It’s unclear how that would work since the one base mentioned in the agreement was closed by the U.S. in the 1950s and the other is a small Danish installation that currently houses sled dogs.
It depends on what the Pentagon would want to use the bases for, but most likely projects are new air defense and radar installations, which would come with large construction costs. Nothing in the agreement specifies cost-sharing mechanisms between the three parties to the deal. The Pentagon didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Who won?
At the start of this year, Denmark faced the threat of losing the territory entirely. While Europeans’ trust in the U.S. as an ally has taken a long-term hit, the immediate risk to Danish territory has now gone, according to the legal text.
Instead, the deal explicitly reaffirms Danish sovereignty and Greenland’s right to self-determination — including choosing independence from Denmark, potentially. For what it’s worth, the deal also explicitly recognizes the need to protect the “pristine” environment of the territory and Greenlanders’ cultural, social and economic rights.
“Reading it, one wonders why so much fuss for so little, when this could have been done from the start,” said Grégoire Roos, program director for Europe at the Chatham House think tank in London. “I also think it’s well played from Denmark — clean and diplomatic. Some might call it the European touch.”
Speaking before the deal was published, the Atlantic Council’s Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, said the deal gave Washington something it could call a win, and “allowed the U.S. to walk back from its damaging and pointless threats of aggression.”