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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   26629 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.

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.

This just bugs my 'words have meaning' nerve.

In its most general form, a threat is a an indication of intention- verbal or non-verbal- to inflict harm of someone. Often this comes with a conditional, but not always.

When Trump said he was 'going to bomb the shit out of [ISIS],' that was a threat. It wasn't conditional, but it was very much an indication of an intention soon followed.

When Trump said that threats with North Korea would be met with 'fire and fury,' that was a threat. It was vauge on what said fire and fury entailed, and allowed people to project a nuclear dynamic, but it was a threat with a condition (of North Korea threats continuing).

When earlier today Trump said he called off a second wave of attacks on Venezuela because it released a large number of political prisoners, that is a threat. The indication to attack was conditional on a condition no longer present, i.e. Venezuelan behavior, but the threat is on the condition of if that cooperation changes.

'Military intervention is not off the table' is not a statement of intention. It does not indicate an intent to inflict harm. It does not set a condition for which it might be avoided. It does not even set a condition for it to be enacted. It's a non-denial, but a non-denial is not an affirmation. It is, at most, the implication of the possibility of a threat... which has no negotiating leverage or coercive value if you simply choose another implication to interpret, at which point the speaker either has to up the ante by making a more explicit threat, or not sustain the implicit threat.

I tend to loath macho posturing comparisons, but even if you want to act as if that's a threat, it is an incredibly weak threat by the standards of Trump- who is not exactly adverse to explicit threats of military attacks- and it makes the sort of people who treat it as a strong threat seem even weaker in turn.

Trump:

We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not, because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor... I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way, we will do it the hard way.

You're right that this doesn't mean Trump is going to invade, in the same way that "plata o plomo" doesn't mean you're going to get the plomo. However, the existence of the plata option doesn't make it not a threat.

Was anyone anywhere unaware that the U.S. does in fact have the ability to seize Greenland by force? I understand it's politic to pretend that this is irrelevant, but I think a lot of people have started to think it really is irrelevant. It's not irrelevant, and it's fair to remind people: we're negotiating not because we have to, but because we want to.

Everyone is aware of that, that's the point. When you are holding a deadly weapon and the other guy isn't, then "We respect your sovereignty and would never do that" isn't a threat, "I'll use this if I have to" is absolutely 100% a threat.

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