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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   25038 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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USA really, seriously wants to own Greenland.

Trump has made this extremely clear ever since his first presidency when he first offered to buy the island from the Danish government. At the time, the Danes made it very clear that this was not possible. They could not legally sell the island, and if they could, it still would not be for sale. This presidency, he has been probing around, trying to find an effective strategy that can give the administration what they want. He made that clear in 2025 by essentially stating that no tactic is off the table. He has since attempted the following:

  1. Threaten a military takeover. He did this by stating that military intervention was not considered off the table.This was shut down by European leaders promising to retaliate.
  2. Convince the locals to declare independence. In reality, independence for Greenland means choosing a new master (thus creating an obvious opportunity for the US), as their current society cannot survive without subsidies from a wealthier nation. However, the administration failed to convince the Inuits. I suspect they might return to this strategy in the future though, if the current one does not work.
  3. Currently, the administration is attempting to use the situation in Venezuela as leverage. They are showing that the threats of invasion were not empty, using the implication to frighten the relevant parties into submission. Once again, European leaders have, through indicating support for Denmark, threatened retaliation if the US invades. I suspect this will be enough to deter the administration once more. Although if Europe had not been supportive and instead let Denmark stand alone, I do not doubt that America would be planning an invasion right now.

This begs the question though: Why does the US want Greenland so badly? It is a frozen rock in the middle of the ocean, with an entire population living off government subsidies. Why not just let Denmark pay the bill while the states keep their bases? I have some ideas below, ordered from what I think makes the least sense to the most:

  1. It is a hedge against global warming. As the earth grows hotter, Greenland will become increasingly habitable, making the island much more valuable as other landmasses are swallowed by the ocean.
  2. Real estate for data centers. The island is cold and remote, with a lot of empty space and rare earths in the ground. To my layman's knowledge though, construction of the necessary infrastructure would be ludicrously expensive, even though the land itself might be cheap. Still, I would not put it past the likes of Elon Musk to try something like this anyway.
  3. To secure the North Atlantic against military threats. This seems like the official reason, but I don't really buy it. America already has military bases on Greenland, and I do not see why the military could not simply send more equipment and personnel there if the government wanted a larger presence. No official ownership necessary. If this is wrong, then I invite any other commenter to correct me.
  4. To control the rare earths. Rare earths are a priority of the Trump administration, and even though extracting them is supposedly ridiculously expensive, the mere possibility of another country (China) gaining access to them might be enough to warrant official occupation. This way, the US government, not the Inuits, would be in control of who is allowed to mine there.
  5. It is in the American "Sphere of Influence". It is possible that the world order is turning towards one in which Great Powers (USA, Russia, China, and maybe the EU) hold influence over the smaller countries in their vicinity. The smaller countries remain sovereign and independent as long as they operate in the interest of their great power. In this scenario, the USA views all of the Americas as being under her sphere of influence, including Canada and Greenland. These countries will either bow to their leader or suffer her wrath.
  6. The purpose is to secure Trump's (and more broadly, the Republican's) legacy as president. Trump clearly cares a lot about his image, with the most recent example being how hard he has tried to win the Nobel Peace price. Successfully expanding the nation's territory with the world's largest island would go down in the history books, cementing this administration as potentially the greatest one since world war 2.

The US military, regardless of what the political branches think, is convinced that Global Climate Change is very real. Most of the northern arctic ice is going to melt off, leaving behind navigable water ways, habitable islands (at least habitable enough for major military installations) and major oil and minerals deposits. And due to the nature of a globe shaped earth all this stuff is both on North America’s doorstep, and Russia’s. So for the last ten or twenty years the military has been quietly screaming at the top of its lungs to anyone who will listen that controlling the Arctic is one of the paramount security concerns of the 21st century. Greenland is very important for controlling the Arctic, especially considering Canada is getting more and more politically unreliable. And leaving it under Denmark’s control is a giant liability, since Greenland is pretty close to Russia and Denmark has zero military capacity. They lasted literally 8 hours against Nazi Germany, and are probably in worse shape today.

Also to Trump personally I think there’s probably a legacy interest of being the first President in 150 years to make a major territorial acquisition for the United States.

Also to Trump personally I think there’s probably a legacy interest of being the first President in 150 years to make a major territorial acquisition for the United States.

