President Trump’s idea of buying Greenland has evoked ridicule, mixed with the usual venom, in both Denmark and the United States. And Trump’s way of expressing himself has only increased the scorn: as he said on August 18, “Essentially, it’s a large real estate deal.” (If only Trump had said that buying Greenland would contribute, somehow, to combating climate change, then he would have had a respectful audience, no matter what his choice of words.)
Of course, it should go without saying that Democrats, joined by the Mainstream Media and the international tweeting class, will oppose anything Trump advocates for. And so in the short run, nothing is going to happen with Greenland.
Still, there’s a creeping realization that the dreaded Trump might be on to something. Hence this reluctant headline in Politico: “Trump’s Greenland Gambit Might Be Crazy—But It Could Also Be the Future.”
Moreover, undeniably, the “real estate” (a.k.a. geopolitics) of the Arctic region is in flux. That is, many players—including China and Russia, as well as the U.S. and multinational corporations—are seeking greater footprints in that area. To recall past geopolitical competitions in other parts of the world, we can say that a new Great Game, or maybe a Scramble, is at hand. This includes not only Greenland, but also all the area reaching to the North Pole.
Thus on August 23, the State Department announced plans to open up a consulate in Nuuk, the capital of semi-autonomous Greenland. We had opened a consulate there in 1940, prior to our involvement in World War II, and shrewdly taken custody of Greenland, as a way of keeping it out of Nazi Germany’s grip. To President Roosevelt, the thought that Hitler might be able to station bombers, U-boats—or even Wehrmacht soldiers—so close to North America was too terrible to contemplate.
During the war, Greenland was a strategic bridge to our allies, notably the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union; to this day, it’s a grave to many American airmen who died flying supply missions over its frozen vastness. We relinquished the earlier Nuuk consulate in 1953, even as we retained a military presence at Thule, north of the Arctic Circle, and elsewhere on that giant island.
As the State Department just wrote to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, America has a “strategic interest in enhancing political, economic, and commercial relationships across the Arctic region.” The letter added that the consulate would serve as “a critical component of our efforts to increase U.S. presence in the Arctic and would serve as an effective platform to advance U.S. interests in Greenland.”
We might pause over those last words, advance U.S. interests in Greenland.