Here are some quick talking points, when people ask, 'What the hell is this about?'
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This morning on Fox, two well-matched intellects: Maria Bartiromo and Ted Cruz. Next to them is a Fox-produced map making Greenland look bigger than China, which in reality is more than four times its size. And on a par with the whole of Africa, which in fact is nearly 15 times as large. Fox is famous as the main source of real-time intel for the person who has assumed one-man control of US military, economic, and diplomatic relations with the world. What could go wrong? (JF screenshot.)
This post includes a reprise of some previous items on Greenland, especially from this post one week ago. But as news has evolved, and as the insane idea of taking over Greenland has moved closer to alliance-destroying “reality,” and as a handy one-place guide to the main issues, I offer this update:
I’m not expert on Greenland. But at least I’ve been there, last spring for nearly a week. Which is a week more than the current US President, his Secretary of State (who is also his National Security Advisor), or his Secretary of Defense can claim, among them. And I’ve been reading about the place, and asking people about it, before that and ever since. Which I doubt any of them have done.
Here are my main suggestions if you find yourself in a “Wow, this Greenland situation, what do you think??” conversation any time soon.
1) This crisis is all coming from someone’s gut. Not from anyone’s brain.
Maybe you want to keep this to yourself, rather than leading with it in the conversation. But it’s worth knowing: Does the Trump-era obsession with Greenland seem completely irrational? That’s because it is—as no less an authority than Trump himself has told us.
The most self-aware part of Trump’s recent hours-long gabfest with NY Times reporters, and among the most self-damaging, was the “why Greenland?” exchange.
The Times team didn’t put it exactly this way, but the implied setup for their question was: With brutal war ongoing in Ukraine, with carnage in Gaza, with regime change in Venezuela, with upheaval in Iran, with federal troops occupying major cities, with tariffs upending world economies, and so on, why on Earth are you even talking about Greenland?
Here’s how the Q-and-A played out, with emphasis by me.
David Sanger [NYT]: Why is ownership [of Greenland] important here?Trump: Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success…. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document…Katie Rogers [NYT]: Psychologically important to you, or to the United States?Trump: Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything.
Give Trump credit, this one time, for honesty. Give him demerits on every other count. What he’s doing to all the rest of us is crazy. But, in a moment like Tony Soprano on the psychiatrist’s couch with Dr. Melfi, he’s looking into himself and seeing a deeper truth.
Because the feeling of ownership is “psychologically important” for this one damaged man, the US is throwing alliances and interests built over centuries into a bonfire. Great. But not what Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson had in mind.
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Some of the territory that is ‘psychologically important’ to Donald Trump, to own. (JF photo.)
2) The US has nothing to gain by ‘owning’ Greenland. Zero.
Actually less than zero, into the negative range.
The military bases the US might want, to patrol activity over the Arctic? Especially as melting ice opens more sea lanes? We already have treaty rights to operate as many bases as we could want.
The Chinese and Russian boats allegedly crowding the waters around Greenland? Bullshit. Check out MarineTraffic.com, VesselFinder.com, ShipFinder.co, etc (the rough maritime counterparts of FlightAware and ADSB-Exchange in aviation) to see for yourself.
The “rare earths” that are so prized? As mentioned before, the “mining” terrain in Greenland is about as challenging as any in the world. Even as glaciers melt at a quickening pace, the average thickness of the ice cap over Greenland is more than one mile. There are simply no roads in the country—none, at all—to connect potential mining sites with ports.
What you see in Greenland, apart from tiny settlements on the coast, is ice. Melting ice, yes. But still a stupendous amount of it. Rare earth miners may eventually go to work there. But it will be a very long time. And the US doesn’t need to “own” this territory to buy their output. If and when there is any.
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Hoping that my wife Deb, at left, doesn’t fall into an ice crevasse, at right. (JF photo.)
And this is not even to get into all the burden of maintaining Greenland, if the US took it over. Health care. Education. Food. Transport to remote locations. Adjudicating indigenous rights versus those of the central government.
People in the US grumble about the challenges of remote rural locations. This is on an entirely different scale.
Denmark already has agreed to open Greenland to every security and economic ambition the US might have. And meanwhile, Denmark is juggling all the challenges of this semi-autonomous state.
One man’s sense of what is “psychologically important, to me” might matter to him. It should matter less to us, than Tony Soprano’s did to his mob.
3) No one wants us there. Zero.
Greenlanders have complex feelings about their “mother” country, Denmark. The ties are deep. So are the desires for independence. Greenland is self-governing, and has its own flag, its own culture, its own ambitions—as we heard from everyone we met. But nearly everyone we met had studied in Denmark, and spoke Danish, and had relatives there.
That’s complicated. By contrast, the view of US takeover is simple. No!
And that’s what actual opinion polls show too. Let’s not even get started on the unified opposition of the US’s erstwhile allies in NATO and the EU.
4) Greenland is smaller than you think. But the distances and remoteness are larger.
But its distances and remoteness are profound. Far more people live within my tiny jurisdiction in Washington DC than in the entirety of Greenland. (Ward 3, in Northwest Washington, is about 32 square miles, and has nearly 80,000 people. All of Greenland is about 850,000 square miles, and has about 55,000 people. To spell it out: Greenland has 2/3rds as many people, in more than 20,000 times as much space.) There are no roads, none, between the few “cities.” Almost no plants can grow there, except at Greenland’s far southern tip, near Nuuk. In a week there, we did not see a single tree. Everything about it is remote. Everything except fish must be brought in from “away.”
The US wants to take this over because… it’s “psychologically important” to one mentally failing 79-year-old man?
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A springtime day in Greenland, last year. It was a lot colder than it looks.
5) The whole idea of taking over Greenland would appall the founders of our country.
Yes, of course, the Founders were laying down rules for a young nation set on Manifest Destiny, across the continent. Among them was Thomas Jefferson, whose Louisiana Purchase covered territory about as large as Greenland. But:...
