Abstract
Danish lack of surveillance capacities in the Arctic is threating the current strategic burden sharing
in the region, which can be an American wedge to increased Arctic posture. Arctic foot-dragging
could therefore see Denmark undermine its most important geopolitical asset: being a significant
security policy actor in arctic in the eyes of the United States. In 2021 the Danish government
announced an investment of 1.5 billion DKK in a so-called Arctic Capacity Package. This
dissertation seeks to investigate to which degree the surveillance capacity in the arctic capacity
package is likely to grant Denmark prestige from the US, which will thereby secure the Danish
geopolitical distinction in the region.
The investigation of the dissertations puzzle has been done through Glenn H. Snyders realist
alliance theory, which has been applied on the empirical data of the assignment through a
hypothetical deductive method in the framework of Peter Viggo Jakobsen’s Theory of Success: If
Denmark acquire appropriate surveillance capabilities in the Arctic, then the US will grant Denmark
prestige, because Denmark is a useful ally. Accumulated prestige reduces the risk of abandonment,
which for the purpose of this dissertation is the risk of being marginalized in the region by the US.
The analysis showed that the surveillance capacity in the arctic capacity package leads to a medium
level of prestige. The interoperability of the air warning radar in the Faroe Islands as well as the
long-range drones indicated a high level of prestige, however the absence of neither air warning
capabilities in Greenland nor antisubmarine capacities led to a modified level of medium prestige.
The capacities are likely venues of entrapment, as they are of such a character that enables the US
to easily draw upon them in conflicts beneath the threshold of war. Even though prestige is an
imprecise ambiguous concept, it is a useful tool in the context of alliance relations that are
themselves ambiguous in nature. This dissertation finds it necessary to increase the level of prestige,
as the medium level of prestige doesn’t seem adequate, due to the increased power posture in the
region. On that basis this dissertation recommends investing in GlobalEye surveillance planes and
over-the-horizon radars, as these capacities address the deficiencies in question.
These surveillance capacities can lead to strategic risks in in the Arctic regarding deterrence and the
security dilemma, which can be even more complicated by a future ingestion of AI and autonomous
systems. These areas are, however, beyond this dissertation’s field of study.