US focus on Greenland’s resources

AlArabiya English

The US views Greenland as a strategic interception point for nuclear missiles and a resource hub, senior researcher in Arctic Security Ulrik Pram Gad says. #Greenland

Transcript

00:00But why is Greenland and the Arctic so important to the world and also to Donald Trump?

00:08What is it that's changing it to make it a focus now?

00:12You know, the Arctic looks very different depending on where you look at it.

00:18For a lot of people, Greenlanders, but also indigenous peoples in other parts of the Arctic,

00:22it's a home. That's where they live. They have traditional culture.

00:26They also have a modern welfare state that they'd like to protect.

00:30If you look at the Arctic from Washington, it's, first of all,

00:35it's a place to intercept Russian or Chinese nuclear missiles coming in over the North Pole.

00:42And then, of course, there is this dream that a lot of the resources in ground in Greenland,

00:48which is there, which are well documented, that they can be a source of wealth.

00:54But the problem is that it's difficult to dig them up.

00:58Greenlanders might like Nordic style labor conditions and environmental conditions.

01:05Plus, a lot of the resources in Greenland would have to compete with minerals processed in China,

01:14which are cheaper and which have made the Chinese,

01:19given the Chinese monopoly on the certain technologies that are important for processing those minerals.

Category

Transcript

Recommended