‘Get yer ‘ands off!’ would be ringing in the ears of any American today walking the streets of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. It’s all about Donald Trump’s determination to extend the influence of the White House of Washington DC to the increasingly green steppes of Danish colony, Greenland, a huge island invisible on the radar of the average global inhabitant. The street-style sentiment expressed above, more reminiscent of a London Cockney thug, would be more politely captured as ‘Please leave our Greenland alone.’ This request is directed at, but certainly not obeyed by, Mr Trump. Well, it’s not exactly the right request anyway. Moving from the capture of a sentiment to the capture of a country, one might easily compare America’s interest in Greenland with its recent ‘acquisition’ of Venezuela; a country which – possibly unknown to most of the world’s population, except China and Russia – has the largest oil reserves in the world, because the USA today has more than a very lively interest in what lies under the ground in Greenland.
Until now, to most of the world’s population, Greenland is a blank. Few will have even seen a photograph of its scenery or centres of human habitation. It’s up near the Arctic Circle, with terrain and landscapes as vague and uninviting as its neighbours. However, everyone remembers the Eskimos, now known as the Innuit. They are 90 per cent of the 57 000 people inhabiting Greenland.
Greenland was originally possessed over 1 000 years ago by an explorer from Denmark, a country in Europe. It effectively became a Danish colony when the explorer succeeded in promoting its appeal through the name ‘Greenland,’ luring the fellow Danes from the prevailing perception of it being a freezing expanse of nothing. He even went to live there, reminding the Danes of the value of the acquisition. Today, the Greenlanders themselves have citizenship of the European Union (EU), despite the country itself not being a member of the EU. Up there in the world it definitely gets chilly. A friend of mine, who lived in a part of Canada level with Greenland, recounted to me how they would go shopping in winter and leave their cars running outside the store to prevent the water from freezing inside the radiator and engine. Temperatures of minus 40 degrees celcius. That is serious frostbite country where you can have a nose in place today but gone next week.
Greenland is a huge country; three times bigger than Texas, the largest state in the USA, and 111 times the size of Eswatini. Quantity does not always equal quality, but Greenland is an exception to that, though that’s not immediately recognisable to the naked eye.
Unlike with Venezuela, America’s interest in Greenland has not been under the covers, nor has the USA been alone in expressing a determination to own that country. China made an offer of US$2.5 billion some years ago for a mine that would employ 5 000 Chinese workers, as well as massive infrastructure investments. This resources-pursuing neo-colonialism is not new to modern society.
Denmark turned China down on that. Now why is there now a ‘space race?’ Everyone of the three major nations is acutely aware of Greenland’s strategic role in Arctic security. For the US, it’s firstly about protecting the early-warning Pituffik Space Base surveillance facility; vital for US security on the North Atlantic routes.
The USA is also determined to have full control of Greenland’s huge amount of rare earth minerals, vital to electric vehicles, phones, batteries and all modern computing equipment. Silicon, copper and uranium are just a few.
Whoever controls the respective minerals effectively controls the digital world. With Taiwan currently producing 60 per centof the world’s semi-conductors and more than 90 per cent of the most advanced chips, any invasion of Taiwan by China – not impossible – would put the world’s supply of micro-chips in Chinese hands.
Definitely not advisable. The USA really needs Greenland’s minerals and that dependence spreads across the Western World. Greenland also needs to benefit from the minerals revenue that is currently ignored.
This is one USA acquisition that the fellow-NATO countries would, and should, support in principle, but Trump is now bullying Denmark and the rest of Europe to hand over control of Greenland, with a serious threat of imposition of tariffs on exports to USA from European countries. Now it’s getting nasty and deteriorating by the day.
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