Category Archives: National Security

Denmark, Europe, European Union, Government, Greenland, History, National Security, NATO, Politics, United States

Solutions emerge that could solve the Greenland crisis

GREENLAND

Intro: Turning disused military facilities on Greenland into “sovereign” US bases would hand Donald Trump a territorial prize without him launching a full-scale invasion

High above the Arctic Circle, surrounded by Greenland’s frozen wastes, American scientists conducting a secret research project hit upon a brilliant and remarkable idea.

Suppose nuclear missiles could be hidden inside the polar ice cap? These instruments of Armageddon might be able to survive a Soviet strike and then wreak terrible revenge. Alas, the US military had to abandon this dream after finding that constantly shifting ice fields were never going to provide safe shelter for missile silos.

But the location of this scheme in the 1960s – a once-secret “city under the ice” known as Camp Century – may hold the key to resolving a diplomatic impasse that European governments never believed they would have to contend with. Namely, the prospect of America seizing Greenland from Denmark.

Just days ago, President Trump said: “If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will – and I’m not letting that happen… one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

The dawning realisation that he is deadly serious has triggered a scramble for solutions, intended to avoid the catastrophe of America using force against an ally.

“If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including our NATO agreement – and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,” said Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister. The clock on defusing the crisis is ticking.

US vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio met with the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers in the White House, but President Trump again warned that anything less than American control of Greenland was “unacceptable”.

France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, has said that France would open a consulate in Greenland on February 6, acting on a decision taken last year during President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the territory.

Plans are also being laid for a new NATO mission to secure Greenland, which will probably involve UK forces. Yet, if that idea is not enough to satisfy Trump, the solution could lie on a small island 4,000 miles away.

Cyprus has hosted British bases throughout its 65-year history as an independent state. Today, RAF Akrotiri on its southern coast serves as Britain’s busiest overseas base, while GCHQ has a vital listening post in the eastern Dhekelia area. What makes these facilities different is that both are located on British sovereign territory. The Union flag flies over Akrotiri and Dhekelia, whose 98 square miles – or 3 per cent of the island of Cyprus – are, legally speaking, just as British as any other town or county in the UK.

Suppose America’s military installations in Greenland were to be converted into “sovereign base areas” on the Cyprus model. Given that this arrangement has worked for nearly seven decades on a small and crowded Mediterranean island, it should be relatively simple to replicate on a vast and largely empty territory like Greenland. Could this be the answer?

Michael Clarke, a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, says it might be a way of giving Trump the sort of victory that he wants, and so it has plausibility.

Any possible solution has to deal with the fact that Trump’s public reasons for taking Greenland make no objective sense: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” he says, apparently unaware that America already has an agreement with Denmark signed in 1951, allowing the US to “construct, install, maintain and operate” any military base on Greenland and to “station and house personnel”.

The US military also enjoys free access to the seas around the island. If Trump is right to claim that Russian and Chinese ships are now prowling these waters, then America can already counter this threat. There is simply no need for Trump to “have” Greenland.

During the Cold War, the US used its rights under the 1951 accord to build at least 17 installations across the island, ranging from airfields to radar stations and weather observatories.

In the high north, more than 1,000 miles from Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, American engineers tunnelled into a glacier to create Camp Century in 1960. Powered by a nuclear reactor, this secret maze of living quarters and research facilities – codenamed “Project Iceworm” – housed 200 specialists studying the possibility of hiding missile silos beneath the snow. When that proved impossible, Camp Century was shut in 1967. Later, as the Cold War came to an end, America dismantled all but one of its military installations in Greenland, withdrawing virtually all of its 6,000 personnel.

