How Greenland explains Donald Trump's entire presidency

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/21/politics/greenland-donald-trump-denmark/index.html


Now consider the Greenland purchase in the context of Trump's broader presidency. It meets all the criteria that have come to define his "modern-day presidential" approach to the job.

*Come up with a totally off-the-wall idea, with a whiff of America-gets-its-way-no-matter-what in there

*Idea leaks -- or the White House leaks it as a trial balloon -- to the media, with the caveat that his aides aren't sure if he is serious about it

*Downplay idea, insisting the media got it wrong -- even while leaving the door open to doing the deal if the other side is open to it

*Take ball and go home when off-the-wall idea is rejected, jeopardizing relationship with longtime strategic ally

See, the Greenland story really does have it all! It is the Trump presidency in microcosm. He says and does absolutely wild things. Even his top staffers aren't sure how serious he is about it, and, therefore, don't know whether to actually pursue it. The idea leaks to the media and immediately becomes a thing. Trump freelances, making up his views as he goes. A semi-serious conversation about whether any of this is even possible begins even as the intended target starts to freak out. Trump, either spurred or spurned by all of the attention, leans in -- to it all. Then it all unravels because, as we later learn, he was winging it all along. There was never any "there" there -- just Trump saying stuff.

(A quick sidebar on the this-is-all-a-strategic-distraction from gun control or immigration, etc., argument: No, it isn't. Is there anything you have seen in Trump's time in office that would lead you to believe that he is capable of that sort of strategic planning and execution? It's readily apparent at this point that Trump is just saying stuff -- and then reacting to how those things land with the general public. There is no three-dimensional chess. There's not any kind of chess being played.)

Greenland was never for sale. Mexico was never going to pay for the wall. His inauguration crowd was never the largest in history. There was not blame on both sides in the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville. Immigrants were never invading our country in hordes. Background checks were never going to happen.

You get the idea. It's the Trump presidency.

[RJB]

I was never a cat lover but I really liked a cat that a former girlfriend had. Recently I found this song written in 1931 that really sums up my feelings.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNDajm2DIQg&t=11s&pbjreload=10

[specsaregood]

It is always funny reading from people that cheated their asses off to win and still not coming to grips of why they lost.

[Danke]

But it wouldn’t be the first time a President has sought to buy Arctic land from another country: In 1867, President Andrew Johnson bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million.

It wouldn’t even be the first time the U.S. has tried to bag Greenland. Back in 1946, officials offered Denmark (https://time.com/5504331/denmark-migrants-lindholm-island/) $100 million in gold bars for the world’s largest island, a Danish autonomous territory. U.S. officials at the time thought it was a “military necessity.”

That 1946 offer was supposed to be a secret. (It was only widely revealed in 1991, when declassified documents were discovered by a Danish newspaper (https://www.apnews.com/9d4a8021c3650800fdf6dd5903f68972).) But in 1947, TIME caught a whiff of similar plans.

https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/time-1947-arctic-circles-map-greenland.png?w=800&quality=85


“This week, as U.S. strategists studied the azimuthal map of the Arctic,” TIME’s Jan. 27, 1947 (http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,778870,00.html) issue reads, “Washington military men thought this might be as good a time as any to buy Greenland, if they could.




The article is accompanied by a map titled “Arctic Circles,” which shows concentric circles emanating from both Alaska and Greenland––emphasizing Greenland’s proximity to European capitals including Moscow.

There was no word of the classified $100 million offer made by U.S. officials a year earlier, but TIME suggested that “military men” had considered writing off Denmark’s $70 million debt in return for Greenland.

The news came at a time of insecure postwar peace. The U.S. had emerged from the Second World War victorious, but the Cold War was already brewing. Tensions with the Soviet Union were out in the open, including over U.S. presence in the Arctic. “So long as U.S. servicemen—even radio beacon operators and weathermen—remain at Greenland outposts, the U.S. is exposed to verbal sniping from Moscow for ‘keeping troops on foreign soil,’” TIME noted.

Buying Greenland, the piece went on, would be the best way to solve that problem. It would also win the U.S. a substantial military advantage:



Greenland’s 800,000 square miles make it the world’s largest island [not really, Australia is much bigger...but it is labeled a continent] and stationary aircraft carrier. It would be as valuable as Alaska during the next few years, before bombers with a 10,000-mile range are in general use. It would be invaluable, in either conventional or push-button war, as an advance radar outpost. It would be a forward position for future rocket-launching sites. In peace or war it is the weather factory for northwest Europe, whose storms must be recorded as near the source as possible.



The strategic concerns mentioned in the 1947 TIME article might not be too distant from those on Trump’s mind. But there is one important exception: today, as sea ice recedes (https://time.com/4592866/greenland-ice-sea-level-rise-climate-change/) thanks to global warming, the once-icebound Arctic is rapidly emerging as a potential new sea route (https://time.com/4773238/russia-cold-war-united-states-artic-donald-trump-barack-obama-vladimir-putin/) for trade vessels and warships.


“Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade,” Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in May. “This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days. Arctic sea lanes could [become] the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals.”


But as students of history will know, that means the area around Greenland could also become the site of a 21st century political crisis.