JANUARY 22 — Greenland’s government has issued civil-preparedness guidelines advising households how to cope for five days amid possible power outages and disruptions to water, food, medicine, heating, and communications. The message, Dr as articulated by Greenlandic minister Peter Borg, is deliberately calming: this is not a signal that a crisis is expected; it is about strengthening resilience.
That reassurance is necessary — but insufficient. Preparedness manuals do not emerge in political vacuums.
They surface when strategic pressure accumulates, when uncertainty thickens, and when a society senses that external interests may test its autonomy without necessarily firing a shot. In the Arctic, the contest is no longer hypothetical. It is structural.
The central fallacy in today’s discourse is the assumption that “no use of force” equals “no coercion.”
History teaches the opposite. Great powers rarely announce aggression as aggression. They deny it. They cloak it in legality, necessity, or benevolence.
They promise restraint — and then proceed by other means. If there is no force, there is co-optation. If there is no co-optation, there is coercion.
If there is no coercion, there is compellence. These are not academic abstractions.
They are the modern grammar of power. Co-optation begins softly. Investment packages, infrastructure financing, technology transfers, security partnerships, and “capacity building” arrive bearing gifts.
Over time, they shape preferences. Elites recalibrate incentives. Dependencies deepen. Policy space narrows.
The choice to say “no” becomes more expensive than the choice to acquiesce.
Coercion follows when persuasion stalls. Trade pressure. Regulatory choke points. Financial scrutiny. Supply disruptions. Visa regimes. Legal challenges framed as technical compliance.
Compellence is the final rung short of open violence.
It is the credible threat that pain will be applied unless a specific outcome is delivered — now, not latent international politics, compellence thrives in grey zones where attribution is fuzzy and escalation risks are carefully managed.
Against this backdrop, Greenland’s preparedness guidelines should be read not as paranoia but as prudence.
Greenland sits at the convergence of climate change, resource competition, and geostrategic rivalry. Melting ice is not merely an environmental story; it is an access story.
Sea lanes lengthen. Minerals surface. Infrastructure acquires dual-use significance.
Civilian grids — power, communications, ports — become strategic assets. Disruption need not be violent to be decisive. Europe understands this, even if it hesitates to admit it.
The European Union has long prided itself on normative power: rules over force, law over coercion.
Yet norms do not defend supply chains, and law does not harden cables against pressure.
When strategic competition intensifies, the EU’s preference for process can become an invitation to pressure.
The uncomfortable truth is this: Europe cannot outsource Greenland’s security to reassurance alone.
Nor can it assume that declaring “no force” immunises the Arctic from predatory statecraft.
The scent of aggressive designs, as history shows, is often thrown precisely by those who intend to move — later, and differently.
From Suez to Crimea, from the South China Sea to the Red Sea, the pattern repeats. Leaders deny intentions. They emphasise legality. They warn against hysteria.
Then realities shift incrementally until resistance becomes impractical or prohibitively costly.
The absence of force at the outset is not evidence of benign intent; it is evidence of strategic patience.
For Greenland, societal preparedness is therefore a form of deterrence.
A population capable of withstanding disruption is harder to intimidate. Resilience raises the threshold at which coercion works.
Five days of self-sufficiency is not about surviving an apocalypse; it is about denying leverage in the opening moves of a crisis.
For Europe, the implication is sharper. Solidarity cannot be rhetorical. It must be operational.
Energy security, communications redundancy, maritime awareness, and political clarity are not optional add-ons; they are the substance of sovereignty. If Europe wavers, others will not.
None of this requires alarmism. It requires realism. Great powers do not need to invade to prevail.
They need only to shape choices. And choices, once constrained by dependence and pressure, cease to be free.
Greenland’s guidelines acknowledge a simple fact: security today is not only about soldiers and borders.
It is about households, grids, water, and trust. In that sense, the document is quietly radical.
It recognises that the frontline of geopolitics now runs through everyday life.
Europe should take note. With or without the use of force, Greenland will remain a test of resolve. And on that test, the EU is not off the hook — yet.
* Phar Kim Beng is professor of Asean Studies and director of the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University of Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
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