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Last week President Trump floated the idea that the US could purchase Greenland from Denmark, earning him a rebuke from that country's Prime Minister. Ulrik Pram Gad writes that the spat between Denmark and Trump over Greenland shows that the president's slow dismantling of the US-led liberal world order has now also become the problem of smaller nations – and the Arctic. ; Last week President Trump floated the idea that the US could purchase Greenland from Denmark, earning him a rebuke from that country's Prime Minister. Ulrik Pram Gad writes that the spat between Denmark and Trump over Greenland shows that the president's slow dismantling of the US-led liberal world order has now also become the problem of smaller nations – and the Arctic.

The relationship between Greenland and the European Union (EU) can best be understood by exploring the development from Danish colonialism to a future independent Greenlandic state. In 1985, Greenland became the first territory ever to leave the European Economic Community (EEC) when it opted for status as an 'overseas country or territory'. The manner in which Greenland had to follow Denmark into the EEC in 1973 – whereby Greenlanders saw control over their fisheries move from distant Copenhagen to even-more-distant Brussels – was pivotal for the Greenlandic demands for home rule that succeeded in 1979 and made the 1985 withdrawal possible. On 25 November 2008, a majority of the people of Greenland voted in favour of enhanced home rule – 'self-government' – still within formal Danish sovereignty. Denmark and Greenland alike are preparing for a future envisioned as involving climate change, intensive raw material extraction, new transportation corridors and new claims to sovereignty over the Arctic. Greenland uses this imagined future as a way of enhancing its subjectivity, not the least when dealing with the EU. This article analyses how the Greenlandic self-understanding as being on the way to sovereignty – and the tensions involved – structures the triangular relationship between the EU, Greenland and Denmark. The article concludes that the visions of sovereign equality might, on the one hand, create greater expectations than Greenland will immediately be able to live up to – at home and in the EU. On the other hand, the representation of the Greenland–EU relationship as one of sovereign equality – present and future – might just be able to provoke the resources necessary to make the dream come true.

Dieser Artikel analysiert die Darstellung von Muslimen als Bedrohung im Diskurs der dänischen Mitte-Rechts-Regierung seit 2001. Damit liefert er ein nuancierteres Bild der dänischen Integrationsdebatte, die üblicherweise als eine Gegenüberstellung zweier gegenläufiger Diskurse – Kulturalismus und Multikulturalismus – beschrieben wird. Mittels einer analytischen Fokussierung auf "Sicherheitsnarrative" zeigt der Artikel auf, auf welche Weise anfängliche Narrative von Muslimen als Bedrohung für Kultur, Wohlfahrt und gesellschaftlichen Frieden miteinander verschmolzen sind und sich dahingehend gewandelt haben, dass sie Staat und Multikulturalismus überraschend neue Rollen zuschreiben. Die Neubewertung von kultureller Differenz in einer jüngsten Strategie, die einer Radikalisierung entgegen wirken soll, hat keine Ent-Versicherheitlichung der Muslime zur Folge – vielmehr festigt sie ein Bedürfnis nach Überwachung und Kontrolle des muslimischen Anderen. ; This article analyzes how Muslims are implied to constitute threats in the official Danish discourse of the centre-right government since 2001. It does so to provide a more nuanced picture of Danish debates on integration than the usual presentation of two discourses – culturalism and multiculturalism – pitted in opposition. By analytically focusing on "security narratives", the article details how initial narratives of Muslims as threats to culture, welfare and societal peace merged and morphed to award surprising new roles to the state and multiculturalism. The re-evaluation of cultural difference implied in a recent strategy to counter radicalization, however, does not amount to a de-securitization of Muslims – rather it installs a need for surveillance and control of the Muslim difference.

