Odd Couples’ Win-Sets: Maintaining U.S. Basing Rights Through New Two-Level Game Negotiations With Greenland

As a political focal point, the Pituffik Space Base (“Pituffik”) has played a decisive role in deepening relations between Greenland and the United States. To shed light upon these relations, both between the two internally and with regard to Denmark, this article analyses the 2020 negotiations regarding Pituffik and the positions of the three parties in both the final agreement and the process of negotiation. The theoretical framework of the analysis is an interlocked two-level game analysis following Putnam (1988); the study is based upon 12 interviews with key figures, media coverage, and on the negotiated agreements themselves. The article argues that Greenland and the United States, although being an odd couple as a small state-like self-governing nation and a global superpower, conducted a new, interlocking two-level game, reaching win-sets and common interests while changing the way the parties negotiate and sign agreements. Thus, the article concludes that the 2020 negotiations about the base inaugurate a change in the overall relationship by positioning Greenland in a new and more direct relationship with the United States.