Negotiating the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement: Theoretical and Empirical Aspects

• Published in: Scandinavian Political Studies
• Main Author: Petersen, Nikolaj
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 1998
• Subjects: Greenland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9477.1998.tb00001.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9477.1998.tb00001.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9477.1998.tb00001.x

Since 1951 a Danish‐American defense agreement on Greenland has regulated US military activities there. The article gives a detailed empirical‐theoretical analysis of the negotiation of the Agreement under five perspectives: bargaining power, agenda setting, negotiating positions, strategies and outcomes. An important parameter was the fact that negotiations took place in a cooperative setting with a long shadow of the future. This made for a skewed, though regular negotiation process with a give‐and‐take of positions, counter‐positions and concessions. Negotiating strategies varied, with the US side concentrating on an “authority” strategy, while the Danes relied on a mixture of off‐setting “moral” and “tied hands” strategies. Although the US got the best outcome, it was not a dictate, because the ground was leveled by the negotiations taking place as part of the build‐up of a long‐term security relationship and the fact that the United States was the demandeur vis‐à‐vis Denmark.