America's Arctic Troops in Greenland Go To Diversity Training
The U.S. already has a base in one of the territories Trump covets. Here’s how the Americans stationed there are told to deal with the people who are actually from there.
Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base, is one of the loneliest U.S. military assignments in the world. Built on Arctic permafrost, the base hosts 200 troops in Greenland's far north. Its closest neighbor is 75 miles away, a small town called Qaanaaq, population 646. Not that it matters, since the only ways in or out of the base are military flights and a ship that visits once a year.
"You can go to the bowling alley, go to the gym, the community center, I guess," First Lt. Matthew Smokovitz told Stars and Stripes in 2015. "It's like a rinse-and-repeat thing. It's so cold and so dark; where you gonna go?"
A few years ago, I thought it might be funny to file a Freedom of Information Act request for any diversity and sensitivity classes ("language, regional expertise, and culture training," in military jargon) that troops at Pituffik had to sit through. What neighbors would the training be for? Polar bears? But to my surprise, I received briefing slides on how to deal with Greenlandic contractors, which I first published on my Substack blog in 2022.
President-elect Donald Trump has been promising to take over Greenland, either by paying or threatening its colonial overlord Denmark. His former national security adviser Robert C. O'Brien says that the region will be "the critical battleground of the future" due to climate change opening new trade routes in the Arctic. But the diversity slideshow from Pituffik is a reminder that the United States already has a presence in Greenland, and a relationship with its people.
The U.S. military first moved into Greenland during World War II, when Denmark fell to a German invasion, and the Danish ambassador in Washington asked the United States to stop further Nazi advances. (It didn't hurt that Greenland was also a key source of cryolite, a mineral used in aluminum processing.) The U.S. Coast Guard took over the Danish outpost on Pituffik Glacier, which was named "Thule" for the icy northern frontier in Greek mythology.
After the war, American planners realized that Thule would be useful in a future nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The Danish authorities forcibly expelled the locals to Qaanaaq, making way for a massive military airport for U.S. bombers and reconnaissance jets. At its peak, Thule Air Base hosted over 10,000 troops and support staff.
Modern technology means that the same job can be done by fewer people. The spy planes were replaced by radar dishes and satellite uplinks. The base, which was renamed Pituffik Space Base in 2023 after the U.S. Space Force took over, now hosts only around 650 people. The majority of them are Greenlandic, Danish, and Canadian civilian contractors.
That's where diversity training comes in. Even though the Danish government pushed out locals to make way for the base, the U.S. military ended up bringing in more Greenlanders to help with day-to-day tasks on the base.
The briefing slideshow explains that Greenland's culture is more focused on "social conformity" than American culture, with little patience for individualism and "ambition." On the other hand, people in Greenland are more "bold, direct, straightforward," and there are "[n]o limitations to what you can joke about."
Almost all of the 60,000 people in Greenland are ethnically Inuit, although many of them also have Danish ancestry mixed in. The slideshow states that "Danish/Greenlandic relations are good, but occasionally can become sensitive."
In 1979, Greenland became an "autonomous country" under the Danish monarchy. Greenlanders have their own parliament and manage their own domestic affairs. (For example, even though Denmark belongs to the European Union, its laws and regulations don't apply in Greenland.) Denmark retains the final say over border control, monetary policy, and foreign relations.
There's an active debate on whether Greenland should pursue full independence. Around two-thirds of Greenlanders, including current Prime Minister Múte Egede, believe that the country should go its own way, especially as lucrative mineral resources are being unearthed. But even some independence advocates, such as former Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist, fear that the small country just isn't ready yet. Greenland still receives about half its government budget in subsidies from Denmark.
In any case, it seems likely that the United States will get what it wants. After all, an independent Greenland would need foreign investment to unlock those natural resources, and American companies are well-poised to provide it. In 2020, the Greenlandic and U.S. governments signed a set of agreements on military basing, mining, energy, and tourism.
Given that Greenlanders are already inclined to cooperate with the United States, why meddle in their independence debate? For Trump and his supporters, it seems to be a matter of pride before anything else.
"Our country was built by warriors and explorers. We tamed the West, won two World Wars, and were the first to plant our flag on the moon," the Republican-controlled House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote on social media. "President Trump has the biggest dreams for America and it's un-American to be afraid of big dreams."
