It was one of those golden autumn days when everything seemed to be perfect: cloudless blue sky, a warm twenty-four Celsius showing on the dashboard thermometer and, above all, traffic light enough to allow me to enjoy the magnificent show that the maple trees on the hills along my road mounted in the brilliant sunshine: a carpet of colours ranging from pink, orange, brown, blood red and ending in deep Bordeaux.
I felt very happy to be living in a beautiful country, convinced that nowhere else in the world were there maple trees that could produce such a spectacular annual display.
To boot, the radio was on and Beethoven’s violin concerto was playing.
Then, suddenly, the music stopped and we were informed that President Trump just managed to strengthen the existing 1951 Greenland-Denmark-US defence agreement by making it ‘permanent’ and permitting expanded US military access.
However, Trump did not get ownership. The agreement expressly reaffirms the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland’s right to self-determination.
My heart skipped a beat. “What about Canada?”
I found out later that the agreement doesn’t take anything away from Canadian territory. The question is whether the dramatically expanded US military role will eventually affect the balance of power over the Canadian Arctic and the Northwest Passage.
Canada has a sovereignty dispute with the US about the Northwest Passage and now the US has obtained exceptionally broad, apparently permanent, military access arrangement in the Arctic immediately beside Canada.
For Canada, such an arrangement is advantageous from an international security point of view as long as both the US and Canada remain members of NATO.
But who knows what the future holds? One thing is certain: the Northwest Passage will become strategically more important not less because of increasing Russian military activity and China’s growing strategic interest in the Arctic.
CAVE CANEM
(Beware of the Dog)
