Compact of Free Association in Greenland’s future?
Greenland may be as large as Texas all the way to the Upper-Midwest states, but it only has a population of roughly the same as Valdosta, Georgia.
However, with last Tuesday’s parliamentary elections all said and done, there has been a political shift in Greenland that can only be described as of glacial proportions (no pun intended).
The people of this sparsely populated land have spoken, and the ruling Leftists don’t like it. Nope, not one bit.
As reported by Breitbart.com;
For President Trump, this election produces a Greenland government which will at least work constructively with him, rather than reject American overtures with contempt.
Scenic downtown Valdosta.
As Breitbart also notes, the conservative and independence minded Demokraatit party has pulled in nearly 30 percent of the vote (up from a paltry 9.1 percent in 2021).
While Demokraatit’s Jens-Frederik Nielsen has made it clear that saddling-up with the United States isn’t his number one priority, the also conservative Partii Naleraq came in a close second 24.5 percent of the vote (up from 2021’s almost respectable 12 percent).
Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s Demokraatit, a pro-business party that favors a slow path to independence, won a surprise victory in Tuesday’s parliamentary election, outpacing the two left-leaning parties that formed the last government.
“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders, and we want our own independence in the future,” Nielsen, 33, told Britain’s Sky News. “And we want to build our own country by ourselves.”
In a government that relies on coalitions, AP News gave Naleraq short-shrift;
Naleraq, the most aggressively pro-independence party, finished in second place, with 24.5% of the vote.
That’s it… nothing more. But Breitbart also noted;
The large and small of it.
Indeed, Naleraq party leader Pele Broberg wrote an opinion piece in English for USNEWS the day before the vote, laying out in very clear terms what he foresees such a relationship would look like. While Broberg would likely end up a junior coalition partner and not Prime Minister in the coming Greenlandic government, under European political systems, junior coalition partners can enjoy outsized influence on government policy.
Hmmm… so how in the world could Demokraatit and Partii Naleraq ever come to anything even close to an association with the United States?
That’s actually an easily solved question, a question that’s already been answered.
There’s something called the Compacts of Free Association. Those are agreements between the US federal government and the Western Pacific nations of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau (formally the US Trust Territories of the Pacific following WW II).
All three republics are sovereign nations, maintaining diplomatic relations with over 100 other governments. The three are in a “free association” with the United States. Under the Compact, the U.S. has full authority and responsibility for the defense of the three nations.
As also cited by Breitbart, according to Naleraq party leader Pele Broberg;
He said recent research in Greenland showed citizens didn’t want to achieve independence only to be swallowed into another country, and the path he foresaw was one of a close alliance with America. This could be a “free association status” with Washington like that of “by the Pacific island states of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau”, he said.
“We would get U.S. support and protection in return for military rights, without becoming a U.S. territory”, Broberg proposed.
