What Happens in Greenland Need Not Stay in Greenland

Trumpist fighting talk about other countries’ property should worry all US vassals

Trump and his team of America’s bluntest and briskest can look funny. Their demands are so bracingly direct; their threats so refreshingly frank. It’s almost as if they are mightily enjoying themselves as they rub in the facts of brute American power: We, the US, are the best-armed, richest mobster family in town, and the new Don is greedier than Scarface and crasser than Tony Soprano!

Europe – buy more overpriced LNG from us or we’ll wreck your economy even more! Canada – just get with the program, any program, really, or we’ll recall that we’d like a land bridge to Alaska, sort of the shape of your state (pardon, country, chuckle, chuckle)! Panama – remember we own you and everything you think you own is ours, too! Or we’ll drop in – literally, with the 82nd Airborne and AC-130 gunships – to remind you (again). And this time we won’t even name it “Operation Just Cause.” “Operation Just Because” will do fine. Denmark, listen up: You think Greenland is yours, but we know better. It’s really ours, and the only question is whether we do this the nice way or the hard way, because: Important Arctic and bad, bad China and Russia! Just take our word for it.

Note, all of these objects of Trump’s bullying are, officially, Washington’s “allies.” In Canada’s case, the rough handling alone has already been enough to, in effect, topple its prime minister: Hapless Justin Trudeau couldn’t save his skin even by a groveling trip to the new boss’s court at Mar-a-Lago. Regime change by trash talk; that’s a new one. And once again, that old lesson: it’s safer to be a respected adversary than a disrespected friend.

Trump’s gripes and demands, in any case, are extremely ill-founded. If the US were a country that had to argue its case, no one would even pay attention. Canada is a sovereign country; the preponderant majority of its 40 million people have no interest in joining the US as its 51st state. Period.

The whiny complaints that Trump and his team have made about bad treatment at the Panama Canal don’t withstand scrutiny, as the by-no-means unpatriotic Wall Street Journal has detailed in a podcast: No, the US is not “being ripped off at the Panama Canal;” no, American shippers are not treated worse than others or being price-gouged; and no, the US is not currently paying for the maintenance of the waterway. Instead, after completion of the canal handover in 1999/2000, that has been the task of the Canal Authority, which is, in essence, a business structure. Finally, the Chinese do not have soldiers in the Canal Zone, as Trump has claimed; and, in general, his screams of “China! China!” are as hyperbolic as always.

And Greenland – we’ll get to that in a moment.

Yet it would be a grave mistake to underestimate how serious all of this seemingly absurd Trumpist braggadocio is. In general, that is so because the US is not a country in the habit of merely arguing its case. As a political culture, it is, instead, addicted to cheating and violence. That’s why it loves a “rules-based order” – with “rules” no one knows, except in Washington on any given day – and abhors international law. In particular, it would be unwise to dismiss the Trumpist no-charm-all-harm offensive as just a grab bag of “power moves” to establish dominance and produce leverage. Just, in other words, a lot of ultimately empty noise to play for various political and trade advantages. That is a fashionable but shortsighted interpretation that lacks due diligence.

Things are, actually, not that simple, especially for America’s so-called “allies,” that is, its de facto clients and vassals. To understand why, the case of Greenland is most instructive. But it’s not enough to enumerate the legal rights and illegal claims involved. All that is rather obvious. The US wants to buy Greenland – not for the first time, by the way. Presidents Jackson and Truman had an eye on it as well.

In general, the US has a history not only of conquering and ethnically cleansing what it wants, but also of buying (including forced sales, of course) what it wants. Yet Greenland has belonged to Denmark for more than half a millennium. Denmark is a sovereign state, like the US. In theory, therefore, the US can only ask, but not demand. Denmark has – as we have all learned to repeat for Ukraine – “agency.” And Denmark has said “No” – not for the first time, either. End of story. In theory.

In practice, as so often in history, the legal situation is just the starting point, where things begin to get interesting. For two sets of reasons, one pretty obvious, the other a little less so. Let’s look at the obvious first. As the New York Times has pointed out, Trump is, by deformation professionnelle, a real estate developer. As a real estate tycoon, the other side saying “No” is just an opening bid, a challenge to up the arm twisting and, perhaps, the offer, too. What it is definitely not is a reason to stop.

Greenland looks to him, as he himself has stated, like yet another very desirable piece of property. The reasons for that are, actually, solid enough. Greenland has a strategic location between the thawing Arctic, which is the theater of a new great game of geopolitics currently – literally – heating up. (Let’s just pass over the irony that when US Republicans get greedy enough, they even admit that global warming is real.)

And Greenland also features enticing raw material deposits. That’s why, for instance, the EU has a special agreement with Greenland’s Minerals Resources Authority. So, if Washington takes over under the guise of having to fend off the big bad Russians and Chinese, again, a handsome side effect would be to shaft the hapless, submissive, self-destructive Europeans, again. Profit is nice. But what’s wrong with having a little fun, too?

What’s not to love? Except, of course, if we play by international law, what you want is not automatically what you get. You would also have to have a right to it; and there’s the rub again: Washington does not. Yet, that has never stopped it, has it?

Moreover, the US is trying to exploit Denmark’s constitutional fault lines. Almost as if Washington was in the habit of subverting other countries! In this case, the idea is that Greenland has a special status, founded on the 2009 Greenland Self-Government Act, and a very small population of less than 60,000. Maybe they could be induced – by a mix of threats and incentives – to fully secede from the Danish state? And then, of course, be promptly re-attached to Washington, one way or the other, including as, in essence, a protectorate. That is the idea paraded openly by former Trump adviser, Alexander Gray. See how that works? “Let us help you gain your independence,” Uncle Sam is kindly saying. “And then lose it again. To us.” What an original script. Not. Rest assured, trite as the approach is, Gray is not alone.

And finally, here is the less obvious – and most important reason – why especially America’s allies should be very worried about the Greenland move currently underway in the US. Look at its essence. The US elite is saying three things to Denmark: One, we know and decide who your enemies are (Russia and China, of course); and no, you do not get to challenge that decision, as if you were a genuinely sovereign country. Move two: Once we have defined your enemies, we also tell you that they are enemies of all of us (the West, NATO etc.), and that you have an obligation to contribute to our common defense against them as we – not you – see fit. Move three: We find that you are not doing enough for that defense; and once that is so, we have a right to either force you to pay for our protection or, if you cannot do that, give up your stuff to us. That is the essence of a recent Fox News interview with another former Trump adviser, Robert O’Brien.

You see what this is, right? It’s pure, explicit mafia logic. No more frills, no more sugar-coating. You may say, so what’s new? Isn’t that just the usual Trump effect: it’s basically what the US always does but without the sweet-talking? True. But still, there is something special in the boldness with which this doctrine is now displayed in public. Its general applicability should worry every American “ally.”

Take Germany, for instance. For years now, the “Zeitenwende” Germans have made a point of sucking up to the US by flogging themselves over not yet doing enough to build up their military. That narrative, so willingly, masochistically endorsed by them might well come back to bite them in the behind. Imagine Trump one day saying: “You know what, Berlin? You are right: you are not doing enough to defend us all against Russia and China. We, the US feel ripped off, again. And once that is so, pay us more or, you know, we really think that special-status 'free state' of Bavaria you have there is far too pretty to be left to your insufficient care.”

Absurd? Absolutely. Only, tell me why that means it’s not possible. But then again, current Western European “elites” are so used to selling out, maybe they won’t even mind.

First published on RT.com, 7 January 2025