Today, the only remaining US facility is Pituffik Space Base on the shores of Baffin Bay, 138 miles west of the carcass of Camp Century. It is here where about 200 personnel watch for incoming ballistic missiles as part of the US Early Warning System. If Pituffik were to become US sovereign territory, then Trump would be able to say that he had planted the Stars and Stripes in the snow and gained new land for the United States. If the same status were to be accorded to the abandoned tunnels and unusable silos of Camp Century – and perhaps the locations of all the other former military sites – then 17 US flags might appear on the map, and a few hundred square miles of Arctic ice cap be added to America. Given that Greenland covers more than 836,000 square miles and has only 56,000 people, this would make little practical difference. No-one’s life would be changed if the Stars and Stripes were to fly over some uninhabited inlets far above the Arctic Circle. Even if the boundaries of any sovereign base areas were to be drawn as expansively as possible, and Trump gained a few thousand square miles, that would only amount to a fraction of Greenland.

“The real issue is that Trump wants to add a big chunk of territory to the United States so that he gets his face on Mount Rushmore,” says Prof Clarke. “He’s not going to get the Nobel Peace Prize, so he wants another sort of prize.”

About 40 per cent of the current territory of the United States was bought, with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Alaska Purchase of 1867 being the most famous examples, and Trump seemingly yearns for something comparable. Granting America sovereign base areas in Greenland may be a way of handing him the prize that he craves – without, in practice, changing very much.

The International Security Programme at the Chatham House think tank certainly agrees that this could be a solution, while adding that any territorial concessions made under US pressure would be a bitter pill for Denmark and Greenland.

Chatham House believes that although this would still be a big concession for Denmark and Greenland to make, it would be a better concession than risking an American attack. It stresses, that for Denmark and Greenland, this is now such a matter of national security that they probably could make far-reaching concessions in bringing this impasse to an end.

There must be a danger that Trump may act unilaterally and simply declare US sovereignty over Pituffik, and perhaps the chain of defunct installations, including Camp Century.

Denmark’s best option could be to pre-empt him by offering to convert these facilities into sovereign base areas as part of an overall settlement.

Some possibilities are infinitely worse. Rubio has said that America wants to buy the entirety of Greenland, reviving Trump’s proposal from his first presidential term. But the Danish government has neither the legal power nor the appetite to sell its territory.

If no solution is possible, Denmark could stand firm and rally its European allies, hoping that Trump’s attention may turn elsewhere. But that option increases the risk of America resorting to military action – and just about anything would be better than that calamity.

Yet, even if the confrontation could be resolved by giving the US sovereign base areas, Prof Clarke believes this outcome would still weaken the West. “NATO will have suffered because of that – the fact that they’ve had to buy him off. And Denmark will have suffered. So NATO would still come out of this weaker,” he said. “But it would not be as destructive as the possible alternative.”

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Britain, China, Economic, Government, National Security, Politics, United States

Questions to be answered over China’s super-embassy

NATIONAL SECURITY

The construction of the new Chinese “super-embassy” in the heart of London has been a long-running saga, its development plans shrouded in secrecy. Back in 2018, Beijing bought the Royal Mint site – an act whose symbolism was not lost on most Britons – for £255m. Assurances were given that the building would be used for normal diplomatic functions. But when the plans were released, they included a vast basement complex with no obvious purpose. Curiously, the details of the basement were redacted.

The true extent of Beijing’s plan has now been revealed. There will be 208 underground rooms, including a hidden chamber equipped with hot-air extraction systems, one metre away from Britain’s most sensitive communication cables, which transmit financial data to and from the City of London, as well as messaging traffic for millions of internet users.

Even before these revelations came to light, the Chinese plan came with obvious security risks: last year MI5 issued an “espionage alert” about Beijing’s spies targeting MPs and parliamentary staff “at scale”, while the US told Britain to reject the proposal on the grounds that it could effectively become a den of spies working against Western interests.

Planning permission has not yet been granted, but it is widely expected that Sir Keir Starmer will approve the proposal ahead of his visit to China later this month. For many in Britain, the obvious question should loom: why?

Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto promised an audit of Britain’s relationship with China. In the end, only two paragraphs of it were published, in the National Security Strategy. And, as is publicly known, the failure last year to prosecute Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, two alleged spies for China, was because the UK Government was not prepared to provide witnesses willing to describe China as “an enemy”.

