President-elect Donald Trump has in recent years talked about ‘buying’ Greenland. Until recently his comments attracted little attention but recently he shocked the world by threatening the use of economic coercion or military force to fulfil his wish. Male gorillas in the forests of west Africa engage in chest-beating to see off their rivals but Nato, to which the Kingdom of Denmark has belonged since its foundation in 1949, is meant to be a zoo park in which all the wardens sign up for a working partnership. What is behind this public breach in diplomatic etiquette?
Americans can point to earlier times when they expanded their territory by purchase, not to mention conquest. The classic instance of the financial method was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 when France sold off lands for a mere $15 million that at the stroke of a pen doubled the size of the United States. Napoleon at the time had his hands full in fighting off the British and benefited from the stability that the American deal secured.
Trump has never aimed at geopolitical coherence
The same was true in 1867 with Russia’s sell-off of Alaska to the US for $7 million. It turned out to be the bargain of the century at the start of the Klondike Gold Rush three decades later. But Tsar Alexander II had no other sensible option after defeat in the Crimean War. He could not defend Russian territory across the Bering Strait if Britain chose to attack again from Canada. Russia as yet had no Trans-Siberian railway, and it seemed prudent to keep the British away by involving the Americans.
The Greenland proposal does not fall in this category. Denmark is not offering its vast island in the north Atlantic for sale but is being menaced with trouble if it refuses to come to terms. There is little prospect of a friendly shaking of hands.
Trump has several advantages. Denmark cannot match the US either militarily or economically. The Danes govern Greenland at a huge distance and had to grant home rule to Greenlanders in the late 1970s. Greenland is no longer a Danish colony and Greenlanders already have the right to declare independence. But Greenlander opinion polls have been volatile over this question in recent years, and it is uncertain as to how the electorate would react to falling under the sway of the new US president.
Meanwhile Washington’s politicians have noted with concern how Vladimir Putin has upped his game north of Siberia. As the northern waters have warmed with climate change, the Russian fleet of warship and icebreakers has swollen. Putin has declared Russia’s interest in exploiting the natural resources inside the Arctic Circle north of Siberia, and Trump’s latest intervention implies the wish to resist the spread of Russian influence to the icy waters of the north-west Atlantic.
Trump beats his chest at more countries than just Denmark and Greenland. He threatens to re-occupy the Panama Canal, which has been under full Panamanian authority only since 1999. In December 2024 he accused the Panamanians of gouging exorbitant fees for transit and letting the Chinese into the canal’s operations. Trump has also resumed the ritual of Canada-baiting. He referred to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the mere ‘governor’ of the 51st US state. He wants rid of ‘that artificially drawn line’ between the two countries which, he says, undermines American national security.
Trudeau this week has restrainedly replied that ‘it’s not going to happen’ and that Canadians are a proud people. On both matters Trudeau is surely right.
But nobody knows what Trump will do when he resumes the powers of office. His oral effusions are standard practice. Sometimes he seems like a would-be Muhammad Ali, who enjoyed preening himself and demeaning his opponents before his bouts. But Ali did then go out and do the fighting, and usually he emerged as victor. He also knew that verbal extravagance stripped down the morale of the boxers he faced.
Whatever happens after 20 January, it will likely involve the bullying of allies and friends. In the case of Greenland, he had warned of possible outright annexation. Trump gives high priority to securing a larger zone of influence – and of an influence much greater than the US currently wields.
If this way of thinking is sustained, the great powers are entitled to be surrounded by subordinate states. Trump’s breaks with the credo of Western diplomacy by voicing licence for America to use force, whether economic or military, on its neighbours. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping must be happy at hearing this. Putin wanted all Ukraine by right of conquest and now seems willing to settle for a large eastern chunk of it and Xi wants to gobble up Taiwan. But the problem for Trump is that Taiwan makes most of the semiconductor chips on which the US still depends – and American policy since the 1940s has been to defend the Taiwanese from annexation.
Trump has never aimed at geopolitical coherence. He presents himself as the president who doesn’t go to war whereas he in fact used force in the Middle East in his first term in office. As the slogan ‘America First’ implies, he aspires to a more controllable and enlarged zone of American national security than at present. But his series of declared aims for Greenland, Panama, Mexico and Canada is unlikely to produce a world without international tensions – and such tensions, as happened in the decade before 1914, can all too easily tip over into war.
Although Putin and Xi have no known pretensions to grabbing Greenland, they must be quietly applauding not only how Trump’s ideas lend validity to their expansionist goals but also how his crude diplomacy destabilises the very alliance, Nato, which they most fear. But there is still some room for hope. When international tensions rise, even the US will want friends and allies in distant places and President Biden’s successor may then recognise the need to treat the rest of Nato as his partners.
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