Dec. 6, 2002

Standard Version

The surprisingly strong showing of an opposition group in Greenland's parliamentary elections Tuesday may have unexpected consequences for U.S. missile defense plans. The left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party received 25.8 percent of the votes — out of an electorate of 39,000 — placing it second in Greenland's domestic parliament, the Landstinget. The IA now ranks just behind the pro-independence Siumut Party. If the two groups form a coalition government, which is likely, they would control 18 out of the Lanstinget's 31 seats. Greenland, formerly a colony of Denmark, received Home Rule in 1979 but still must yield to Copenhagen in foreign and security matters. Of late, Greenland has been pushing for more power in its external affairs and even for independence, which 80 percent of the population is said to support. Controversy over the U.S. missile defense radar located in Thule may prove to be the island's ticket to complete sovereignty.

The missile defense system being developed to protect the continental United States from ICBM attacks will require the eventual strategic distribution of upgraded early warning radars in order to detect oncoming missile volleys. Several existing radar sites being discussed as possible candidates are Thule, Greenland; Fylingsdale, U.K.; Clear, Alaska; and PAVE PAWS sites in Massachusetts and California. The expected upgrades would be of software and equipment; without this, the missile defense system could not effectively track enemy warheads. It probably would not change the radars' current operating bands, antennae patterns, or output levels. Also under consideration for deployment at the aforementioned sites is the vastly more powerful X-band radar being developed for missile defense programs.

Thule initially was created as a weather station by the United States in 1946, but its tumultuous relationship with the locals did not begin until later. In May 1953, when a population of 87 Inughuit — an ethnic group long revered by the rest of Greenland for surviving in an unforgiving climate and sticking to the old ways of hunting and fishing — was told by Danish authorities that the population had four days to clear out so that the Thule air base could expand its perimeters. For many years, Denmark claimed that the forced resettlement was done in response to Inughuit requests, an allegation that was always denied by community activists. In 1996, a group called the Hingitaq 53 filed suit on behalf of the survivors and their descendants — 610 individual co-sponsors in all — to request the right to return to Thule. If allowed, this suit would have closed the air base completely and given compensation for the loss of hunting and fishing rights. A settlement of 17,000 kroner (roughly $2,288) was offered to each plaintiff in August 1999, with collective damages of 500,000 kroner ($67,294). The Inughuit, who had been looking for damages more in ballpark of 238 million kroner ($32 million), considered the offer insultingly low and rejected it. The case continues in front of the Danish supreme court. In September 2002, the United States agreed to give back by the end of the year Dundas, a town that had been engulfed by Thule. Locals believe this is a good first step but do not want to stop there.

The strife surrounding Thule air base is not simply an issue of land ownership. The local population has long been concerned about deleterious effects from making Thule's early warning radar (in use since 1960) a part of a revitalized missile defense system. In 1987, Thule's radar was replaced with a phased-array radar. This caused an uproar amongst the local population who saw that as a first move toward giving the radar offensive capabilities and lead to a fall of the coalition leading Greenland's Landstinget. More recently, at a hearing on missile defense held by the European Parliament in March 2001, Landstinget member Johan Lund Olsen enumerated the IA's objections to using Thule's radar for missile defense purposes. Worries of it making Greenland a target, sparking an arms race, fattening up weapons manufacturers' coffers, and inundating locals who had already suffered from the base's presence were all given.

Also a concern is environmental contamination of the area surrounding Thule. Says local politician Axel Lund Olsen, "If one day a war begins, people are afraid that if a bomb would hit Thule air base, all of the food we eat from the sea would be destroyed." This fear is not entirely unfounded. In 1968, a U.S. B-52 loaded with four nuclear weapons crashed 12 miles from Thule. Sediment from the ocean floor near where the plane went down showed in a 1991 study very high levels of radioactive plutonium contamination. Nearly three decades after the crash, in 1995, the Danish government admitted some culpability and paid $15.5 million to the 1,700 Danish and Greenlandic locals who had worked at the Thule air base and were exposed to high levels of radiation from the incident.

The controversy surrounding Thule is not the only place the budding U.S. missile defense system is running into problems with the locals. The PAVE PAWS radar in Massachusetts is criticized by some for having a hand in the area's unusually high cancer rates. A coalition of environmental groups brought a lawsuit against the federal government in August 2001 to prompt the assessment of environmental damages missile defense work in Alaska might bear (six months later, the government agreed in principle to do an analysis). And the deployment of a second battery of Israel's Arrow missile defense program, a system developed in cooperation with the United States, was held up for almost two years while officials attempted to convince locals that the Green Pines radar would not have adverse effects on their health.

However, the rise of the IA in Greenland's Landstinget marks a new page in anti-missile defense movement. This ascension, combined with Denmark's awareness that the growing restlessness in Greenland may lead to its independence, means that Copenhagen is going to have to be more sensitive to the island's concerns. This new judiciousness may very well be expressed by hampering American attempts to upgrade Thule's early warning radar. In the end, international considerations may prove to be more of a stumbling block to the Bush administration's missile defense plans than technological limitations.

Sources:

Clare MacCarthy, "Greenland poll may pave way for independence," Financial Times, Dec. 3, 2002.

DeNeen L. Brown, "Trail of frozen tears: The Cold War is over, but to native Greenlanders displaced by it, there's still no peace," Washington Post, Oct. 22, 2002.

"Greenland: country profile," Europe Review World of Information, Oct. 3, 2002.

"Greenland vote delivers strong pro-independence result," AFP, Dec. 4, 2002.

Henriette Rasmussen, "Greenland, the Inuit and the NMD," Pugwash Occasional Papers, March 2001.

Johan Lund Olsen, Statement to the European Parliament's hearing on missile defense, March 13, 2001.

Jorgen Dragsdahl, "The Danish dilemma," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sept./Oct. 2001.

K.L. Capozza, "Heated Arctic dispute: Greenland, Alaska natives balk at new U.S. military plans," San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 3, 2001.

Ross Kerber, "Technology and innovation: Making (radar) waves," Boston Globe, July 2, 2001.

"Upgraded early warning radars (UEWR) for missile defense," Raytheon fact sheet, www.raytheon.com, 2001.

"Upgraded early warning radar (UEWR)," www.globalsecurity.org, Oct. 8, 2002.

"US agrees to give back Greenland town," AFP, Sept. 25, 2002.

 

By Victoria Samson CDI Research Associate vsamson@cdi.org

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