone of peace. We can divorce what we're doing in other parts of Europe from there. But I think since Finland and Sweden's ascension to NATO, there's a sense that, okay, the Arctic is now full of enemies. For us, how do we beef up our own defenses? But this is no a challenge because they've invested so much of their capacity in the war in Ukraine. And so I think this has constrained them from acting in a military capacity as they would want to do in the Arctic, but they have been investing more in trying to work more with China. They've been trying to bring the BRIC state in. So I think they're shifting now. And is that a sign of strength or weakness? Because I think kind of the question is, okay, so let's say the war in Ukraine ends and Russia has the capacity to move so out of its forces back to where they came from or to other locations. You know, is the, is involving China or the BRICs kind of a stopgap or until Russia is able to use more traditional military
What are the traditional military tools? I would say Russia's current cooperation with China is one of necessity. It wants the funding. It wants the ability for China to provide logistics and infrastructure to help them build out the Northern Sea Route. But on the other hand, I think Russia does want to work with European Arctic states because obviously they actually know what they're doing in the Arctic. They have the experience of working there. I think what would tell us a lot is there was some news back in the fall that Russia is currently developing a new updated Arctic strategy. It hasn't come out yet and I've been searching for news about it, but I suppose it's still in negotiation. So I think once that comes out, we'll know does Russia see itself permanently as divorcing from the other Arctic states and pulling in its more untraditional allies or does it want to go back to the norm? Or we'll just be confused and arguing about what it actually says for the next however long until the issue a new one has this happened with past Russia's strategic documents. Yeah, probably that too. So China and this whole near Arctic, suppose lots of countries are near Arctic by China's definition. What are they trying to accomplish? A couple of different things. I think first and foremost, it's about a strategic frontier for them. So they see Russia and the United States in the Arctic and for them. They perceive themselves as also a great power. And so they want to be part of that competition or however you call those engagements there. But I think on the other for China, the Arctic is really about energy security. They want the oil and gas from the region. And of course they want the shipping capability from China to Europe, which is estimated to be 40% faster than the current route through the Suez Canal. So for China, it's basically economic or is there more to it? I think so. So again with Russia, it's hard to say because we perhaps subscribe dual use ideas to what and how they're engaging in the region. And I'm sure that there are military interests there, but they don't state that publicly in any of their documents. And even though they called themselves near Arctic in 2018, they don't use that term when they talk about the Arctic anymore, because they've seen the blowback that it caused. We just all got very excited and liked it so much that we can't stop using it, even if they've stopped. So is the Arctic a place where you see confrontation beginning or is the Arctic a region where if there is confrontation, we'll see spillover. So I think it's one of my colleagues uses this term of do we see threats through the Arctic in the Arctic or across the Arctic? And I don't really see conflict in the Arctic. I see the potential for spillover from other regions kind of entering the Arctic. But when I think of what's actually happening confrontationally, it has to do with these under the threshold kinetic threats. Because the thing is from a Western perspective, no one has interest in starting a competition or confrontation. Whereas from Russia, they also don't want a military confrontation because they have so much economic investment and interest in developing, oil and gas and shipping that bringing military conflict would be a huge problem for them. Though I think the Russians have demonstrated that they will occasionally do things that make absolutely no sense from a strategic standpoint, right? That's fair. So this is always the problem with the Russians is they are willing to let perceived security interests Trump economic interests and their perceived security interests aren't always the ones we would assess their security interests to be. This is what 2022 I think did to all of us as it made us realize that the Russians are not going to behave the way we think the Russians ought to behave in line with their interests. This is true, right? It's the same problem with the US at this point, which I think places Europe in a really complicated state because they say we can't rely on knowing what to expect from Russia or from the United States. So how do we calibrate away forward? How do they calibrate away forward? I made at least in the Arctic. What can they do to have a more robust stabilizing policy in the Arctic? For both the Arctic Europeans and their near Arctic allies. From my mind what they have to do, it comes down to increasing presence, knowing how to operate in the region and having a clear strategy and set of strategic communications. I think it's really hard to deter and defend against these under the threshold threats, which I do see as increasing in the region. And so there needs to just be a lot of clarity on is it going to be the EU as a block that is responding to these