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“U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is serious about trying to acquire Greenland, both to expand America's sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere and as a way to cement his legacy, according to three sources familiar with his thinking. The Republican said [last] Tuesday he would not rule out using military or economic action to acquire the overseas Danish territory…
“Denmark has responded to Trump's comments by saying Greenland is not for sale. Denmark has controlled Greenland for hundreds of years although its 57,000 people now govern their own domestic affairs.” Reuters
Here’s our Spotlight on Greenland. The Flip Side
The left is skeptical of purchasing Greenland and critical of Trump’s threats.
“On the one hand, Trump almost certainly has no plan, or even concepts of a plan, to launch a hemispheric war… On the other hand, Trump constantly generated wild ideas during his first term, only for the traditional Republicans in his orbit to distract or foil him, with the result that the world never found out how serious he was about them…
“This time around… We cannot simply assume that Trump’s most harebrained schemes will fizzle. An easier question to answer is why Trump keeps uttering these threats. One reason is that he seems to sincerely believe that strong countries have the right to bully weaker ones… To be sure, you can construct a coherent policy rationale for some kind of international deal involving Greenland. But there is little evidence that Trump is interested in any kind of practical deal. He wants to menace allies.”
Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic
“It should be noted that none of the reasons why Greenland is strategically important for the United States explain why it needs to be part of the United States. American companies, including a new mining venture backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, are already investing in Greenland’s minerals. The US also already has a military base in the country: Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base is… a key node in America’s missile early warning system…
“The US benefits from Greenland being under the jurisdiction of a friendly NATO ally: In 2017, the Danish government blocked an effort by a Chinese mining company to acquire an abandoned military base in Greenland, in part out of a desire to maintain good relations with the US. These are the sort of relations that are potentially threatened by publicly musing about annexing territory by force.”
Joshua Keating, Vox
“In the news conference, Trump proposed getting rid of the ‘artificially drawn line’ between Canada and the United States. Of course, that is precisely what President Vladimir Putin says about the line between Russia and Ukraine. Or President Xi Jinping about the division between China and Taiwan. This is a world that makes Russia and China great again…
“Some say we are simply back to the ‘madman theory’ of foreign policy, which posits that it’s good for the president to sometimes appear unpredictable, even irrational, because it throws adversaries off guard. It’s worth recalling that Trump tried this gambit in his first term, most obviously with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un…
“He began by threatening him with nuclear war (‘fire and fury … the likes of which this world has never seen before’) and then abruptly switched to romancing him with love letters. None of it worked. North Korea continued to build its nuclear arsenal, conduct missile tests (after a brief pause) and threaten its southern neighbor. The scholar Daniel W. Drezner notes that much research has concluded that the originator of the madman theory, Richard M. Nixon, produced no positive results for his efforts to seem crazy and unhinged.”
Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post
The right urges Trump to explore the purchase of Greenland.
The right urges Trump to explore the purchase of Greenland.
“Trump is not planning a military invasion of Greenland, nor should he. However, he does actually make sense when he suggests that the United States should try to acquire Greenland from Denmark peacefully… U.S. purchases of territory have a long and beneficial history. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 doubled the nation’s territory in one fell swoop. The 1819 Florida Purchase, the 1848 Mexican Cession, the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, and the 1867 Alaska Purchase all proved to be wise moves…
“Moreover, as both Russia and China evince interest in claiming large parts of, or the entirety of, the Arctic Ocean as their own, with interest in snatching its oil and minerals, the U.S. would be well advised to bracket the ocean with Greenland on one side to go with Alaska on the other. The Arctic contains an estimated 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of its undiscovered natural gas, along with diamonds, iron ore, nickel, copper, and zinc. And Greenland itself is full of those riches…
“The U.S. in turn has more resources than Denmark to provide superb environmental protections for the large interior of Greenland and to do worthwhile environmental research there. If the U.S. did purchase the huge island, the island’s 56,000 residents could enjoy territorial status in much the same way as the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico — or, perhaps, the island could be added to the state of Maine, thus affording its residents full representation in Congress.”
Editorial Board, Washington Examiner
“There is zero prospect of its current 60,000 inhabitants developing and exploiting the resources of that landmass and trading them to us in a way that gives us all the benefits we could gain by controlling the territory ourselves and developing it with our resources. That’s not a sufficient case for invading the country and seizing the territory — other costs have to be considered, including the moral costs of an unnecessary war and the diplomatic costs of expansionism.”
Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review
“Trump can use Greenland’s desire for independence to leverage a deal that gives him almost everything he wants while also appealing to Greenland’s and Denmark’s pride and interests. That’s what a [Compact of Free Association] could do. The United States has three such treaties with the Republic of Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands…
“The U.S. supplies each with economic aid and access to many government programs such as Medicaid. Imports from these countries are largely tariff-free, and citizens of these nations can live and work in the United States. In exchange, the U.S. handles all defense obligations… [Greenland] needs annual subsidies to remain economically viable in the short run, and it needs large-scale investment in mining and tourism to become financially self-sufficient. Denmark cannot supply the necessary funds to bootstrap Greenlandic independence; America could.”
Henry Olsen, National Review
