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Greenland in Arctic Security: (De)securitization Dynamics under Climatic Thaw and Geopolitical Freeze
Marc Jacobsen, Ole Wæver, and Ulrik Pram Gad, Editors
Greenland has increasingly captivated imaginations around the globe. Yet, while it is central to the Arctic region, its role has been poorly understood. Greenland in Arctic Security delivers a comprehensive overview of how security dynamics unfold in and in relation to Greenland. Each individual chapter analyzes specific discourses and dynamics pertaining to hard or soft security questions. These span from great power interests in geostrategic infrastructure to domestic debates centered on promoting and protecting Greenland identity when engaging with the outside world. In addition, the book offers perspectives on other security questions that have been catalyzed by the effects of climate change.
By combining these different analyses, Greenland in Arctic Security provides new, theoretically informed discussions on how security politics can manifest across different scales and territorial borders. At times, these politics can have consequences beyond their original intent. With Greenland geopolitics and securitization theory of current interest to political and academic debates, this book offers timely insights for readers.
Fig. 2.1. The three dimensions of macrosecuritization: comprehensiveness, level, degree of support. Reproduced from Buzan and Wæver (2009, 259), with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
Fig. 3.1C. Transfiguration of a security configuration, in this case from a security dilemma to a different type of configuration, possibly more dynamic.
Fig. 3.2A. Animal rights securitization of hunting: Hunters pose an existential threat to individual animals. Extraordinary means: intervene physically between hunter and prey.
Fig. 3.2B. Environmentalist securitization of hunting: Hunting poses an existential threat to species. Extraordinary means: ban hunting or import or boycott products.
Fig. 3.6A. Securitization of climate change: Fossil extraction / CO2 emissions pose existential threat to climate, ecosystem, livelihood. Extraordinary means: ban extraction and cap emissions.
Fig. 3.6B. Securitization of climate change as threat to Inuit identity. Fossil extraction / CO2 emissions pose existential threat to Inuit identity. Extraordinary means: ban extraction and cap emissions.
Fig. 3.9. Shortcutting the securitization of Greenlandic fossil extraction to fall in line with Greenland’s green image. Extraordinary means: lifting territorial exception and banning extraction.
Fig. 4.2. The Cold War macrosecuritization between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries had cascading effects on other scales and sectors. For instance, the establishment of the Thule Air Base broke with full Danish sovereignty over Greenland and had further effects on the local societal security and the individual economic security, where the Inughuit identity and the hunters’ households were threatened by the forced relocation. In the figure, the y-axis indicates the different scales and the x-axis the different sectors, while the text inside the circles describes the referent object, which changes as the securitization cascades vertically and horizontally, as the arrows show.
Fig. 4.3. Following the end of the Cold War, the macrodesecuritization of East-West relations cascaded onto the Arctic, where desecuritization within the military sector allowed more room for interstate cooperation regarding environmental protection and promotion of Indigenous peoples’ rights. Though geographically located within the Arctic, Thule Air Base remained largely detached from this new U.S. regional security perspective because it was an essential element in the defense against ‘rogue states’ as securitized by the Rumsfeld Commission report.
Fig. 4.4. After having been discursively separated, the U.S. security discourses regarding Thule, Greenland, and the Arctic were yet again aligned in 2019, when they were all framed within an overarching perspective of great power competition with China and Russia.
Fig. 5.1. Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov (right) and Jeppe Kofod at the bilateral press conference in Moscow, October 9, 2020 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation 2020).