Invading the Whiteness: Science, (Sub)Terrain, and US Militarisation of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Impressive and awe-inspiring by virtue of its sheer size and its overpowering minimalism, the Greenland ice sheet arches over the island, a flattened dome rising thousands of metres above the underlying bedrock. As Cold War tensions were on the rise in the years following the Second World War, this immense body of ice gained increasing geopolitical traction. The then Danish territory of Greenland was both strategically located between the main industrial centres of the two antagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as a source of strategic environmental intelligence. When Denmark was under German occupation during the 1940s, the US claimed territorial control over Greenland to protect its northern frontier, and later in 1951, the US secured their logistical stronghold in Greenland with the signing of the so-called Greenland Defense Agreement between Denmark and the US (Archer 1988; Lidegaard 1997; Olesen 2013). The Agreement granted the US almost complete freedom of action within three ‘defence areas’, including the infamous Thule Air Base in north-west Greenland. However, US visions of enrolling Greenland in its Cold War military apparatus extended well beyond the confines of the defence areas, all of which were established in the seasonally ice-free coastal zones. As Lt. Col. Emil Beaudry of the US Air Force noted in a report on high latitude defence: