UK Strategy Towards the Arctic (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, a fellow Glaswegian and therefore inured to Arctic weather, and to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, on this admirable report and his splendid introduction of it. I have only two criticisms of his report, and one of them is totally unfair, so I will start with the other one.

The report says that we have

“insufficient key military assets, such as submarines, maritime patrol or airborne early warning aircraft, to support this increased focus on the Arctic”—

which we should have—

“alongside the UK’s growing interest in other regions such as the Indo-Pacific”.

That is obviously true, but it is also a huge understatement. It is not just the posturing about the Pacific that creates the credibility gap. I believe that, as with the Joint Expeditionary Force, on which the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, spoke, which we are supposed to lead but our role is disappointing our partners, we lack the deployable assets to play the part we should be playing, and NATO expects us to play, in the High North. We still talk a good game, but our firepower does not match the rhetoric. In this, as in so many other ways, we need to learn from our front-line friends, the Finns, with their 1 million trained reserves and their society alive to the threat that Putin poses.

The unfair criticism of the report is that it nowhere discusses the largest immediate risk to the High North remaining an area of international co-operation and low tension, the risk to which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, drew attention, which is that America grabs Greenland. The report’s authors might reasonably reply that when they completed the report, 13 months ago, no one saw Trump back in the White House, but, in 11 days’ time, he will be back, and he has this week refused to rule out taking Greenland by force. He said on Monday that if the Danes declined to let him buy it, he would put punitive tariffs on their trade. On Tuesday, he explained that the US needs Greenland for its national security and said:

“People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it”.


This last point is one known in diplomatic terminology—I apologise for using a technical term—as cobblers. Danish sovereignty over Greenland has been unchallenged since the Treaty of Kiel 1814 and was formally accepted and acknowledged by the United States and the United Kingdom in 1916.

However, I do not think Mr Trump is joking. He has form. He has to be taken seriously and, in this case, probably literally. Five years ago, he ordered the National Security Council under John Bolton to arrange the purchase of Greenland. Fiona Hill, who is now assisting the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, in his review, was personally involved in discussions with the Danish Government, who demurred. When the row went public in August 2019, Secretary of State Pompeo was able to calm things down, but the President was so cross, he cancelled a state visit to Copenhagen. I suspect that he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. This time, he will not have Fiona Hill or Mike Pompeo to rein him in.

Whatever his motive, I think Mr Trump is not talking about military issues when he says that the US needs to have Greenland for national security; I think he is thinking in commercial or economic terms. If he was interested in making greater military use of Greenland, he could renegotiate the 1951 defence agreement, which is already strikingly permissive. The United States pays no rent and does not have to seek permission for any overflights or landings. I suspect that what he is after are the rare earths and the uranium, or the oil and gas, which are all now becoming much easier to exploit as the ice melts. I suspect that he is thinking also about China. China already has the biggest outside investment in Greenland, and Greenland exports more to China than to anyone else other than mainland Denmark. The noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, rightly drew our attention to growing Chinese interest in the High North. Whatever his motive, I agree with President Macron, Chancellor Scholz and President Tusk that the forced transfer of sovereignty is no way to treat an ally. Like the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I hope that our Government will find a way of making the same point that they have made. We owe it to the Danes to show them that we stand with them. On 18 October, a UK Minister, Mr Doughty, told the Arctic Circle Assembly that the UK

“will not tolerate attempts to wreck regional stability”

in the High North. He probably had Russia in mind, but sauce for the goose.

NATO Secretary-General Rutte has a big job on his hands in the next four years, with a dominant ally likely to interpret the concept of alliance rather eccentrically. Fortunately, we have an ex-Secretary-General, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, calling on the help of Fiona Hill, with her close-up experience of eccentricity, to advise us now on how we should best cope with it and its consequences as we reassess our priorities. I hope we build our shrunken forces.