[Military Environmental Forum] GLOBAL: "What America Left Behind in Greenland"

[Lenny Siegel <Lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

What America Left Behind in Greenland
The Toxic Legacy of Eighty Years of U.S. Military Occupation
Part 2 of a 3-part series.  

By Pat Elder
Military Poisons  
July 9, 2026


President Donald Trump's July 2026 remarks criticizing Denmark's relationship with Greenland provide an unexpected backdrop for this report. Although the President did not specify what he meant by Denmark "not spending money to really help Greenland," his comments invite a broader examination of the responsibilities that accompany the American military presence and strategic interest on the world's largest island.

The geopolitical tensions have been extraordinary. Following President Trump's repeated suggestions earlier this year that he might use military force to acquire Greenland, Danish military planners reportedly developed highly classified contingency plans that included destroying key Greenlandic airfields if the United States attempted an invasion, according to the BBC.

On April 1, 2026, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was negotiating with Denmark for access to three additional military installations in Greenland. According to the newspaper, two of the proposed sites were former American bases abandoned following the Cold War. The report underscored Greenland's renewed strategic importance at a moment when many of the environmental consequences of earlier U.S. military operations remain unresolved.

For more than eighty years, the United States has maintained an extensive network of military installations across Greenland. Those bases left behind nuclear radiation, fuel spills, abandoned infrastructure, military waste, contaminated landfills, PCB-containing materials, asbestos, unexploded ordnance, and, at several locations, documented PFAS contamination associated with firefighting activitie

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For the entire article, see
https://www.militarypoisons.org/latest-news/what-america-left-behind-in-greenland

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)





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