In the gradual unravelling of Greenland's colonial relationship to Denmark, an essentialist conceptualization of Greenlandic identity has played a significant role. However, both our scholarly understanding of post-colonial Greenlandic identity and the process towards independence for Greenland could be furthered by bringing politics back in. Based on a discourse analysis of the Greenlandic debate on language, this paper makes three claims: First, the identity projects promoted in Greenland are based on an essentialist conception of identity. Secondly, Greenlandic identity discourse combines elements of traditional Inuit culture and elements of colonial modernity. Thirdly, monolingual Greenlanders are those with the most to gain from abandoning the dichotomy of essentialist identities. Strategically, the paper suggests a post-post-colonial Greenlandic identity as a means of avoiding the exclusion of valuable human resources. One step towards relieving the relation to the Danish Other of identificatory weight could be a gradual shift to English as second language.

Den danske regerings antiterrorstrategi strækker sig fra militære midler til dialog; et centralt begreb i regeringens såkaldte "Arabiske Initiativ" til fremme af partnerskaber om "fremskridt og reform" i Mellemøsten. Men hvordan bevarer man kontrollen over dialogens retning? Og hvorfor er det så vigtigt?

"The Politics of Sustainability in the Arctic argues that sustainability is a political concept because it defines and shapes competing visions of the future. In current Arctic affairs, prominent stakeholders agree that development needs to be sustainable, but there is no agreement over what it is that needs to be sustained. In original conservationist discourse, the environment was the sole referent object of sustainability, however, as sustainability discourses expand, the concept is linked to an increasing number of referent objects, such as, society, economy, culture and identity. This book sets out a theoretical framework for understanding and analysing sustainability as a political concept, and provides a comprehensive empirical investigation of Arctic sustainability discourses. Presenting a range of case studies from Greenland, Norway, Canada, Russia, Iceland and Alaska, the essays in this volume analyse the concept of sustainability and how actors are employing and contesting this concept in specific regions within the Arctic. In doing so, the book demonstrates how sustainability is being given new meanings in the postcolonial Arctic and what the political implications are for postcoloniality, nature, and development more broadly. Beyond those interested in the Arctic, this book will also be of great value to students and scholars of sustainability, sustainable development, and identity and environmental politics"--

Though it's many miles away from tiny Denmark, Greenland is administered as an autonomous country within the Danish Realm. It's a relationship that at first glance appears unusual, and, as Ulrik Pram Gad shows, that relationship is quietly predicated on a general assumption that Greenland is on a path toward eventual independence. In both nations, he shows, discussion of Greenland invokes the idea of the "community of the realm" while recognizing Greenland's continuing reliance on aid as it moves toward independence. As climate change is beginning to open up new areas of Greenland to potentially profitable resource extraction, Greenland is increasingly imagining that sources other than Denmark can provide the assistance needed. Throw in the EU, which facilitates "sovereignty games" played to allow Greenland a surprising measure of independent agency, and the complexity of the overall situation becomes quite clear. Gad explores the issue through four lenses: discourse analysis to determine the core concepts of Danish and Greenlandic identity; a reading of political debates as identity politics; interviews with key actors; and analysis of legal texts as a frozen outcome of various sovereignty games. The book concludes with a series of scenarios for the slow motion decolonization of Greenland

Greenland has for decades worked towards enhanced independent agency in international politics. The renewed global interest in the Arctic has given new impetus to a strategy of diversifying its dependency relations as a way to postcoloniality. As the Government of Greenland puts it in its foreign policy strategy; "It is important that the interest in the Arctic and Greenland is converted into concrete opportunities for the Greenlandic people and its development as a nation" (2011:3). This chapter investigates how Greenland's foreign policy supports the national self-image in combining indigenous cultural traditions with envisioned future independence. Hence, the chapter introduces the central members of the cast of characters in the most important narratives, which Greenland is telling about its place in the world. The analysis shows how narratives about indigenous identity combines - and infrequently clashes - with narratives of modernization in different ways when Greenland relates to Inuit kinsmen, Nordic siblings, the UN, the USA, the EU and Asian powers; the presentation of each character put in historical perspective. Theoretically, the analysis draws on a tradition of analysing international politics and foreign policy as driven by narratively structured discourses constructing nation state identities in relation to Others.