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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 has had military bases in Greenland since the 1950s. To my knowledge, no non-NATO state ever had a base in Greenland during that timeframe, nor would it be in Denmark's strategic interest to allow any.
Granting a foreign power the right to establish a military base does not cede sovereignty, though. Plenty of countries have US bases, and while the US could arguably occupy any country (with a handful of exceptions), in practice it lacks both the will and the incentive to do so.
It might be illustrative to look at the bigger American foreign adventures since WW2, like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq. Some were defeats (though not on the battlefield, but due to the will of the Americans running out), some were inconclusive. Despite being small engagements compared to the world wars, all of them were seen as a big deal politically. The US is not the Third Reich or Imperial Japan, occupying a foreign country, even one which is a hundred places below them on the list of countries by military spending, is a big deal for them.
To look at the practical effect of having US bases in your country, consider the role of the US airbases in the Gulf monarchies in the Iran war. From a logistics point, they would be ideal to launch bombers against Iran. Instead, the bombers were launched from airbases thousands of kilometers further away from the theater, likely because the monarchies did not give permission to attack Iran from their territory, which would have made them belligerents.
So, having a military base does not even give the US the ability to use that base freely. It gives them even less leeway to enforce their will on the host country in other matters. Suppose that in 2028 an ultra-woke US president wants to use his military power to legalize gay marriage in Qatar. I do not think he would succeed, unless for some reason this was his one and only policy objective and he actually occupied them.
For Greenland specifically, the situation is a bit different, because nobody gives a damn if trans women are allowed to compete in sports in Greenland or not. Greenland is relevant for two reasons: militarily, because ICBMs launched between the US and Russia would want to fly over it, and resource-wise. Militarily, the US was de facto able to use Greenland as much as they wanted, so Trump's deal offers nothing new.
So if the deal actually grants the US full rights to exploit the minerals of Greenland, I will agree with you that Denmark just signed away Greenland. But given what I have heard so far, I do not think this is likely. There will be some constraints on investments by foreign powers, but it is unlikely to grant the US any mineral rights.
I was with you and I was with you but I don’t see what mineral rights have to do with it. I’m actually more or less in agreement with those who say the mineral rights argument is a bit of a red herring. (I also saw this story that an American company has already signed for some rights, so if there is really anything to be mined maybe Americans can get it without a treaty having to spell it out.)
The minerals are really only essential if they give America control over some natural resource it can’t already control. But Alaska and the Mountain West have a bunch and Canada has more. I guess it helps to have a backup.
Maybe also the others here are right to distinguish between sovereignty and suzerainty. I think in this case it amounts to the same thing because Greenland has only 56,000 citizens — it genuinely doesn’t matter. There is almost nothing we need to impose on Nuuk. All they need to do is let Starlink in.
I also think it does make a big difference if America has to go through Denmark or can act on its own terms. If my hunch is right we will be installing a lot more than standard military bases as such. (Satellite radio terminals, missile launchers, Starlink hookups, drone bases, data centers, port terminal services, airports.) I expect this will also eliminate the Danish crown royal monopoly on shipping to Greenland, which has been a major constraint on developing anything in Greenland from the beginning.
I have more to say but I don’t want to start an entirely different topic. My working theory is that America is building a Golden Dome autonomous supercomputer satellite swarm, built entirely on the back of the Western Hemisphere and the Monroe Doctrine. It’s basically going to obviate war as traditionally fought. (Don’t worry, there will still be lots of it.) But America will basically be isolated from it. We are going to own space, and supercomputers, and fill them with missiles autonomously-built in factories sourced with raw materials from the Western Hemisphere. Greenland, basically, only matters insofar as it fits in with that.
This doesn't make sense given the orbital mechanics. If your space weapons are in orbits below GEO (and there are good reasons for not putting them that high), then they are all over the place. The raw materials are also a furphy - space isn't particularly raw materials intensive.
If American did own LEO at some point in the future, they wouldn't need Greenland.
Back in ancient times (you know, a decade ago) it was useful to have ground stations all over so your LEO satellites wouldn't have any gaps in communications coverage. I think Starlink proving out laser sat-to-sat networks has put an end to those days, though; any serious future natural security satellites are going to link to Starshield for backup comms at minimum.
This might not be the case today, but my guess is that by 2036 our serious peer opponents will be able to knock out even swarm constellations like Starlink in a serious war. Being able to put stuff on the ground still matters.
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