Britain is in the economic doldrums, and Starmer is desperately seeking more direct investment for his growth plans. China has slowly been buying up Britain, purchasing UK gilts as well as companies. This leaves the UK vulnerable to pressure from Beijing, which has a record of using debt as leverage. The PM clearly believes Britain needs to be on good terms with China.

However, that shouldn’t stop him quizzing Beijing. If there is nothing to see, why was so much of the plan redacted? Why does a foreign embassy need 208 rooms underground? Why demolish and rebuild the outer basement wall of the secret chamber, directly beside the fibre-optic cables that carry information critical to Britain’s national security and prosperity? And if the embassy is built, what does Britain gain?

These questions need to be satisfactorily answered before the green light is given to build a Chinese super-embassy in London.

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Britain, China, Defence, Government, Military, National Security, Politics, United Nations, United States

Chagos deal risks the UK’s nuclear deterrent

CHAGOS ISLANDS

BRITAIN’S nuclear deterrent would be at risk from Chinese interference if the Prime Minister capitulates over the Chagos Islands.

A covert satellite system used to direct British and US nuclear missiles would be compromised if Keir Starmer signs off a deal with China-friendly Mauritius, it is feared.

The UK is currently locked in negotiations, led by Attorney General Lord Hermer and National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, over handing over the strategically important islands in the Indian Ocean following a UN ruling.

The archipelago, controlled by the UK for more than two centuries, is home to the joint UK-US Diego Garcia military base. Britain is set to pay billions to Mauritius to lease the base back for 99 years under the terms of the deal.

But concerns have been raised that the UK’s system for coordinating nuclear missiles relies on connection points on the Diego Garcia base. To function properly, these “nodes” require physical protection and British control of the island’s electromagnetic spectrum.

However, the deal includes a clause saying other countries could also use the spectrum, from which Mauritius could profit.

This could offer Beijing a gateway to jamming the highly classified Automated Digital Network System 3 (ADNS 3), which is shared by the Royal Navy and the US Navy, and, which crucially, is part of the “Nuclear Firing Chain” (NFC). The deal would enhance UK national security, but without it, Britain would lose access to the spectrum. The future operation of the base without a deal would clearly be at risk.

Nonetheless, critics suggest that the government’s arguments are totally fabricated. They say that the islands are far more important than just this and the potential threat to our operations from a no deal is a total fiction from the pen of the Cabinet Office – and, by extension, the human rights law firm, Leigh Day.

Lord Hermer was a go-to barrister for Leigh Day before his appointment as Attorney General last year and he has been accused of a deference to international law over domestic needs.

Leigh Day is currently representing asylum seekers who claim they were trapped on the Chagos Islands after being rescued at sea by the Royal Navy. In 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that Britain’s continued administration of the islands was unlawful.

Despite the UK ignoring the ruling, it was subsequently ratified by the UN General Assembly, which found the islands rightfully belonged to Mauritius. Sir Ben Wallace, a former defence secretary, said: “Many of the UN judges who made the flawed ruling come from totalitarian states including China.

“Is the PM really going to put their opinions before that of Britain’s security? Diego Garcia is British and must remain so.”

And, MP Tom Tugendhat said that in his former role of security minister, he had seen the advice on the implications of the deal, but the version being presented to the public was “nonsense”.

The settlement could also mean that the Royal Navy could be prevented from entering a buffer zone which Mauritius intends to set up around the islands.

Without any protection from Western navies, there is heightened fear that China could get close enough to the sensitive military facilities.

It is known that ADNS 3 provides assured tactical wide area networking between ships and shore around the world to support full battlespace connectivity.

Britain’s nuclear threat is carried by the Royal Navy’s bomber submarines. Any breakdown of communications or hostile interception of messages which are part of the NFC, or any other breach, would mean Britain losing its nuclear deterrent.

This is a highly technical matter, involving a lot of classified systems, which, according to critics, is being overlooked by government lawyers.

This part of the world is key to China’s expansionist agenda, and any deal with the UK would appear to facilitate that. These systems rely on guarantees around the security of Diego Garcia.

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