challenges, just the Nordic or European Arctic states? Or is it all the NATO allies? And I think just being clear on what adversary should expect is really what will help Europe develop a clear path forward. And how do you see the trade-offs between some of these options, between more NATO versus more Nordic, between more NATO versus more EU? Are there different lanes for different countries and institutions? Definitely. So from an EU perspective, they do have several Arctic policy documents, which there's going to be a new one coming out this fall, which I think will tell us a lot because the previous one came out in 2021. But of course the EU does civil security. So I think we can expect to stay in that lane. NATO to really stay in line with the collective defense lane, which will mean more exercise, more patrols, perhaps through certain areas of the region. And I think for the Nordics, a lot of this comes down to teaching allies of how to operate because it's a really challenging region for equipment, for learning how to move around whether on skis or not. And so I think it's really just about finding a good division of labor, or we're not duplicating efforts. And the US role in NATO, how much does it complicate NATO planning for the Arctic? I'm not sure if this is optimistic, but my hope is that even though the Trump administration might be very unpredictable, the way that the US military works inside the Arctic is very dependable. We know that there are plans right for transatlantic reinforcements to come over to Europe. And so I have to hope that this is going to be still the case. And the Canadians, I feel like we always forget about the Canadians, the other piece of the North Atlantic. Yes, also a key ally here. I think there's been a lot of recent actually interesting relationship building between Canada and the Nordics Canada and Germany on defense procurement. And of course, Canada and the US are part of the by national NORAD command, which does aerospace and maritime surveillance in the North American Arctic. And so I think they play like an indispensable role as part of this. So I'll close by asking whether there's still space for cooperation that isn't NATO allies cooperating to deter Russia. Is there space still for cooperation with Moscow? Yeah, for something other than, and when I say is there space, I don't mean in a fanciful happy world where people start behaving themselves, but other things that could happen now in the current political environment that are really plausible. I do think there's some limited areas for cooperation. It just might not be everyone together on every cooperative issue. So for example, Russia and Norway continue to agree on fish quotas and shared maritime spaces that they have to my understanding they also still have the emergency red phone in case that there's a miscommunication that happens in the parents, see or the Norwegian scene. So I think in terms of those issues, we can definitely still expect to see cooperation. And we are, although the Arctic Council is in kind of survival mode, scientists are still talking in the working groups where research and research cooperation is being done, even if it's not in person, perhaps not even on video calls, but only through emails. There's some small degree of cooperation that's happening. And is it getting us anywhere? I mean, kind of the climate change conversation has really had, I don't know, could giant blanket thrown over it basically right, which next thing's even warmer. How much hope have you got for this coming back or people managing to do something despite the mouffling? I don't have so much hope on a broad climate change level, but I think again, this comes down to disaggregating the different types of environmental change. So maybe we're not all going to be at big climate change conferences together, but maybe we can cooperate on black carbon pollution, for example, or very specific types of ocean acidification. So this to my mind means let's go back to the Cold War. What were we able to cooperate with the Soviet Union on in that time period? It was super issue specific. And so that's the type of cooperation. I think we can continue to work on now and then see where it goes in the future. And is someone put together a list of what all of that is? Not to my knowledge now. I think that would be a useful thing to do. And I think I'll close this on today. Gabriella, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. I feel like I've learned a lot and I'm hoping that our listeners enjoyed it too. Yeah, I had a great time. Thanks for inviting me. So if you want to hear more Gabriella, you can follow her on Blue Sky. She's @juGershuss and she also has a website www.getvrrealavershuss.com And for our own work on European security, which includes our security, there's the crisis group website, which will be www.crisisgroup.org. And of course, you could follow us on social media. A crisis group is @crisisgroup on X and Blue Sky. It's also Instagram and various other places. And I'm @uliaulika on Blue Sky. I want to thank our producer, Alberto Cugini and our coordinator, Haiko Shubb, for making this podcast happen. And of course, my biggest thanks are to you, the listeners of this podcast, that as always, if you have thoughts or suggestions, email them to us @
[email protected]. Leave us reviews where you get your podcast, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And we will be back in a number of weeks. I know we've been a little off on our monthly schedule, but we will be trying to return to it. to which as this very exciting 2026 continues to
long. But until next time, goodbye.
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