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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31420 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.

I thought this interview on the subject with a former Bush administration advisor was great. She brought up a new angle that I haven't seen elsewhere- that Greenland would be a great spot for putting in a space base to manage polar-orbit satellites. Currently that's done from bases in Svalbard and northern Alaska, but both of those are inconvenient for various reasons. It would be nice for the US to have a spot that's close to the North Pole, relatively close to the Northeast USA, and that we completely control.

She also mentions that frustration that the US Military leaders have about dealing with Europe, which as been building for many many years. There's no central European leadership, so they have to navigate this maze of 27 separate national bereaucracies. All of which are far, far weaker than the US military, but we still have to pretend like it's some sort of equal partnership and ask nicely for permission. That can potentially be a big problem, like when you're running a critical top-secret military operation and time is of the essence. The Arctic is a harsh environment, and the US is the only country other than Russia that really has the ability to control it.

My personal opinion is that there's a lot of good, rational reasons to want Greenland. Missile defense, offshore oil/gas drilling, satellite control, transpolar shipping routes, mineral mining, all sorts of stuff. We don't exactly know what the future will hold, but it's usually a safe bet that owning a large land mass in a critical strategic area is rather helpful, and we definitely don't want China or Russia to get it. And all of this has been thought of by the generals and think-tank analysts who camp with the idea.

But I don't think any of that is why Trump wants it. He's a politician with a flare for the dramatic. He wants to see the US, and him personally, secure a big win by seizing a big chunk of land and expanding our boundaries. Having it look extra-big on the Mercator projection makes the deal even sweeter. I have to admit, as a patriotic America, that idea does get my blood pumping a bit, even if it had no other rational reason. I suspect that's also why Denmark is so firmly against it. They were willing to sell us the Danish West Indies even though those had more people and more economic value. They're willing to subsidize the hell out of the small Inuit population in Greenland just so that they can have the national pride of "owning" a big chunk of land. In the past they were saying that Greenland had the right to independance whenever it wanted, but now they seem to be pulling back on that, because they know that an independant Greenland would quickly get bought up by the US.

Why can't the US launch satellites from Danish territory?

It's not for launching the satellites, that still happens from more equitorial latitudes. The issue is having a control/monitoring/intelligence facility. I'm sure they could do that from Danish territory, just like they're currently doing in Svalbard. But they're they have to share with a lot of other countries, and the number of satellites and control facilities is only going to keep growing, so at some point it just becomes nice to directly control the land. It makes generals... uncomfortable... when their most critical satellite control facilities are on someone else's land, and it raises the awkward question of what they would do if Denmark actually tried to make them leave.

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