There’s been a trend of dismissing Trump’s obsession with Greenland as some random quirky idea. As the lead image shows, it’s sometimes dismissed as a Trumpian obsession with largeness. Unfortunately for Greenland, Canada, and the world, there are 3 strategic drivers behind Trump’s obsession.
The first strategic driver is only valid if Putin is behind the request. As such a thing is unfortunately quite possible, I’ll include it here. The first strategic goal is to secure Russia’s exit from the North Sea. During WW1, WW2 and the Cold War the allies controlled Greenland, Iceland, the Orkneys, and the United Kingdom. In WW1, WW2 prior to the fall of France, this string of possessions created a gauntlet for German subs to escape the North Sea. Allied patrols could sit in these gaps to make it difficult for subs to break into the Atlantic. It wasn’t impossible to get to the Atlantic, but these islands made it more difficult. Later in the Cold War, control of these islands would pose the same challenge to the Soviet Union should the war go hot without going nuclear. Should Trump take Greenland, I would imagine that he would sell bases to Russia which would make it harder for Europe to keep Russian subs out of the Atlantic.
The second and third strategic drivers are both climate related. As the ice caps melt potential oil fields will open up that have been blocked by ice. There is no guarantee of oil in Greenland and the surrounding northern seas, but the North Sea has plenty of oil and there are reasonable chances for the Arctic near Greenland to have some deposits.
The final strategic driver is based on the map below:
I added this after the first comment.
When we look at the North Pole on a globe and remember that the polar ice is quickly decreasing, then we see that a very important route for ships will be opening up in the coming years. Starting from the Atlantic ships can sail to the east of Greenland, pass between Greenland and the Norwegian islands of Svalbard, cut across the top of the world and come out past Alaska. US control of both Alaska and Greenland gives the US plus Russia significant control of this passage. Depending upon how the ice cap melts, different routes will open up. And this is where the importance of Canada comes in. US control of Canada and Greenland gives further control of the Arctic waters to Trump, and let’s be real here, control to Putin.
Russia has already been harassing the islands of Svalbard. Russia couldn’t take Greenland as the UK’s fleet would be plenty sufficient to prevent a Russian invasion and more specifically, supplying Russian occupation troops if Russia managed to take it by surprise. But no one could realistically prevent a very aggressive United States from taking Greenland. Trump can take it and then gift it to Putin even if just through a few Russian bases there.
I’m not the first or only person to point this out. Nothing here is original to me. But I bring it up now because I want people to understand that the threat to Greenland is real. Putin very much wants to control the Arctic either directly or through proxy. Currently it wouldn’t take a large force to essentially take control. Here in the United States we need to watch for signs of a move. And Europe needs to seriously consider posting a variety of European troops there. It wouldn’t be practical to station a lot of troops there so the main rational of putting some troops there is to make it just hard enough to take that the US would need to use a larger and therefor more obvious task force to take it. In addition, attempting to take it with European troops there would risk war with those European countries and hopefully deter an attack.
So in the future, you may wish to refrain from mocking this particular idea. By mocking it we dismiss it and create an environment where we don’t treat this threat seriously enough. It wouldn’t be the end of the world for Putin to take more control of the Arctic but damaging enough that we can’t just let it happen. The threat to Greenland is real and we must take it seriously.
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