Donald Trump is a Johnny-come-lately in the business of landgrabs. Chinese President Xi Jinping beat him to it by seven years when he secured power in Beijing and eventually talked about “rejuvenation,” “reunification” with Taiwan and eventually talking about Chinese “sovereignty” over Okinawa and talking aloud about a “common destiny” in East Asia with Korea and Japan. Sounds like the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere originally proposed by imperial Japan.
Trump’s proposal to buy Greenland only makes sense in the context of the history of the Arctic and how imperialist powers tried to secure it, only to be frustrated by the dogged resistance of Denmark, even when it figured in a war that sapped its resources. Trump’s obvious ploy is to claim that the world’s largest island was critical to US security, as if all nations on the planet must bow to his wishes. In 1867, the US bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. President Andrew Johnson followed this up by sending Secretary of State William Seward floated to buy Greenland and Iceland. Denmark had been weakened by its defeat during the Second Schleswig War of 1864 and Seward had already discussed the purchase of Danish islands in the Caribbean to establish a naval base. No deal was reached.
In 1910, President William Howard Taft again explored the purchase of Greenland after cryolite was discovered on the island. The mineral was needed by the expanding US weapons industry. The two sides discussed proposals to purchase the island outright or to swap it for Mindanao, a US territory in the Philippines, and the Dutch Antilles but the deal bombed. Now, the Danes have no interest in accommodating Trump, despite his threat to use military force to take over the harsh weather and forbidding terrain of Greenland. The 45-minute call of Trump to Frederiksen on Jan. 15, 2025 did not cause the feisty female minister to flinch, forcing the nasty Trump to threaten an invasion.
A combination of Danish pride and the inclusion of the Indigenous community of Greenland in decision-making make this different from 1867 with Alaska, or even the World War II moves by the US to gain a defense foothold in Greenland, historian James Patton Rogers, also the executive director of the Brooks Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University and Caroline Kennedy Pipe, an expert on Arctic security at the Loughborough University, wrote for Time Magazine recently. There simply is no sense adding more Americans already serving at a US military base in Greenland, which was established by virtue of an agreement in 1941 that was renewed in 1951 and allowed US forces and Coast Guard to be stationed in Greenland.
Trump must be worse than King Canute, who ordered the waves to recede and not touch his feet. At least King Canute accepted that the forces of nature are stronger and powerful than a king like him. Now, Trump wants to order Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to yield and for the Greenland Prime Minister Mute B. Egede to welcome American occupation forces with open arms. Not even a week into his administration, Trump is proving to be far worse than the mindless Trump of 2017. Yet, Trump’s imperialist policy is but a rehash of the policy pursued by Xi to take over the South China Sea, “reunify” with Taiwan (which China never administered for a single second) and reduce the threats to China represented by the three layers of US military bases in Asia and the Pacific. China has been involved in territorial disputes with at least 18 countries but it says nothing about the hundreds of thousands of kilometers that the Qing empire acquired under the Treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia in 1689. This treaty was scuttled after the Qing lost the war with Russia and forced to sign the 1858 and 1860 Aigun and Peking Treaties which returned the area, thrice the size of France, to Russia.
It is not only US “national security” that compels Trump to covet Greenland. He is not a grifter for nothing. He wants to rob Greenland of its rare earth elements estimated to be the 8th biggest deposit in the entire world. Addicted to transactional political and business deals, Trump has been making hay by appointing at least 14 billionaires to his Cabinet and other profitable positions. He talks of taking over Panama after his Trump Organization was kicked out of a hotel in Panama City for tax evasion and fraud. The majority owners of the hotel his company managed found out about its deflated earnings, window-dressed profits and non-payment of taxes, forcing them to kick out the Trump Organization for good. Panama shamed the narcissistic Trump and he is out for revenge, to the extent of claiming that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China occupies Panama.
The Treaties of Aigun and Beijing, the ceding of Taiwan to Japan after Beijing lost the war to Tokyo, and the extra-territorial control of Western powers in China, caused Xi Jinping to talk about China’s overweening desire to regain respect, but the only instance that would allow it to be restored is for him to win back the land it yielded to Russia. Unless Xi secures the territory that imperial China had lost to Tsarist Russia, there is really no sense to perorate about making China whole again. The case of Trump’s salivating over Greenland is altogether a different animal. After treating some homeless Greenlanders to lunch and giving them MAGA hats, Trump’s spawn and namesake, Donald Trump Jr., claimed that Greenlanders support MAGA and want to be Americans, too. The boast was destroyed as soon as it was aired. Greenlanders don’t want to be Americans.
This is just like what descendants of Chinese mainlanders who jumped to Taiwan in 1895 are saying: We are Taiwanese and do not want to be called Chinese. The indigenous peoples of Taiwan also identify more with their relatives in Northern Philippines than with China, which they consider a different country. Survey after survey since the 1990s has shown that the ratio of the Taiwan people backing “unification” with China has sunk to single digits, with more than 90% of the population saying the fate of Taiwan is a matter that only the Taiwanese can decide. Just as there is no popular support for “reunification” with China, there is similarly no interest in Greenland’s 57,000 people to call Donald Trump their president. (DIEGO MORRA)
