So what can we put on the positive side of the balance-sheet? Before evaluating something we need to ask ourselves whether Danish sovereignty over Greenland matters - sovereignty is what Denmark was asked to sell, nothing else. If something would benefit Denmark regardless of whether it sold Greenland or not, then it cannot count as a benefit. We are also interested in the changes on the margin based on Denmark not selling.

Proceeding through possible benefits in descending order:

Geostrategic location Obviously very valuable. But it is worthless to Denmark if it does not use the location for anything valuable—which it does not. Compare to, say, Gibraltar. Denmark is a liberal Scandinavian state which has been neutral since the 1864 Second Schleswig War; it is not going to launch its piratical navy out from hidden Greenland ports to raid Atlantic shipping. Denmark has, does, and will make no real military use of Greenland. (This possible benefit also cuts the other way: a strategically vital location you cannot defend or use effectively is not a benefit, but doomed , and one reason that territory purchases like the Louisiana or Alaskan or Virgin Island transfers happened. The fact that a small, obscure, distant country like Denmark has been permitted by the much larger or much more closely located powers like the USA, UK, USSR, France, Germany etc to retain Greenland for so long implies that it is either not that valuable or Denmark is not gaining its value.) Likewise, Denmark has failed to capture the indirect geostrategic value of Greenland: not only did it refuse the US offer, it then—as a founding member of NATO, joining 1949-04-04—proceeded to let the US use Greenland as much as it pleased, expanding the US WWII installations into the gigantic Thule Air Base (linchpin of the Strategic Air Command nuclear bombers aimed at Russia) and agreeing to govern Thule under a 1951 treaty which specifically says (emphasis added): Without prejudice to the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over such defense area and the natural right of the competent Danish authorities to free movement everywhere in Greenland, the Government of the United States of America, without compensation to the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark, shall be entitled within such defense area and the air spaces and waters adjacent thereto: … The USA had plans to exploit Greenland’s location even more thoroughly with Project Iceworm (“a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet”); it was canceled not due to Danish objections but technical problems with the ice tunnels. When Denmark’s military is active in the 20th/21st century, it is in roles where Greenland is of no possible value to it (eg serving as peacekeepers & advisors in Afghanistan). What is the Danish Navy supposed to do with a Greenland base, intervene in the Cod Wars? With the ending of the Cold War, Greenland’s value is likewise diminished. Yes, the US would still like it for use with the anti-ballistic missile shield and for shortening air routes, but that’s a preference and not an existential necessity (the need for bombers is now largely moot given subsequent developments like aerial refueling and missiles).

Economics: the Northwest Passage Perhaps, like how Spain refuses to let Catalonia secede, Greenland represents a large chunk of national GDP and cannot be allowed to? But no, the GDP contribution is negative. Perhaps the location is economically rather than strategically valuable, particularly for the North-West Passage? But Greenland’s territorial waters extend out only 12 nautical miles. Even the Greenland EEZ does not cut off the Passage. The only obvious way to monetize the Passage is military, which as already noted, is politically impossible for Denmark. Nor was the North-West Passage important in the 1940s and still is not important despite global warming.

Fishing grounds Fishing is one of the few viable Greenland industries; Wikipedia says it’s 72% of the 2008 exports of $485m or $350m, from a fishery of around 5 million square miles. This is total export value, not profit. If we assume profits of 10%/$30m or whatever, that’s nowhere near enough to repay the subsidy or the cost of not selling, and so it does not help. (But it is definitely a brighter spot in the tally when compared with the oil/Passage/geostrategic values of 0.)

