Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. This essay first appeared on Substack.
Greenland, again? Really?
Apparently yes. Donald John Trump, president of the United States, on January 9 vowed to take control of Greenland, an autonomous part of America’s NATO ally Denmark. In these words: “We’re are going do something on Greenland whether they like it or not.”
Two days earlier, when a New York Times reporter asked whether there were “any limits on his global powers,” the president responded, “Yeah. There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
How about international law, Mr. President? “I don’t need international law.” And “it depends on what your definition of international law is.”
Denmark and the U.S. are both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has protected Europe and the West since 1949. Doesn’t a U.S. takeover of Greenland amount to an existential threat to NATO, Mr. President? “It may be a choice” between preserving NATO and seizing Greenland, Trump acknowledged.
The president made clear that his goal is owning Greenland. Why wouldn’t a lease or a treaty, negotiated between Denmark and the U.S., work just as well? Because ownership is “what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing you can’t do with, you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document,” Trump explained.
Also on January 7: Trump proposed a $1.5 trillion ($1,500,000,000,000) defense budget, an increase of $600 billion ($600,000,000,000) or 67 percent more than the current $900 billion ($900,000,000,000) defense budget.
It’s called a “defense budget.” But the name change from the Department of Defense to the Department of War, authorized recently by the government, hints at what the president has in mind for a massive military budget increase.
The discretionary slice of the federal budget—after subtracting defense, interest, and mandatory expenses like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—amounts to about $900 billion, the same as the current defense piece.
Trump’s proposed $600 billion increase to defense is equal to about two-thirds of that entire discretionary slice. By contrast, the enhanced tax credits for health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act, which have dominated Congressional debate recently, cost about $91 billion a year (part of the discretionary spending total).
Some random thoughts about a Trump takeover of Greenland:
—Russian President Vladimir Putin would like nothing better than a dissolution of NATO caused by the U.S. seizing Greenland. Don’t expect him to object to Trump’s plan, regardless of its effect on Russian goals in the Arctic.
—Trump says American ownership of Greenland is necessary for our defense. Canada, which is much closer geographically to Greenland, appears to feel differently. Canada’s Ellesmere Island, at the northeast corner of that country, is separated from Greenland by only 15 miles across the Robeson Channel. The Canadian government, to my knowledge, has not mentioned any threat to Canada from Greenland’s current status.
—The United States is on record approving Danish ownership of Greenland. In 1916 the U.S. bought the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) for $25 million from Denmark. At that time some other European nations had made claims to portions of Greenland, based on previous explorations and commercial ventures. So the U.S., as part of the West Indies sale treaty, agreed to a Danish demand that the treaty include a statement that the U.S. would “not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.”
If Trump decides to do it, a military takeover of Greenland would be easy to accomplish. We already maintain a military base on Greenland’s northwest corner, Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), operated by the U.S. Space Force. Greenland’s defense forces are understandably tiny compared to American capabilities.
But Greenland has offered to let the U.S. increase its military footprint there. And polls show that 85 percent of Greenlanders object to American ownership. While an increasing share of the population leans toward more independence from Denmark, its enthusiasm for another foreign owner is unsurprisingly small.
And why would it be otherwise? Greenland’s populace receives the benefits of the Danish democratic welfare state. Health care is a publicly financed government responsibility. Rights regarding sexual orientation and identification are very extensive, and hate speech on LGBTQ grounds is against the law. It’s no wonder that Greenlanders would be wary of turning their future over to the current leadership in Washington.
It’s hard to deny the similarity of Trump’s hungers for Venezuela and Greenland. In Venezuela it’s oil. In Greenland it’s minerals, including rare earths. The official American position for capturing Venezuela strongman Nicolás Maduro was to shut down illicit drug trade, but virtually all the discussion since has been about oil.
Greenland’s mineral wealth up to now has been very difficult to tap because of the island’s ice sheet, but with global warming, some deposits near the southwestern coastal fjords may be easier to access. Trump has yet to make a coherent argument about why America, in partnership with NATO, can’t defend its interests and protect itself from Chinese or Russian threats to Greenland under the current state of affairs.
Greenland’s entire population totals only 55,000 or so. Nearly 20,000 live in Nuuk on the southwestern coast. That leaves 35,000 in the entire remainder of the island, most of them of Inuit ethnicity and living in communities on the southern half of the west coast.
If Jefferson, Iowa (population 4,182) were located in Greenland, it would be the fourth largest town on the island, between Ilulissat (5,087) and Qaqortoq (3,069). Here’s an idea: how about establishing a sister city relationship between Jefferson and one or the other of those two towns? It could be initiated by the city of Jefferson or by Main Street.
Doing so right now might raise suspicions in Greenland about our motives, but it would be a fascinating project, and would be a way to let some Greenlanders know that not all of us Americans want to take them over.
Polls show that most Americans feel the same way as most Greenlanders: let Greenland determine its own destiny. The U.S. can consider a request for American takeover if and when the request comes to us from the 55,000 Greenlanders. Until then, we have plenty of other challenges, some of them self-inflicted.
Top image: Satellite photo from May 2005, highlighting the island of Greenland, as well as Iceland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Public domain from NASA / Ames Research Center, available via Wikimedia Commons.