Would that even be a positive? 50 000 inuits who barely speak english who live 6000 km from LA and have few common interests. The US is unruly because of its size and diversity already. The US should if anything be divided up, not expanded to handling Venezuela and Greenland.

How many people are complaining about having Alaska?

Inuit is already plural. The singular is Inuk.

And in Inuktitut it also has a dual form, Inuuk (one Inuk, two Inuuk, many Inuit); Greenlandic, also known as Kalaallisut, is the only member of the Inuit-Yup'ik-Aleut family not to have the dual form.

habitable islands (at least habitable enough for major military installations)

From what I've heard of Adak Island, that's not a high bar either. I was told that their version of a windsock is a log on a heavy chain.

Militarily speaking, what would acquiring Greenland do to limit the risks you lay out here? They have military bases there, and the other NATO countries also believe in climate change and have an interest in keeping the area under control. Denmark has a tendency to cede American requests for military presence, so why can't the US meet their goals without acquiring Greenland and throwing their alliances into question?

Denmark has a tendency to cede American requests for military presence, so why can't the US meet their goals without acquiring Greenland and throwing their alliances into question?

It seems possible that American military leadership foresees growing tensions between Europe and the US and that securing Greenland is easier now than it will be later. It also looks like the US understands they can no longer control the entire world, so they'll take the next best option which is to assert their control over half the world and all of its shipping lanes, potential outposts, etc.

The current administration and the US military still show that they embrace conflict theory over mistake theory, at least insofar as it relates to the Western Hemisphere. Maybe they're wrong to see the world this way, but it's an undeniable fact that the quickest way to get what you want is to be the biggest kid on the block.

I still believe Europe is capable of great things militarily, so they're going to have to start flexing because the Trump admin are less likely to kowtow to finger wagging. Trump and crew are at least signaling they will take it with force if they believe the cost-benefit is workable.

The main issue I have here is that the growing tensions you describe are mainly due to the Trump administration's extremely aggressive negotiation tactics and hostile rhetoric. It was an avoidable problem. Keep treating the EU like allies, and the tensions would not have been there. Hell, even after all this, the European leadership at large still seems to be holding out hope that the US will reverse course, and that everything can just go back to normal.

Militarily speaking, what would acquiring Greenland do to limit the risks you lay out here? They have military bases there, and the other NATO countries also believe in climate change and have an interest in keeping the area under control. Denmark has a tendency to cede American requests for military presence, so why can't the US meet their goals without acquiring Greenland and throwing their alliances into question?

Yeah, it seems like the US can just negotiate a treaty to build additional military bases in Greenland. If the concern is that Denmark is not adequately defending Greenland from the Russians and the Chinese, a treated could be negotiated for that as well. (In fact, arguably there is already a treaty in place -- the NATO treaty.)

If the concern is that someday Greenland might exercise its sovereignty and ask the US to leave, well, that didn't work out for Cuba.

Yes. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that asking to buy Greenland was apparently the first idea the Trump administration had. As if treating Denmark like a loyal ally and negotiating with her to increase the existing force was never an option. This is why I find it most likely that simply owning the landmass (either as a prestige project or to cement the US as a Great Power) is the main goal. Because this is the only thing that explicitly requires ownership.

Does the US actually want to defend Denmark? The idea could be to take the important and profitable parts of Europe and then let Europe manage its own defence.

Defending mainland Denmark, Estonia, Sweden and Ukraine is too expensive and risks nuclear war. Having a sanding army ready to fight off the Russians is simply not worth it for the US.

Defending Greenland without being forced to defend mainland Denmark is a far more attractive option.

It's a pretty nasty development for the innocents of nigh defenseless small countries who will be at increased risk of getting invaded, tortured and killed by the hun. I feel it's a consequence of the cultural divide that has appeared between the US Reps and the European libs. There's no real feeling of unity there. And all this plays right into Putin's hands, who afaik identified that supporting Trump into power by various means would help cause this divide, weakening the democracies of the world.

European countries can defend themselves. During the cold war even mid tier European countries had hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Russia does not want to restore the iron curtain and retake East Berlin either. What this is the end of is European countries being a joke in terms of our militaries.

Trump is American and is responsible for the US. Reaching the conclusion that the US shouldn't spend hundreds of billions subsidizing European defence does not require Russian meddling.

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