Whither Greenland?

Self-determination could mean submission. But it would come with benefits.

Gaza’s location on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea makes its desirability obvious. It has a little oil, which Israel has been stealing for decades, but nowadays it’s hardly replete in olde worlde charm. Brownfield? More like greyfield. And it still has its population; for the moment. One that is hostile to the occupier.

But it’s the cobbled-together image of Israel’s prime minister and America’s president supping cocktails together in their budgie-smugglers whilst sitting in deck chairs that sums up Trump’s interest in the area: luxury development for the ultra-wealthy.

Greenland is a different proposition: unfiltered UV rays make sunbathing there very unwise: you could quickly be burned to a frazzle. The talk seems to circle less around whether, more around when, America will acquire the island. One view seems to be SOON. And less around when and more around how: purchase, cooperation or conquest?

Purchase is an option that was on the table, or at least proposed, as early as 1867, in the wake of the acquisition of Alaska from Czar Alexander II of Russia. According to Marco Rubio, the US foreign minister, it is still on the table, or at least proposed, as late as 2026.

Then, there is cooperation, some kind of Cofa, or compact of free association, akin to those the US has with Pacific islands: they remain independent, but allow the US to do what it wants in terms of military bases and operations therefrom.

As for conquest, Stephen Miller says it would take a matter of minutes, and he’s probably right. So, what beckons, do you think: Cofa, purchase or conquest?

The most amenable arrangement would probably be Cofa: the island remains Danish (or Greenlandic, if it opted for independence), the NATO alliance remains intact (on paper at least) and no one gets killed in a pitched battle. Greenland gets remuneration from the United States for its presence there, the absolute need, as expressed by Mr Trump, for it to be in Greenland for its own national security is met, and Greenlanders get to go about their daily business unhindered. It sounds like the ideal solution. What’s not to like about it?

Well, there is one thing not to like about it from the American viewpoint, because, in substance, it’s precisely what the present situation is, so Cofa is obviously not what America is after. In terms of agreements dated 1951 and 2004, the US has all the access to Greenland that it wants and needs. A Guardian report puts it thus:

A 1951 US-Danish agreement allows it to “construct, install, maintain and operate” military bases across the territory. The treaty, which was updated in 2004 and includes Greenland’s semi-autonomous government, also allows the US to “house personnel … and control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements and operation of ships, aircraft and waterborne craft.”

On the very first day guiding my very first European coach tour with Americans in 1981, whilst I was organising the allocation of rooms at our hotel on the Via della Conciliazione in Rome, one lady in the group interrupted me and asked, “Do you know where the rest room is?” I pointed through an archway and said, “It’s through there.” A short time later, she returned, and confessed to being unable to find it. So, I took her by the elbow and led her through the archway to a room filled with armchairs, coffee tables and sofas, a rack of newspapers on sticks, and other means of relaxation, and said, “Here, you have everything you could possibly desire in order to have a rest.” She regarded me with doubt on her face, and said, “I don’t think you understand.” She was right. I didn’t.

I had not yet learned that, contrary to the English, who will say a little when they mean a lot, the American tendency is to refer to things using words completely at odds with what they want to say. For instance, why does diss mean disrespect, when it could just as easily mean disentangle or discombobulate or dysentery? Why do bathrooms have no bath in them? And why does America say it needs access to Greenland for its national security when it already has access to Greenland for its national security?

Of course, what it needs, or wants, is money. That’s all Trump wants. National security is not something that so much as stirs a hair on the head of a soon-to-be-80-year old miser. But even Molière’s ancient Harpagon loved cash. America could buy Greenland. It could even take a leaf out of Israel’s book: oh, we never took over the country, they freely sold their land to us. This is what I have heard and read. But it’s one thing to sell someone a farm, it’s quite another to have that lead to them forcing you out of the country where the farm’s located. I can’t actually see America engaging in such a slow, laborious project as the Zionists did: a battleship sailing up a fjord is much more their style. And the goal is not possession of Greenland’s farmland, such as it has any, but of Greenland’s terrestrial depths: if you’re permitted to set up an airbase, you can hardly then turn it into a deep-shaft mine, hm?

Are we at the dawn of a new age of empire? When the small peoples of the world who clamour for independence suddenly realise they have attained a status that leaves them parlously exposed to the wild beasts of the jungle? One need look no farther than the Haitians: they arose in slave rebellion in 1791 and achieved the goal of shaking off their French colonial masters (yes, they even beat Napoleon) on 1 January 1804, when they promulgated their first independent constitution. They would go on to divide into two separate states; they would go on to assume control of the whole island of Hispaniola under what they dubbed an empire; and, perhaps most sadly, they would go on to hold their first ever free, fair elections a whole 186 years later. They are sadly still in a chaos that is generated from within, and, for the most part, from outside, from the powers of empire who just cannot leave them be.

Independence is like a genie granting you a wish when he has emerged from a tarnished old lamp: but you must be careful what you wish for. When you yearn for independence, you yearn to have no dependence, to not be dependent on anyone, and not to have anyone to succour to your aid when times get tough. And when times are tough, dependence starts to look very attractive.

The population of Greenland is 57,000. America could go from door to door and give each one of them, how much? A thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? Go on, let’s say it: a billion. If they offered them a billion dollars in exchange for their votes for independence and application to become an American colony, do you think they’d be turned down? That is the power money has to change minds, and it needs no power of cogent argument behind it to work. If it worked the laborious way in Israel, it’d work the easy way in Greenland.

Power is a mighty mover of emperors. But money moves emperors and their minions. The choice for Denmark is threefold:

1. It can agree to what it already agreed to in 2004, and keep alive its friendly alliance with the US, which would then no longer be worth the paper it is printed on.

2. It can refuse to allow the US to take Greenland, whereby the US will invade, and thereby shred the NATO alliance into confetti, so that even the paper it’s printed on is no longer worth the paper it’s printed on.

3. It can grant Greenland independence. And watch as its imperial possession gets swallowed up by another empire. That way, it will maintain the NATO alliance, and that has to be something, hasn’t it?