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Notes -
So something actually happened regarding Greenland.
Details are fuzzy, but Trump just posted that the US made an agreement with Denmark and Greenland gives the US permanent military control over Greenland, the right to expand its military presence there and, most importantly, to veto any foreign intervention on the island.
This will not make Greenland a part of the United States, which means Mercator Projection dominance lies beyond our grasp for now.
Critics will point out that this doesn't really change anything since the U.S. already had de-facto military control over Greenland. I think in these case the critics would be wrong. If Trump's post is accurate, this does seem substantially different from the previous agreement. It's permanent, the US can expand with Denmark's permission, and they can deny foreign expansion without Denmark's say so.
It's unclear exactly what the US gave up in order to get these concessions, but Trump says it will cost the US taxpayer nothing. Perhaps there are trade concessions?
What's somewhat interesting is that the US barely has a presence on Greenland at all anymore. At one point, in the Cold War, it stationed 10,000 troops there consisting of a quarter of Greenland's population. Today, just 150-200 unlucky souls man the Pituffik Space Base in northern Greenland. Perhaps that's what makes this agreement valuable. The U.S. can now deny adversaries such as China a perch in Greenland without having to actually send in troops.
Greenland just ceded sovereignty to the United States. We’re calling it something else, we’re pretending that sovereignty is when you have a flag and a parliament and a Danish passport. But Greenland just ceded the legitimate use of the monopoly of violence to the United States. It’s a nice diplomatic fiction in a world that prefers fictions to naked force.
But make no mistake: American power is expanding. This isn’t really about installing military bases (although that required negotiated approval before, a key difference many are choosing to ignore). Anybody thinking in terms of tens of thousands of soldiers stationed in bases took a wrong turn in the 20th century.
Consider — Pituffik (Thule) is now operated by Space Force. American power in Greenland is less about stationing troops and more about coordinating satellite linkups.
Near-term predictions:
SpaceX will announce a massive deal to connect Greenland up to Starlink. (Actually it will probably be pretty cheap and derided even as “small”.)
American investment into improving Greenlandic ports will follow. Denmark’s monopoly on shipping will disintegrate.
The US is becoming an empire. Suzerainty is a standard part of the empire package- the British empire was full of member states who governed themselves. Greenland gave up the right to an independent foreign policy, sure, that means their diplomats can't take bribes for favorable votes at the UN. Small potatoes. But the historical norm is for those kinds of small states to have no independent foreign policy anyways, and it's unlikely Greenland particularly values the ability for its eventual independence to influence world affairs.
Now, what happens with the inevitable breakup of Canada is far more interesting.
I don’t know that the breakup of Canada is inevitable. I don’t think Canada is a “real country” and it basically exists at America’s convenience, but it is convenient. America doesn’t want to have to deal with Quebec, native rights, Ontario, or maintaining the vast Arctic expanses.
The way I see it America needs Canada to do the following:
Canada needs to provide America preferential access to its vast natural resources (those known and those that will be discovered)
Canada needs to not become a proxy for foreign powers or terrorists (Tamil Tigers, Chinese auto dumping, etc.) (This includes patrolling the Arctic)
Canada needs not to threaten America in its own right (talk of turning off energy, for instance)
Besides that, what do we need Canada for? They can maintain a separate legal system, they can deal with bi-lingualism, they can criticize us at the UN and accept our help when diplomats need to be extracted in a crisis. There are even some advantages in this arrangement. Nobody really wants to go to war for Canada.
I’ve even been thinking that Canada """joining""" the EU can be face-saving for everybody in many ways. The EU is already essentially an American client, Canada joining it is like your child running away from home by hiding in his sister’s room. Trump is thinking differently but I can imagine some formulation that makes everybody happy.
(To be clear I think the EU project is majority unlikely.)
Re: Canada and the EU, I have no idea what the hell von der Leyen is doing there (and I don't think she does either). We already have countries in Europe that don't want to be part of the EU, why are we going outside with some kind of associate partnership nonsense? This is like having Australia in the Eurovision. I don't know why either, apart from they have a big TV audience who watch it.
Maybe it's a straight swap: Greenland left the EU in 1982 and is now going with America, so maybe we get Canada in (belated) exchange?
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