In May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a visit to Greenland.\u00a0 In a rather unedifying way, he was called \u2018Tony\u2019 by his hosts, a disarming point that was bound to open the floodgates of insincerity.\u00a0 For all the convivial stuffing, there was a certain sting to the occasion: the previous Trump administration had revisited a fantasy long nurtured in the corridors of Washington and power crazed pundits.\u00a0 Greenland, went the dreamers, might someday become a part of the US imperium.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump, in reigniting the issue with a businessman\u2019s bumbling delight, noted<\/a> in 2019 that Denmark \u201cessentially\u201d owned it. \u201cWe\u2019re very good allies with Denmark, we protect Denmark like we protect large portions of the world.\u00a0 So the concept came up and I said, \u2018Certainly I\u2019d be [interested in purchasing Greenland].\u2019\u00a0 Strategically it\u2019s interesting and we\u2019d be interested but we\u2019ll talk to them a little bit.\u201d\u00a0 The Danish response to his appraisal \u2013 that Greenland was potentially part of \u201ca large real estate deal\u201d, was dismissive. Trump harrumphed.<\/p>\n So what has happened to Trump\u2019s ideas regarding this icy territory?\u00a0 The press conference began cordially enough. Blinken was welcomed by the autonomous territory\u2019s premier Mute Egede who reminded him<\/a> that celebrations would be held commemorating Kangerlussuaq\u2019s 80-years anniversary, built by the US Air Force in 1941. \u201cWhat began as a military base is now an important civilian airport for Greenland.\u201d From a world at war, the relationship with the US had \u201cevolved to a cooperation in science and mutual interest and understanding the health of our planet.\u201d<\/p>\n This was laying it on a bit thick, but Blinken obliged with due soppiness. \u201cI\u2019m in Greenland because the United States deeply values our partnership and wants to make it even stronger.\u201d\u00a0 The consulate in Nuuk, after a seven decade hiatus, had been reopened for that reason.<\/p>\n To the press members gathered, he explained how the US was willing to part with cash in developing the island (\u201cabout $12 million in programming in the first year, and plans for additional funding.\u201d)\u00a0 This covered sustainable tourism, fishing, land management, and cooperation between universities. But then came the question: \u201cCan you definitely say that the United States does not seek to buy Greenland?\u201d To this question posed by John Hudson of the Washington Post<\/em>, Blinken could only assert its accuracy.<\/p>\n Greenland\u2019s Minister for Trade, Foreign Affairs and Climate, Pele Broberg, was also clear<\/a> that Greenland, while significant in terms of \u201cgeo-location\u201d and of \u201cutmost importance for the defence of the United States\u201d, was not part of any \u201creal estate deal\u201d with Washington.\u00a0 But Broberg\u2019s interpretation as to what constituted real estate was curious enough.\u00a0 \u201cReal estate means land with nothing on it, nobody on it.\u201d\u00a0 This observation was a prelude to something less than convincing.\u00a0 \u201cSecretary Blinken has made it clear that he is here for the people living in the Arctic, for the people living in Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n Over various periods of history, that grand cold expanse of Greenland has interested US prospectors of political realty.\u00a0 The US imperium had grown rich through a combination of purchases and predatory conquest, repudiating those warnings made by George Washington about the perils of an enlarged empire.<\/p>\n During the administration of Andrew Jackson, the territorially-minded expansionist William Seward went on a bidding spree<\/a>, pursuing that old coveted goal of acquiring Canada from the British Empire and naval assets in the Caribbean.\u00a0 Returns followed for the US Secretary of State.\u00a0 The Alaska purchase, with the Russians imprudently parting with land they thought was of little value, was truly something of a steal.\u00a0 In the summer of 1867, Seward also commissioned former treasury secretary Robert J. Walker to look into the issue of whether Denmark might be willing to part with both Greenland and Iceland.\u00a0 Walker had already made good progress in acquiring the Danish possessions of St. Thomas and St. John through treaty.<\/p>\n In his introduction to a report<\/a> for the State Department, compiled by the superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, Benjamin Peirce, Walker is eye-popping with praise for this \u201clargest island in the world.\u201d\u00a0 (The Trump vernacular is all too present.)\u00a0 You can sense the aggrandising inner voice: \u201cIts area, thus elongated, would be about 1,800,000 square miles, or largely more than half the size of all Europe, but with a far greater shoreline.\u201d\u00a0 He acknowledges those \u201cvast fisheries and extensive coasts and numerous harbors, especially with abundant good coal there [which] must greatly antedate the period when the United States will command the commerce of the World.\u201d\u00a0 Acquire Greenland today, and a rich tomorrow is assured.<\/p>\n The Truman administration, eyeing strategic advantages in its Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union, was another bidder, offering $100 million for the island territory in 1946.\u00a0 As John Hickerson of the State Department noted in a memo<\/a>, \u201cpractically every member\u201d of the planning and strategy committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed that a purchase should take place.\u00a0 It was also \u201cindispensable to the safety of the United States\u201d while being \u201ccompletely worthless to Denmark\u201d.\u00a0 The Danish Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen was less than impressed<\/a> with this imperial imposition when approached by Secretary of State James Byrnes in December 1946.<\/p>\n Happily for Copenhagen, the advent of NATO alleviated any pressing need to show the Danes the money.\u00a0 US military planners got what they wanted: a defence treaty in 1951 permitting the building of the Thule Air Base.\u00a0 To facilitate this agreement, the Danish government relocated the indigenous Inughuit community with assured callousness.\u00a0 It was all a crude demonstration of empire by concealment and obfuscation, a point made with some force<\/a> by Daniel Immerwahr\u2019s How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States<\/em>.<\/p>\n With the Biden administration looking inwards, expressions of interest for Greenland, at least from the US, have closed.\u00a0 This is unlikely to be a permanent state of affairs.\u00a0 The ice is melting; global warming is a terror for the environment but a delicious commercial boon for strategists hoping for easier access to the Arctic.\u00a0 Russia is proving a more than formidable player.\u00a0 China, along with Russia, dream of the Ice Silk Road<\/a>.\u00a0 US officials fret that Beijing might get a military foothold on the island.\u00a0 This real estate story is far from over.<\/p>The post Blinken Says No to Greenland Real Estate<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a visit to Greenland.\u00a0 In a rather unedifying way, he was called \u2018Tony\u2019 by his hosts, a disarming point that was bound to open the floodgates of insincerity.\u00a0 For all the convivial stuffing, there was a certain sting to the occasion: the previous Trump administration had [\u2026]<\/p>\n The post Blinken Says No to Greenland Real Estate<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3208,33762,36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297306,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297170\/revisions\/297306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}