Hydrocarbons: oil/natural gas/methane An old hypothetical, raised by almost everyone, but one that totally fails. Proof of the farsightedness of predictions that Greenland will turn into another Alaska and gush oil or minerals can be seen in the fact that after a century, there remains not a trace of this in sight—future exploitation of natural resources has always been a justification for Greenland, and, one suspects, always will be. Being covered by kilometer-thick ice is unhelpful. The Greenland state oil company, NUNAOIL, is small; and if I read their 2010 report correctly, they lose money some years and the profitable years yield only a few million dollars. There may be ton of oil there, but there will always be vast oil deposits somewhere which are uneconomical to extract, and Greenland seem to hold a lot of them. (When oil companies prefer working with tar sands to your oil, you either have very little or very expensive oil!) Given that Greenland oils & minerals have been so expensive to extract that they haven’t been over the past centuries, any technology making Greenland exploitation feasible will benefit many more viable competitors and also implies that the marginal costs of extraction will be so high that even if at some point meaningful levels of resource extraction happen, the profit of each unit will be near zero—Saudi Arabia, Greenland is not! Worse, Denmark has agreed that future oil profits will go to Greenland, left-overs will only go to reduce the annual Danish subsidy, and anything past that goes back to Greenland to foster further autonomy/independence, a trend which seems likely to repeat itself if there turn out to be any exploitable resources in or near Greenland such as by the North Pole . So under no scenario will Denmark ever turn an actual profit. And finally, Denmark could profit from any oil discovered regardless of whether it or the US owned Greenland—if its oil companies are competitive. So, oil is completely useless as a reason to hold onto Greenland.

Mining: Zinc, lead, and rare earths Those mines were closed in 1990, but may re-open in the future. I didn’t find any data on the profitability of the mines between 1946 and 1990; it is possible they were so lucrative as to justify holding onto Greenland. This seems a little unlikely, but I can’t immediately dismiss it. (It wouldn’t justify the subsidies past 1990, of course, but it might justify the original 1946 decision to hold onto Greenland.) The warming of Greenland and melting of glacial ice has prompted renewed exploration of Greenland’s mineral reserves and fresh discoveries of deposits , suggesting that profits were minimal before due to difficult conditions. The difficulty here is that many of the economic benefits will be internalized by the companies doing the exploitation, their (foreign) employees, and the externalized environmental waste & health fallout from mining is notorious. In particular, the discovery of rare earths may not matter because rare earth deposits are not rare and not found solely in China (as coverage of China’s 2009–2010 rare earth embargo might lead one to believe) but found all over including large deposits in the USA; the reason the American deposits at the Mountain Pass rare earth mine stopped being mined is because the environmental contamination was too severe and China permitted that while America did not—hence Mountain Pass is only starting up with a heavy investment in cleaner mining techniques. Will the rare earths be profitable enough to compete with American or Australian or Canadian or Chinese deposits, under Greenland’s conditions, at acceptable levels of pollution and especially the taboo radioactivity?

Mining sand: As global warming melts the ice, it exposes much sand in Greenland. Is that profitable and will make Greenland the ‘Saudi Arabia of Sand’? No. Sand is extremely heavy, used in bulk in construction for concrete (and being so bulky, especially environmentally destructive to extract), and used primarily on the opposite side of the world. It is a low-value product used in low-value ways in poor places, which may not even pay for shipping outside of Iceland.

Political control Greenland has been principally self-governing since 1979. This may not have been foreseeable in 1946, but suppose it hadn’t; how exactly is the control worth hundreds of millions and billions?

Capturing Greenland’s import business If Denmark’s exports (and future benefits from postulated resource wealth) are driven by its sovereignty over Greenland, then their current moves in devolving even more power and control to the Greenland government (eg. the aforementioned oil deal) are shooting themselves in the economic foot. And if Denmark’s export success isn’t because of its sovereignty, all the less reason to have sovereignty! But given the fact that the direct Danish subsidy is almost the size of Greenland’s entire annual imports and Greenland only imports 60% from Denmark (60% of $867m being $520m vs $500m subsidy), it is hard to see how this could ever result in a profit for Denmark.

Cultural value Wikipedia does list ‘handicrafts’ as a major export. But just like oil and the other resources, benefiting from Greenland’s craftsmen and artists do not require any kind of sovereignty or subsidization. The US doesn’t own China or Canada, yet we still profit plenty and get lots of artists and craftsmen from them. Given free flow of people, the question becomes can Denmark justify its subsidies and opportunity cost by the marginal increase of artists and craftsmen? Justifying by Greenland’s total art output is dubious; by the marginal increase even more dubious.

Colonization Much of the Greenland population is Danish, unsurprisingly. One wonders if some successful colonization (the population is only 57,000 people) is a real benefit to Denmark; regardless, given that Denmark’s 2010 birthrate of 1.88 children per woman is below replacement rate, any nationalists ought to focus their colonizing efforts at home.