What do you think: is it manifest destiny that the United States acquire or at least exercise control over Greenland? That’s pretty much how America got Texas, California, New Mexico, Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa. Then there was the Louisiana purchase. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the United States, paying France $15 million or a bit less than three cents per acre for a landmass that is about 26 per cent of the contiguous United States. And let’s not forget about Alaska.
A few facts about Greenland. It is big: 836,000 square miles. It is home to about 50,000 people, mostly Inuits. Historically, it has been seen as the semi-autonomous property of Denmark. It is much closer to the east coast of the United States than it is to Denmark – much, much closer if you travel from the 51st state, sometimes known as Canada. According to Donald Trump, we’ll get around to talking about the United States exercising control of Greenland in ‘two months’, maybe as soon as twenty days. ‘We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,’ he recently told reporters. The Chinese and the Russians pose a threat to the area. The EU knows this but won’t publicly admit that the US must intervene to protect the Arctic region. For its part, Denmark, a nation of 6 million people, is unable to protect its protectorate. To beef up security, said Trump, they recently sent another dog sled.
By what right does Denmark have Greenland?
Oh, dear. All that sent the commentariat into a tizzy. The tizzy took a dose of steroids when Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s aide Stephen Miller, took to X to post an image of Greenland overlaid with an American flag and a single word: ‘Soon.’ Yikes. On Monday, Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, said that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of the Nato military alliance. Or maybe it is the only way to preserve the creaky Cold War relic?
Anyway, the talk in Trump world about Greenland has given mouthpieces like the journalist Jake Tapper a case of the sads. After Katie Miller’s post, Tapper anxiously pestered her husband about Greenland. ‘Can you,’ quoth Tapper, ‘rule out that the US is ever going to try to take Greenland by force?’ ‘Greenland should be part of the United States,’ replied Miller. He then offered him a lesson in realpolitik. ‘We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,’ he said. ‘These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.’ Has Miller been reading his Thucydides (see Book 5.89)?
Miller then asked an interesting question: by what right does Denmark have Greenland? Is it because Erik the Red founded a settlement there around AD 1000? I think the Danes will have to do better than that.
And besides, Jake Tapper can rest easy. Trump will not be sending in a Delta Force squadron to seize Greenland. That’s not how things will evolve. How will they evolve? Trump wrote about it in The Art of the Deal. There will be tears and some foot stamping by the Danes and other members of the EU. But Greenland will soon come under the orbit of the United States. Maybe Trump will make the sort of deal that Arthur Guinness struck when, in 1759, he leased St. James’s Gate, Dublin, for his brewery for £45 per year for 9,000 years.
I am sure a tidy sum will change hands over Greenland. Maybe Trump will also extend some face-saving tokens. But Greenland is essential to America’s, and Europe’s, security in the region. Therefore, notwithstanding the Jakes and the Margarets of the world, Greenland will be ours.
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