Greenland is 836,300 Square Miles, to put this in perspective, Greenland is 66% the size of India geographically. Greenland is the world’s largest Island and is immensely strategic in terms of geography. Greenland is closer to North America than Europe but offers incredibly short flight routes to the Russian North as well as Northern China. This makes Greenland extremely useful for intelligence gathering as well as defending the United States and Canada from potential attacks from what is increasingly viewed as an axis of potential military aggression. This, of course, is matched by the potential energy resources, metal deposits and Earth Minerals. The idea that there are only 55,000 Native Greenlanders is causing President Trump to feel that it is feasible to offer economic incentives to Greenland and Denmark to allow for a transfer of Greenland to a U.S. territory, much the way the Russian Empire sold Alaska to the U.S. or how Napolean parted the French territories to the United States. The U.S. has a history of either buying land or going to war to as it did during the Mexican American War, though even in this case Mexico was paid a sum for losing nearly half of its geography. President Trump may well be thinking that if not by compensation, then by war Greenland could be forced to join the United States, and this is where matters become rather complex.
Greenland is the only modern nation with a majority Native population to have managed to transition to a nation state.
It will be a hard case to sell to the Greenlandic population, as they are in a Union of Equals with Denmark for the first time since 1721. The position Greenland has is one which is very unique as it is the only nation with a majority native population to have successfully made it into the 21th Century. Greenlandic is still widely spoken and though Greenland was converted to Christianity the native religion is still very much part of everyday life. A transition to being a territory of the United States would likely be met with stark comparisons of their present status and that of Native Americans who have not fared well at all.
It is very likely that President Trump would not be marketing this campaign based on expanding the rights of Greenlanders as there is really nothing more that can be done, and any benefits to be made possible economically would likely not be shared equitably with the Greenlandic people. So the mechanism of having Greenland join the U.S. would be a military formula, which would be rather uncomplicated for the U.S. to do, but would lead to an enormous issue with NATO member states which would be all obligated to step in to both defend Denmark as well as Greenland by default. President Trump might feel emboldened to go ahead anyway, as he may feel there is no concrete action Western European states would actually engage in. The reality is that the United Kingdom and France would be the two states which will be potentially obligated to use their military to evict the U.S. out Greenland, they would likely not step up to this task. This would in essence end NATO.
President Trump is looking to integrating Greenland into the U.S. as cementing his own legacy.
The real gamble President Trump faces is if an occupation of Greenland is worth the loss of NATO. In a secondary consideration, the U.S. will lose all remaining credibility as the 2003 invasion of Iraq has already taken much of this away. President Trump would be better advised to find a way to gain access to develop Greenland without optically taking control of the Island. A direct invasion will only embolden China and Russia to take even greater actions of brazen aggression. When nations begin to make open threats of taking over other sovereign nations, it is clear a far larger war is looming. Ending a World order without the establishment of another leaves the world open to a great conflict in the coming decades.
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