Independence Movement Picks Up Steam

The Wall Street Journal reports Trump's Talk of Buying Greenland Energizes Island's Independence Movement

Greenland is a self-ruling part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The Danish government says it is willing to grant Greenland full independence if there is local support, and recent Greenlandic elections and polls indicate there is.

Trump's recent threat of a trade war with Denmark is changing the negotiating dynamic, says Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. The Danish government now might be more open to agreeing a divorce deal that includes some continued payments to ease Greenland's path to independence, he says. "My prognosis is that the Danish government will accept it in the next few years," he says. An independent Greenland would then be free to forge its own security or economic ties with the U.S., Denmark or anyone else.

In April, Greenland goes to the polls in a vote that could fire the starter gun on independence for the territory of 57,000 people. The last time elections were held, pro-independence parties got 80% of the vote.

The prime minister of Greenland made a New Year's address to the nation saying that a draft constitution for the country has been prepared and that the independence process should be triggered.

"It is now time to take the next step for our country," Múte Egede said. "Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation—which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era—and move on." 

A 2009 Danish law lays out how Greenland can take the first step in the process: It must notify the Danish government, the two must negotiate a divorce agreement and the deal must then be ratified by a referendum in Greenland. The Greenlandic government has commissioned legal experts to work out the details of how step one would work with a two- year deadline.