Back From Greenland, Gov. Landry Says US Can Right Wrong of Its Post-Cold War Departure

WASHINGTON—Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry says the United States made a big mistake several decades ago.

“Right after the Cold War ended, the United States’ peace dividends basically failed Greenland, because we basically depopulated the bases,” Landry, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, told The Epoch Times on May 21 after his first visit to the autonomous Danish territory.

In an exclusive print interview with The Epoch Times, Landry said he received an overwhelmingly friendly reception from Greenlanders, even as a doctor who accompanied him was unable to meet with the health minister.

That doctor, Dr. Joseph Griffin, also spoke with The Epoch Times.

Landry also laid out potential steps to strengthen ties between Greenland and the United States amid Trump’s bid to acquire Greenland. Shipping, air travel, and the repopulation of some bases are among the possibilities he sees.

“Short wins that show tangible results could happen in six to eight months,” he said during the interview, which took place ahead of scheduled meetings with Trump and other officials.

At one point, the United States had 17 bases alongside other installations. Now, its presence is limited to the far northern Pituffik Space Base.

Landry said the mass closure of those sites drove the depopulation of many small Greenlandic villages.

Now, in a new era of great power competition with Russia and China, things have changed.

“I think that post-Cold War, we felt like, ‘Oh, we’ll never have to worry about anybody again,’ yet here we are again,” Landry said.

Trump, he said, has a chance “to right the wrongs of the past.”

“There’s no doubt that the president has placed Greenland back on the world map,” Landry added.

Landry in Greenland

The governor visited Nuuk, Greenland’s capital.

He said Greenlanders welcomed him—an assessment that differs from some media coverage of his trip there.

A February survey published by the Copenhagen Post found that 76 percent of Greenlanders oppose joining the United States.

After his May 18 meeting with Landry, Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told reporters, “We believe there is progress, and from Greenland’s side, we are focused on finding ⁠a solution that is good for us all, and most importantly, that threats of annexation, takeover, or a purchase of Greenland and the Greenlandic people does not occur.”

The May 21 opening of a new U.S. consulate building in Nuuk, which Landry did not attend, was met with protests.

Landry said that out of the hundreds of people with whom he spoke, he could “remember only seeing or hearing from three people of an anti-American view.”

The Danes, he said, treat Greenlanders “a bit as second-class citizens.”

He said most Greenlanders told him they would like a closer relationship with the United States, with many asking for the United States to reactivate its bases.

“I do think that they certainly would love a compact of a free association,” he said, referring to a type of free association agreement the United States maintains with several Pacific states where the United States has a military footprint.

As the United States’ interest in Greenland waxes after waning for many years, Landry said he thinks Nielsen and Greenlandic Foreign Minister Múte B. Egede are “knocking on the door for America.”

“The question is, are we going to open it this time?” he added.

The special envoy outlined some of the steps he said he would present to the president and to senior State Department officials.

“I think that we should look at ways to strengthen educational opportunities, to strengthen ease of access for Greenlanders into the United States, to make a commitment on air travel that’s going back and forth, to set up a direct shipping route between Greenland and the United States, and to basically make a commitment on populating bases,” he said.

Landry said continuity after the Trump administration regarding Greenland could come through approaches that “overlap the military component with an economic component with an educational component with a health care component.”

Those decisions, he said, should ensure the change is permanent.

He said Greenlanders were interested in mining rare earths and precious metals.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and others have drawn attention to the logistical challenges of extracting minerals in such a cold, remote location.

“There’s certainly far more attractive places to mine for rare earths,” Wright said at a February conference in France.

Landry struck a more optimistic note.

“Are we going to let a harsh climate stop us from being able to get what we need to make our economy great?” he said.

He also expressed a kind of kinship with the Greenlandic Inuit, comparing his own Cajun culture with their way of life.

“Here you have a people who have their own language, who live off the land, who make a living hunting and fishing. They’re trying to preserve a culture there that is extremely unique,” he said of the Greenlanders. “That is something that Cajun culture went through.”

The ancestors of many of Louisiana’s Cajuns were forcibly removed from the historic region of Acadia by the British during the 1750s and 1760s, during the French and Indian War.

Many ended up in Louisiana, which was then part of the Spanish Empire.

A Doctor’s View

While Landry was able to meet with some officials, Dr. Joseph Griffin, a vascular surgeon from Louisiana who said he came as a volunteer, said that an expected meeting with Greenland’s health minister did not occur.

He said he did not know why that happened, saying it was scheduled through the U.S. State Department and its contacts with the health ministry.

“I don’t know what else we really could have done, to be honest with you,” he said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Greenland’s health ministry for more details.

Anna Wangenheim, Greenland’s health minister, condemned Griffin’s visit in a statement to media outlets.

“A society with great distances, a chronic shortage of health professionals, and a demographic development that pressures the system makes us vulnerable—and that is precisely why it is deeply problematic when people with a political mission to make Greenland part of the United States send a so-called volunteer doctor to Nuuk to ‘assess our needs,’” she said.

Griffin said Greenlanders were eager to share their health care concerns with him.

“Their national hospital has basic to above-basic care,” he said, noting that dialysis, heart catheterizations, and many other procedures require trips to Iceland or Denmark.

He said the United States could “supplement and/or augment what they already have.”

The physical environment in Nuuk wowed him.

“The first thing you appreciate as just a human being is walking off that airplane and literally feeling that fresh air and that healthy environment,” he said.

Griffin said he also sought to learn from the Greenlanders about their traditional practices, including how they expose themselves to the cold.

Cold-induced thermogenesis can activate healthy brown fat in humans.

“That’s a very, very healthy thing to do,” the vascular surgeon said.

Griffin noted that the country’s glaciers have water low in deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. Scientists are studying deuterium-depleted water’s potential utility in fighting cancer, diabetes, and other diseases.

He said a Greenlandic man told him he consumed boiled glacier water while sick as a child.

“People would get better, but they wouldn’t understand why,” he said.

Griffin said his visit was intended as a reciprocal learning experience, not an attempt by the United States to take over Greenland’s health care system.

“Greenlandic health care needs to come towards us, so we can understand Arctic medicine,” he said.