Admiral Bauer at Davos: Greenland is of Enormous Strategic Importance and America Right to be Worried

The ongoing rebalancing of the global world order between the U.S. and China makes President Donald Trump’s interest in Greenland rational as the “very important and strategic island” is a key to questions including Arctic security, hypersonic weapons, space, and raw materials, Davos heard on Wednesday.

Speaking in one of his first major public engagements since stepping down as the head of the NATO military committee and his retirement from the Royal Netherlands Navy, former Admiral Rob Bauer spoke out on Greenland and the intense threat to the West of Russia and China cooperating on the Arctic.

Now a civilian, Admiral Bauer spoke apparently free of any NATO party line and underlined the rightness of U.S. President Donald Trump’s concern about the security of Greenland, while emphasising “NATO is too important to the U.S. to have it broken up by this”. He said the alliance could defend the island without it “necessarily” having to be owned outright by America.

Speaking at a Bloomberg reception at the World Economic Forum’s Davos meeting, Bauer said “It is clear for me that Greenland is important to our security and I think more and more nations understand that” and emphasised the serious security risk to NATO when the high Arctic shipping routes become navigable, with Russia and China investing heavily in icebreakers.

He said: “If merchant vessels can navigate those waters then warships can too, and that means the Russians can bring their Pacific fleet in a much faster and easier way into the North Atlantic ocean. and unfortunately we see very concerning cooperation between China and Russia more and more.”

Admiral Bauer hinted at the extreme danger to the United States if the new routes in the high north aren’t adequately defended by NATO, stating Greenland is key to a host of security concerns including hypersonic missiles. The emergence of these new, extremely high-speed weapons have caused considerable concern in the context of the Ukraine conflict: Russia’s new intermediate-range Oreshnik missile, reaches 11-times the speed of sound in its terminal phase.

They do not have global range, however, and the most populated areas of the U.S. are beyond a launch from mainland Russia, but not from the Arctic.

Admiral Bauer remarked: “I am really concerned about the Russia-Chinese cooperation. This is far beyond Ukraine, this is about the Arctic, it’s about hypersonics, it’s about space, it’s about raw materials.”

On the competition to ensure security in the high north, Bauer said:

…it is clear that all of this we see happening is about rebalancing power between the U.S. and China, and that’s where the turmoil comes from. And we’ll be in this for at least 10-15 years, hopefully with as little war as possible. But if tectonic plates shift there are earthquakes, and is tectonic plates of power shift there are unfortunately crises and wars.

And I think that’s what we see now, not necessarily a World War Three, it can be regional wars, it can be local wars. It can be volatile for a while until there is a new balance between those two powers.

…When you look at Greenland it is a very important and strategic island, but for NATO.

NATO can actually help the United States to remain safe, I don’t think the U.S. necessarily needs to own Greenland to achieve that. Since WW2 there are treaties and agreements on working with the Kingdom of Denmark on Greenland.

The U.S. withdrew from Greenland and left only 150 personnel in a base, and is now interested to go back, and that is understandable. I agree with that. I am really concerned about the Russia-Chinese cooperation.

This rebalancing between great powers will be particularly painful for Europe because it has been benefitting from unsustainably cheap and abundant strategic necessities for decades and that period is coming to an end. While Europe largely freeloading on America’s underwriting of the NATO alliance has long been part of the discussion, it doesn’t stop there. Bauer told Davos:

…we see an increasing dependency on China because we were only thinking about efficiency in the West, we were only thinking about getting rich, nobody was thinking strategically… so we sold the mines, and we’re now surprised they [the Chinese] own them… the [American people] are sick and tired of Europeans and Canadians who are not taking responsibility for their own security.

I think Europe has had almost free security for 40 years. It had free goods from China and free oil and gas from Russia, and all three are over. And that’s why, especially in Europe, the shock is biggest.

While Bauer evidently agrees with President Trump — and more than most — that Greenland is strategically critical and not a marginal issue, the President has already spoken contra the Admiral’s belief that European NATO can sufficiently fortify the island for the underway global realignment against China. Speaking in Davos on Wednesday, President Trump said the U.S. is the only nation that can be defend Greenland, but also that he would not take it by force, and was seeking “immediate negotiations” to acquire the island.