White House studying cost of Greenland takeover
I’m sure Greenlanders will realize what a Trump administration promise is worth.
If TrumpWorld does take Greenland by the only practical way — military force — they’ll try tormenting impoverished Greenlanders will claims that if only they had gone voluntarily, they’d be rich. Not true.
This sound bad:
Is there any chance of the UN threatening to leave Manhattan if the U.S. conquers Greenland? Trump might listen to that because it would probably lower the value of real estate there.
We could veto in the Security Council. But can the General Assembly do something?
Evicting the UN from the US has been a rightwing wet dream for as long as I can remember.
Hasn’t Trump mentioned the United States leaving the United Nations?
Which contained this memory jogger,
The John Birch Society, an anti-communist group founded in 1958, was opposed to US involvement from the society’s beginning. From an early date they had bumper stickers with the slogan “Get the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S.!”
I remembered the slogan but not the source.
Parts of the UN, yes. What he will not mention is the Birch Society line about the United Nations leaving the United States. All those missions to the UN use a tremendous amount of Manhattan office space.
This illustrates a difference between Trumpism and fascism. No real fascist leader would tolerate a disorderly nest of opposition ideas like UN headquarters.
Recommended from the Atlantic:
Take Trump Seriously About Greenland
To me, conquering another country with intent to keep it is the biggest red line. If the Greenland flags in Nuuk are replaced with the stars and strips, that marks full decent into dictatorship.
They could just try to take it over the same way they took over the United States. Find some true believers or buy off people to put in positions of authority. Use them to disregard norms and traditions and look for loopholes to change laws. Flood the country with disinformation. Hell, maybe Elon could give everybody a million bucks to sign a petition. Soon enough, Greenland is pro-USA all the way.
I don’t know how well these tactics would work in such a small population. But who knows?
I believe there’s a documentary about such a plan…
The villagers, however, are tired of their hard life and are more than eager to sell, though they feign indifference to induce a larger offer.
Apparently the plan is now to bribe Greenlanders $10000 each into wanting to join the US.
Nice link, also there:
“Greenland’s Inuit population is descended from people who migrated from Alaska hundreds of years ago, and the island’s official language is derived from Inuit dialects that originated in Arctic Canada.”
Which could be turned into the best argument to incorporate Alaska to Greenland and take it away from the USA’s greedy claws, right?
Good that he is too distracted tanking the economy to worry about Greenland, Canada, or the Panama Canal.
In other words: Never let a good crisis go to waste.
The obvious linkup is a union of Canada, Alaska, and Greenland.
Careful, Greenlanders. You can be out that and more in a short period of time in USA medical bills.
I suspect that at least some of them know that, and will tell the rest.
Also, odds are Trump would just not actually pay them, anyway.
Seriously?
This week tells us Trump does what he wants, not what his staff says.
Maybe he will start the buildup for Greenland gradually to see how far he can move the Overton window. Perhaps the U.S. will build additional housing units just outside our Pituffik Space Base to demonstrate that the U.S. is serious about invasion and can do what it wants (although we would give some other excuse). If a pinprick like that results in real sanctions against the U.S. – say, no more Danish pharmaceuticals for the U.S. – the bully would back down. But doing that would both cause big hurt to Denmark’s economy and break humanitarian norms, so it’s probably a non-starter. Then once it’s established that the Danes are spineless, invasion comes the next summer.
I hope I’m totally paranoid about this, but U.S. conquest of Greenland seems to me too damn easy for Trump 47 to lose interest in it. Being worried about it is just what Trump wants me to be, but I am worried anyway.
$10,000 each? What cheap assholes! If you gave them each a million dollars it would still be cheap!
I don’t think additional housing is necessary. There has been 6000 soldiers and 4000 civilians when it was greatest. Now there are 200. Repairs should be enough.
I suggest igloos. Add cultural appropiation to the invasion to make the humiliation complete. And make the innuit pay for it and slap a tariff on that too.
Col. Susan Meyers, the commander of the 821st Space Base Group who also oversees the Pentagon’s northernmost military base, sent a March 31 message to all personnel at Pituffik seemingly aimed at generating unity among the airmen and Guardians, as well as the Canadians, Danes and Greenlanders who work there, following Vance’s appearance. She wrote that she “spent the weekend thinking about Friday’s visit – the actions taken, the words spoken, and how it must have affected each of you.”
“I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the U.S. administration discussed by Vice President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base,” Meyers wrote in the email
So naturally:
What would a military conquest of Greenland even look like? In a normal conquest of a piece of land, you move troops in, fight any opposition troops you encounter, and once there are no opposition troops left (or at least, not enough to matter), you declare victory.
But that’s what Greenland already looks like. We have the only troops there. So far as I can tell, declaring victory is the only step left.