Global warming has awakened Iceland from its slumber, increased its strategic value, and forces its citizens to rethink their future. This weekend’s referendum was the first sign of that concern.
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Last winter, during his visit to Davos, and before an expectant audience, Donald Trump mentioned Iceland five times in his speech. Because of how he spoke and showed his desire for the island, journalists thought he had confused it with Greenland, the large territory further west, coveted for its mineral reserves and enviable position in the Arctic. Karoline Leavitt, White House spokesperson, came to the president’s aid and said it was not a slip. That when Trump said Iceland, he meant Iceland…
It was in this accidental way that the island burst onto the new geopolitics. Land of fire and ice, located just below the Arctic Circle, Iceland is a country of vast deserted spaces swept by the wind with meadows dotted with sheep. Its isolation and distance from political centers of gravity—Reykjavik is 2,000 kilometers from Brussels—have kept it on the sidelines of the historical upheavals of the last two centuries.
The island is also a paradise for seabirds (there are twenty times more puffins than humans living on the island, 400,000) and that is because the waters bathing its coasts are full of fish, Iceland’s great wealth.
Contrary to what it may seem, the United States and Iceland are old friends. In 1942, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Third Reich, Washington installed the Keflavik military base there, right next to the airport where swarms of tourists land. During the Cold War, up to 5,000 people were stationed at the base and there were hundreds of mixed marriages. Many Icelanders left the countryside to work in construction at the base and those salaries lifted the country out of poverty. The Americans left in 2006, but the base remains and is a key piece in NATO’s strategy for the North Atlantic. Iceland, by the way, has no army.
The Icelanders have made two contributions to recent culture. First, crime novel writers skilled in stories of isolation and introspection (the landscape and weather facilitate this). Second, a financial crisis in 2008 caused by local banks that grew large based on debt (eleven times the country’s GDP) and when they defaulted, sank it. The crisis provoked a popular revolt that took bankers to court and women to power. The first gender-balanced government in history was Icelandic and Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was its leader.
Months after the crisis, Iceland opened negotiations to join the European Union (EU). It abandoned them four years later because of fishing, which represents 40% of its exports. Had it joined the EU, European fishermen would have fished in its waters. And that is something few Icelanders accept.
Iceland is a rich and full democracy that would allow the EU to be a power in the Arctic
This weekend Iceland voted in a referendum that would allow it to reopen negotiations for EU membership. For a Europe that in the last two years has become the target of American expansionism and the object of veiled Russian aggressions, Iceland knocking on the door is almost a miracle.
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Iceland’s entry would be a gift to the EU. It is a rich and full democracy. It would strengthen the Union’s western flank and turn Brussels into an Arctic power, with a voice over the future of this strategic region.
The Icelanders who voted YES to open negotiations think their purchasing power is 40% lower than that of European citizens. Those who voted NO do not want to hear about giving up their fishing grounds and abhor seeing the country invaded by Europeans fleeing the heat.
Both sides share distrust of Trump and rejection of his ambassador to the island, Billy Long, who has stated that Iceland could be the 52nd state. They are all concerned about Washington’s annexation proclamations regarding neighboring Greenland and watch warily the reactions of Denmark and the EU. But neither do Icelanders hold special affection for Denmark, the country from which they gained independence after World War II, nor are they convinced that the EU is the ideal ally to guarantee their protection.
The Icelanders have not spoken about geopolitics these days. But time is pressing and they must make decisions. Global warming shortens their remoteness and will open Arctic waters to commercial traffic. Iceland will cease to be a final destination and become a place of passage. The Chinese saw this in 2011 when they sent a real estate investor to buy land, unsuccessfully. And Russia keeps prowling its waters: its fleet anchors in the Barents Sea, not far from the island.
During the Cold War, Iceland, along with Greenland and the United Kingdom, formed the bottleneck that Russian submarines had to bypass to reach the Atlantic. Today, the rearming Europe looks at geography in those terms again.
With climate change, the island goes from being a final destination to a place of commercial transit
Icelanders fear the Russians, and see that the United States is an actor they can no longer trust. But they are also not sure that Von der Leyen’s Europe is the solution for the security of their critical infrastructures (Iceland is connected to the world by dozens of cables running under its waters).
If Iceland is going to be so important, what is best for its citizens? To go it alone or poorly accompanied? To sail solo and play poker with all contenders or be part of that club of 450 million people that is the EU? Icelanders are reflecting on these questions. And this weekend’s referendum was the first sign of their unease.
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