Increasing militarization and resource exploitation is not good news for any ecologically sensitive and vulnerable region, all the more so for the Arctic region which is reported to be warming at twice the global rate, leading to rapid melting of ice. However with the USA’s serious intentions of buying/annexing Greenland, together with an ongoing push for resource grab by several countries including all the three great powers, the region appears to be going in the opposite direction of the protective future that is urgently needed.
Militarization pursued in reckless ways can lead to the most devastating results in such ecological spaces of high vulnerability. In this context disclosures about Project Iceworm, which goes back a long time but whose impacts may be still lingering, should be highlighted as a warning of the kind of reckless and uncontrolled militarization that must be avoided under all circumstances, here and elsewhere.
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Aerial view of Camp Century, Greenland (From the Public Domain)
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A recent description of what happened under this project has been provided by Prof. Jeff Colgan of Brown University, speaking to Srijana Mitra Das (see The Times of India 19 January—interview titled ‘The resource curse drives petro-aggression’). Colgan says—
“After World war 2 the US Army wanted to build a base in Greenland for up to 600 medium range nuclear missiles that would be mounted on a train, riding 3,000 km of track. This train would be buried in tunnels inside Greenland’s ice sheet…
“In the late 1950s-early 60s the US army was very serious about this and actually built Camp Century, the central base for Project Iceworm. They brought a small nuclear reactor to Greenland to power the base. After a few years they realized it was technically unfeasible and gave up, but they left a lot of nuclear wastewater at the base. They also left thousands and thousands of liters of diesel fuel—this stayed in the middle of Greenland’s ice-sheet.”
But now with climate change and massive ice melting,
“The waste material people thought would stay tens of meters below the soil surface will eventually resurface and potentially contaminate water in Greenland.”
Actually with nuclear wastewater and other issues the potential of harm can be much higher. Along with concerns regarding this, there should be even higher concern regarding whether this kind of reckless militarization would be pursued again on Greenland once the USA gains much more complete control. Against whom will this be aimed and what will be the implications if the other side too responds with more or less equal aggressiveness?
Already the people of the region are facing many problems and there are unprecedented threats to various species of the region including the polar bear. Some species are threatened by the shrinking, even vanishing habitats where they have always lived safely and happily, some are threatened by the fast reducing access to their staple food, while some are threatened by weather extremes.
Despite this there is still relentless march to exploit the vast natural resources of the region, including oil, natural gas, rare earths and other minerals. Partly due to the huge natural resources and partly due to strategic and geo-political reasons, big power confrontation in this remote region is also increasing. In fact melting of ice increases the possibility of higher exploitation of natural resources as well as carving out of new maritime routes with all its strategic and commercial implications. Another complication is the increasing confrontational situation of NATO and Russia which may get extended, tragically, even to the Arctic region with very heavy costs to ecology and to native people.
The Arctic region is spread over 8 countries 7 of which are NATO members. These are USA, Canada, Iceland, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Sweden and Finland. The eighth country is Russia. While Russia has a well-established military presence here, this is largely defensive as Russia has important strategic interests to protect here spread over a vast area. With increasing NATO aggression Russia has responded by giving more opportunities to China to acquire a presence here. One move by one side may lead to another move by the other side and very soon the situation may become much more tense and risky.
This should be avoided in the interests of world peace as well as the considerations of protecting Arctic ecology. Not just actual conflict but even large-scale military exercises may prove to be quite harmful for Arctic ecology. Under the Nordic Response 2024 exercise in Norway, last year tens of thousands of soldiers from 13 NATO member countries were gathered in the Arctic region with frigates, submarines and other vessels, and over 100 aircraft.
The situation in Greenland is particularly serious. Very high rate of ice melting has been reported here. With its strategic location close to Russia as well as the USA, Greenland remains of great military interest to the USA. If USA annexes Greenland then its territorial borders come much closer to several allies, Iceland being the closest but other countries like the UK also come much nearer.
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Peter Hermes Furian / Adobe Stock
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In addition Greenland is a source of precious mineral resources, including gold and rare earths. The opening up of these rare earth deposits to China is something which the western powers will like to stop, given the fact that China already has high levels of control over rare earths.
Greenland has a population of just 57000 people in its vast territory of 836330 sq. miles and has the lowest population density in the entire world. This Arctic region is highly sensitive from the ecological point of view. As ice sheets which cover vast areas melt under the influence of global warming, buried carbon deposits will be released and sea levels will rise.
Hence there is a strong case for the entire Greenland to be administered by the United Nations as a zone of neutrality, peace and environment protection but there are hardly any chances of this happening. The immediate prospects are more in the direction of annexation by the USA and increasing militarization and resource exploitation. As the ice melts the remains of what was once a nuclear-powered military station (Camp Century) of the USA will open up, requiring a very careful clean-up effort. An even bigger danger exists in the form a nuclear weapon which was lost here in a bomber airplane accident in 1968. This was the peak of the cold war period when some USA bomber planes carrying nuclear weapons used to be in the air all the time and the Thule military base in Greenland was a special place for these operations due to the relative proximity of Russian targets from here. The airplane accident took place when the USA bomber containing nuclear weapons was approaching this military base in Greenland. The USA had obtained the permission of the Denmark government to set up this military base but it is not at all certain whether the Denmark government, let alone the local communities, had been informed about the transactions here involving the transport of nuclear weapons.
Actually the plane contained four nuclear weapons but three could be recovered. In the salvage operation in 1968 thousands of pieces of debris as well as millions of tons of ice, suspected to contain radioactive debris, were collected. Still one weapon could not be found despite the huge research effort. Workers employed in the clean-up work suffered from cancer later and have been claiming compensations till recently.
It is by now widely accepted that in this accident as many as four nuclear weapons were endangered, three were recovered more or less intact but one hydrogen bomb was never recovered. One aspect of a UN-administrated protective future should be to remain on constant alert for any tell-tale signs of damage from this so that a potential catastrophic event can still be prevented.
The wider efforts for ensuring an overall protective future for the Arctic region against all odds should also continue.
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Bharat Dogra is Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, A Day in 2071, Planet in Peril and Man over Machine. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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