Everybody seems to have a different opinion on why Trump “needs” Greenland. My best bet is that the US military fears WWIII being launched by the Chinese. In his New Year’s address, Xi Jinping called a ‘reunification’ with Taiwan ‘unstoppable’ . Taiwan had never been under the control of the Chinese communist party, neither united or divided, but that is were the island belongs, says Beijing. Speaking of the capital, there is a construction site nearby for the largest underground bunker complex in history.
It’s nuke-proof. You don’t need that to sack Taiwan or Japan. You’d need that for a world war.
While Greenland did not extend the moratorium of understanding MOU with the United States that allowed for a joint exploration and future mining of the country’s rare minerals, it does, however, still have such an MOU with China. In 2018 China announced the Polar Silk Road and it is exactly what you’d expect. Greenland had to be pressured by Washington and Copenhagen to turn down multiple Chinese offers. Ever so often, Greenlanders and Europeans in general sound totally oblivious to the concerns that come with a Chinese monopoly on rare minerals and other bottleneck resources.
The security community likes to talk a big deal about how unreliable America had become under Trump. But can we digest for a moment that the entire Western defense architecture rests on the US precisely because all other partners are much less reliable? I don’t think that I have to reiterate the entire anti-Israel sh*t-show that followed the Hamas attack (‘October 7th’). You know who you are. Civilized nations don’t stand together when savages attack. Instead our leaders act like short-sighted wannabe war profiteers. Not even the most wicket Islamist voter can be foregone.
European elites won’t even commit to defending their own. ‘Erratic’ is maybe the most polite way to describe Viktor Orbán of Hungary. His forces go through a NATO-funded ‘rejuvenation’ makeover. Senior officers are replaced in big numbers. An audio was leaked in which his Defense Minister rallied the troops to get on a path to war as soon as possible. He announced to break with all previous ‘peacekeeping activities’. And, indeed, the peace gestures ceased around the time of the recording, at least all those towards Western and pro-Western peoples. Meanwhile, Orbán went out of his way to block sanctions and weapon deliveries to Ukraine because public encouragement of Russia’s attack, he insists, is just ‘wanting peace.’
Germany keeps destroying its own power stations, nuclear and otherwise, even though our grid becomes increasingly unstable and the Russian elites remain antagonistic for the foreseeable future. At the beginning of Putin’s ‘Special Operation’ Energy Minister Robert Habeck lied to the parliament in order to see some of them destroyed. No scruples. No reliability.
Before the Ukraine War changed into a drone nightmare, artillery shells were the main supply concern. Not one letter of the environmental and workplace regulation could be temporarily altered to speed up production and save lives on the front. Europe is hitting the wall with its stubborn elites.
The crossroads: either ‘net zero’ or an effective deterrence of China. Either (scheming) environmentalists get out of the way or we risk another world war.
Will the leadership of the EU educate the anti-nuclear energy advocates? Will they use the available carbon-free technology such as uranium reactors to reduce the demand for fossil fuels? Will they thus guarantee that it will be Western nations who extract key resources from the Arctic? Right now they look like they don’t want to guarantee anything.
In 1966, Project Iceworm, an attempt to station nuclear missiles on Greenland, got abandoned; officially because the ice shield were not stable. Notably, the Americans didn’t ask Denmark for permission. That’s diplomatic for ‘they probably did ask, did hear from them, but didn’t take a no for an answer.’ Why on earth did the Danes not offer that remote place to improve NATO’s nuclear cover? Greenland isn’t France! It’s not densely populated.
That’s why Trump “needs” Greenland. But he shouldn’t. Europe could yield. That’s the deadlock.
If Europe does yield, a treaty would probably include:
– The mining around the Arctic will not be threatened by their Net Zero environmentalism. Europe doesn’t bother to accept its de-industrialisation while it boosts dirtier production sites in China. If CO2 doesn’t matter when it emanates from China, it won’t when it comes out of the Arctic, either.
– The US comes to station nuclear-powered machines and weapons on Greenland.
The military theater around the island is silliness, but it does distract from the people in Caracas and Tehran who rest hunkered down and are torn between hopes and fears.
I may say that I’m none of the 4D-chess freaks. Whatever good reasons Trump may have – and I’m not privy to the intelligence information that imply a sudden urgency in that matter – his public communication is a complete disaster right now.
Goldstein 
