There was a full house to the Greenland Committee's closed meeting on Wednesday, where both members from Inatsisartut's foreign and security policy committee were invited, as were members from the Danish Parliament's Defense Community Security and Emergency Preparedness Committee.
Along the way, Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen also came in and participated in the meeting.
Experts from the Defense Academy
Peter Viggo Jakobsen and Anders Puck Nielsen from the Defense Academy gave a presentation on the sub-agreements in relation to the low voltage objective. In addition, director of Greenland's Business Christian Keldsen participated online.
As it was a closed meeting, it is limited what the chairperson of the Greenland committee Aaja Chemnitz (IA) can say after the meeting, but she confirms to Sermitsiaq that the meeting was about getting a little deeper into the Arctic packages and sub-agreement 2.
- It has been important to me that we could discuss sub-agreement 2 and perhaps also go into a little more detail together about what it means from a military strategic point of view for Greenlandic society. Sub-agreement 2 has shown that there is a need for more involvement of the population. We will focus on that in the coming time.
- There is also a need for more focus on the preparedness part, which I believe is lacking. But otherwise, I think we have the right mix in terms of the focus being on sovereignty enforcement and low voltage, says Aaja Chemnitz, and adds that a decision must also be made as to whether combat aircraft should, for example, be based in Greenland or somewhere else.
Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen did not want to comment to Sermitsiaq on why he attended the meeting, but according to several of the members at the meeting, his participation was about observing what was said and asked about.
Arctic packages meet the wishes of the United States
Associate Professor at the Norwegian Defense Academy Peter Viggo Jakobsen said after the meeting to Sermitsiaq that the exercise aims to increase the defense's ability to see and hear what is going on in the Arctic, and thus comply with the American wishes, without Russia feeling threatened to increase their presence in the Arctic.
- The challenge for the Commonwealth is that the great powers have become angry with each other again. The US watches over Russia, and Russia watches over the US. And the US has told Denmark that Denmark is a bad ally that needs to have more control over the airspace and the sea around Greenland.
- With the Arctic capacity packages 1 and 2, the defense's ability to see and hear what is happening around Greenland is increased with more planes, ships and radars. In this way, the USA is accommodated based on the hope that they will refrain from rearming in and around Greenland. Because our concern is that if the USA builds up, then Russia will see it as a threat, and then we cannot maintain low voltage around Greenland.
According to Peter Viggo Jakobsen, today there is high voltage around Norway and the Barents Sea, but still low voltage around Greenland, because the USA has done nothing but install a new heating plant at Pituffik.
- But the unknown factor is still that we don't know what the US really wants with Greenland, says Peter Viggo Jakobsen.
