Greenland at the Crossroads

Abstract

At the end of March 2010, a domestic political event suddenly made Greenland a hot topic in Danish current affairs: Lene Espersen, the leader of the Conservative People's party and the new minister of foreign affairs, decided not to attend the meeting of the foreign ministers of five circumpolar countries (Canada, Denmark/ Greenland, United States, Norway, and Russia) to be held on March 29 in Chelsea, Quebec. The reason given by the minister - a long-planned family holiday on Majorca - provoked a flood of vehement criticism that seriously undermined her credibility. Although she had just been appointed the previous month and was a neophyte in foreign affairs, Espersen did not judge it necessary to meet the likes of Hillary Clinton. Another meeting was to be held a bit later in any event, she explained, and only an overview was on the agenda for this one. In the end, Lars Barfoed, the Danish minister of justice, stood in for her at the meeting (and very competently, it should be noted).The most insightful commentators on this affair (in Greenland and elsewhere) pointed out that Danish public opinion was far more interested in the minister's cavalier approach than the substantive political issues. Indeed, this headline-grabbing episode speaks volumes about the average Dane's lack of interest in the far-flung autonomous territory. This was not, however, the case for the preceding minister of foreign affairs, Per Stig M0Uer, also a Conservative People's party member, who had been a pular of the successive centre-right governments since the 2001 changeover of power. M0Uer was the moving force behind the 2008 Ilulissat declaration, to which I wul return later in this article. M0Uer's announcement, made prior to the February 2010 ministerial shuffle, that he planned to attend the Chelsea meeting did not stop Espersen from sloughing off that professional obligation. This les s -than- glorious episode was an unfortunate one for the government of Lars Ijztkke Rasmussen, which, already damaged by the fauure of the 2009 UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen, was in any event markedly less popular than that of his predecessor, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was prime minister from 2001 until his April 2009 designation as secretary-general of NATO.The crisis of confidence sparked by Espersen in the spring of 2010 has continued to deepen. Alarming poUs published at the end of the year showed that support for her Conservative party had been effectively cut in half and was sitting around the four- or five-percent level. Because her own popularity had dropped to its lowest level, Espersen stepped down as president of the party in January 2011. She did however retain the portfolio of minister of foreign affairs and in this capacity she received her Arctic Council colleagues and the representatives of the indigenous populations at Nuuk on 12 May 2011. During this official meeting Sweden succeeded Denmark as the chair of this international body for a two-year term. In an apparent effort to counter the strong criticism endured by Espersen the previous year, Clinton heaped praise on her Danish coUeague during the summit's closing press conference.1 Although this eloquent defence was duly noted by the press, the overall critical attitude towards the Danish foreign minister remained unchanged.It is interesting to compare the relative importance accorded to polar questions by the two Scandinavian countries bordering on the Arctic Ocean, Norway and Denmark.2 In his 2008 book  Gjere en Forskjell (Making a Difference), Norway's current foreign minister, Jonas Gahr StOTe, set out the key points of his intended foreign policy. It is striking to note that one of the first two chapters of this book is entirely devoted to the Arctic and the final chapter stresses the critical importance of Norway's most northerly regions. StOTe clearly believes that his country should give this issue the highest priority. Although Store's then-counterpart in Denmark, Per Stig M0ller, did not write a similar book, he did analyze Denmark's foreign policy that same year in the context of a research seminar. …