The reason for canceling that state visit is actually because Denmark is uninterested in “selling” Greenland.
This is not the first time Trump has cancelled something because he didn’t get his way, so perhaps the Danes are counting themselves lucky. Some pundits are speculating that it was another case of Trump having difficulty negotiating with female leaders.
Expect Individual-1 to blame Danish “socialism” and to get RWNJs making noises about annexing Greenland.
Hiring Erik Prince’s mercenaries to stage a coup for some of the political parties favoring Greenlandic independence would certainly be in line with GOP foreign policy. Putin could certainly lend Trump some advice from his Crimea annexation.
The visit will include meetings with Queen Margrethe II, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, and the leaders of Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
In a press release issued by the Danish cabinet office on Wednesday evening, Frederiksen said that she aimed to use the visit to push Danish positions on a wide range of topics.
"I look forward to meeting the American president in Denmark, when we will discuss issues of mutual importance and how we can strengthen cooperation between Denmark and the USA over, among other issues, security politics, the Arctic, trade and investment."
So like Jarvanaka offering Planned Parenthood a bribe to stop doing abortions, Trump wanted to buy Denmark’s marker on Greenland.
Like Trump’s racism and trade policies, there’s a precedent for American officials trying to buy territory. Most Americans know, vaguely, that the United States acquired much of its territory by buying it. Some acquisitions, like the Louisiana Purchase, are well enough known to be the subject of TV ads. Others are more obscure, like when Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and other Southerners pressed for the purchase of enough of northern Mexico to support the construction of a Southern transcontinental railway.
In fact, buying Greenland has been tried seriously twice. But the changes in international relations since then make it a far worse idea than it was at the time.
[...]
Could the United States offer Greenland’s people a better deal? Probably not. The Trump administration’s neglect of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands after Hurricane Maria forms only the most recent in a long chronicle of US mistreatment of its colonies. The US still holds more than four million people as colonial subjects in islands from Guam to the Northern Marianas – and they get a worse deal than mainland Americans on every score. And who would trade the Danish healthcare sysstem for the American one anyway?
Unless the island were to become a state, Greenland’s fate would likely be more like those other insular possessions. And if Greenland did become a state, it would not only make the Senate even more malapportioned than it already is but it would be a slap in the face to the US territories and the disenfranchised residents of the District of Columbia.
And all of this, of course, doesn’t consider what would happen if, by some unlikely set of events, such a deal were concluded. Just imagine a world of great-power competition in which Russia, India, and China engaged in a new, suddenly-legitimate scramble for colonies.
foreignpolicy.com/...
Even if the United States does not see the people of Greenland’s right to self-determination as an obstacle—a real possibility given the Trump administration’'s deep skepticism of international law and institutions—Denmark almost certainly does. Under the 2009 act, it seems unlikely that Denmark views itself as having the legal authority to enter into a treaty effectuating such a “sale” without the permission of Greenland’s parliament. And even if Denmark could do so under the strict statutory terms of the act, this would be inconsistent with Denmark’s own express recognition of Greenland’s residents as a “people” entitled to self-determination and the international legal obligations that flow from it.
Instead, if the United States wishes to secure more access and control in Greenland, it will most likely have to do so the usual way: by negotiating treaties and related international agreements, both with Denmark and, more importantly, with Greenland’s own government. Or Trump could try to persuade Greenland to pursue independence from Denmark-—a possibility raised during recent Greenland elections—and then enter into some new, closer relationship with the United States, perhaps as an unincorporated territory like Puerto Rico.
www.lawfareblog.com/...
Vores præsident er en komplet idiot