Imperial hallucinations about Greenland

It’s a rouigh ride ahead for the USA. Donald Trump has yet to retake office and is already backing away from his implicit campaign promise of doing something about the price of groceries. Instead he’s offering visions of imperial grandeur.

We might go into international law and the principles upon which the Third Reich’s foreign minister was tried, convicted and hanged. But that stuff is too advanced for Trump’s and his MAGA base’s educational levels. Even if they have a Canadian businessman willing to sell his country, and who has Trump’s ear because he’s a panelist on The Shark Tank.

Let us, instead, get into simpler stuff like Greenland. A big island and collection of smaller islands covered by larger ice sheets that ebb and flow with the seasons. Greenland belongs to Denmark, even if the extent of the land isn’t well delineated for any and all observers. Some of its human settlements, and even its roads, are built on frozen water rather than solid land.

So coming out of the Trump camp there is this bullying derision of Denmark and the allegatoin that it’s much too small to defend Greenland, such that it needs to be owned by the United States to be defended.

But defended against whom? Across the Arctic Ocean, the Russians don’t seem too interested. Who gets into territorial arguments with the Danes in and around Greenland?

Well, every now and then the Canadians do. Dotting the icy shores along that part of the Northwest Passage there are little islands that are part of Greenland and other little islands that are part of Canada. Is it a rather dumb high school kid trick to plant a Danish flag on part of Canada, or a Canadian flag in Greenland? Occasionally such things get done and if Canadian sovereignty gets so insulted Ottawa does not send out the RCAF bombers but it does send cops or soldiers to remove the offending symbol, and some lowly diplomat to deliver a note about it to the Danes.

So Greenland needs the mighty USA to defend itself from – Canada? And US territorial expansion to make boundary claims between Canada and Greenland irrelevant anyway?

Hitler had his designs on Greenland too. When the Wehrmcht overran Denmark way back when, Germany claimed all of Denmark’s overseas possessions, too. Neither the indigenous Inuit-speaking majority nor the Danish-speaking minority heeded Berlin’s call.

Instead, by agreement with Denmark’s sullen reistance government and with Canadian and British support, US forces were brought in, mostly to establish bases around Thule from which air patrols could watch for German U-boats or other warships prowling in North Atlantic waters. The missions have changed with the times, to the point that It’s now the Pituffik Space Base. Call it the US Army Air Corps, the US Air Force or the Space Force, American military presence in Greenland has been constant since the early 1940s.

So is the idea to send thuggish Israeli-style occupation troops to lord it over fewer than 60,000 Greenlanders who mostly speak Greenlandic Inuit, a language not taught in US schools? Or maybe, some sort of an excuse to dole out some new government contracts to Elon Musk?

The Greenlanders don’t want or need US ownership. Few Canadians would like that idea either.

And Denmark? They’re part of the European Union. In their internal politics they have euroskeptics of the left and right, but expect Europe to rally behind and EU member bullied by the United States. It could lead to the end of NATO and the expulsion of US forces from Europe – something that Trump would like – and the quick addition of other European countries with the technological capability to that small club of countries with nuclear weapons. France, which already has nukes and already for the most part views Trump with disdain. Maybe, when the times comes for Trump to do his felony conviction time, they’ll offer the use of one of THEIR colonial possessions – ahem, overseas departments – and America can send its problem to Devil’s Island.

The bottom line? Donald Trump is hallucinating. Some of the world looks on in horror, most of the rest of it is giggling behind his back.

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