If we’re to believe the deranged left, US President Donald Trump’s goal of US ‘control’ of Greenland is yet another instance of the crazed dictator’s delusional approach to world affairs. The only problem is that, not only does Trump’s goal make strategic sense – Greenland’s location and resources make it a North Atlantic prize that’s been fought over for centuries – a great many Greenlanders see it as an opportunity to finally throw off the Danish colonial yoke.
That doesn’t mean that Greenlanders want to become a US state, but many see Trump’s overtures as, at the very least, a strategic bargaining chip.
“We should become a state of our own self and become independent because that is what Greenland wants to do and that always has been the dream, but we will be the closest ally to the US.”
Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. And while [Jorgen Boassen]’s love of Donald Trump is not widespread, his desire for independence is.
There’s only one problem: just like Scotland’s pretensions to independence, the brutal truth is that it cannot exist as an independent nation. Scotland is a net drain on the UK. As an independent nation, Scotland would soon go broke. The tacit admission of this is that the Scottish National Party wants to become part of the EU.
So, in reality, they’re just wanting to trade one overlord for another.
A significant number of Greenlanders are thinking in the same transactional terms. Denmarks funds about half of the island’s economy. But Greenlanders don’t have a great deal of fondness for their Danish masters. After all, Danish neutrality and occupation by Nazi Germany in the second world war saw Greenland left isolated and alone. When the US entered the war, thousands of Americans were stationed in Greenland. Although Greenland re-submitted to Danish with the defeat of Nazi Germany, Greenland had got a taste of what it was missing.
The following decades did little to endear Denmark to Greenlanders.
[Dog trainer Nive Heilmann is ] no fan of Donald Trump, but she does see an opportunity in the president's obsession with Greenland.
“What Donald Trump said, as much as I dislike all this, I see a movement in Greenland of us realising and knowing our worth and demanding the respect,” Heilmann says.
She believes the US president is forcing former coloniser Denmark to confront its dark history in the Arctic island and acknowledge the wounds it has caused.
One of Denmark’s most horrific practices involved the forced contraception of almost half of Greenlandic Inuit girls of child-bearing age during the ’60s and ’70s.
“There’s this story that Denmark was the nice colonisers,’ she says, “[that] they were the first to free the slaves and they were nice to the Greenlandic people. We were allowed to keep our language.
“Well, some of us were, and some of us were not allowed to have children, and some of us were taken away and shipped off to Denmark.”
That is what happened to Heilmann’s grandmother. At 14 years old, she was taken to Denmark and told she was Danish.
Some Greenlanders, though, worry that they’ll swap one colonial power for another. “They say they worry that the American military is here next week,” Heilmann says. Perhaps she ought to ask other Greenland grandparents how that worked out last time.
The Greenland government is posturing, naturally, that their island is ‘not for sale’. But they’re not blind to strategic reality, either. They’re well aware that they’re wedged between three great powers: the US, Russia and China. Take your pick who you want on your side.
[Mineral Resources Minister Naaja Nathanielsen] says the government is open to discussing a military deal with America that would expand its presence.
“We understand why they have these concerns and this is really an open door for us,” she says. “We are open to discussing military installations or others in Greenland besides the base they already have.”
Many have speculated that Donald Trump is really interested in Greenland’s vast critical mineral resources, many of which are essential to the green transition.
Well, duh.
“It seems like maybe more rhetoric than an actual problem because they could just invest if they so wanted,” Ms Nathanielsen says.
Indeed. But that doesn’t resolve who’s going to protect that investment from a potentially predatory Russia or China. Denmark?
Wake up and smell the walrus blubber.
