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That would be one of the craziest positions I have ever heard.
And there is the trademark American response to being told no. Congratulations. We have successfully laid bare the source of Trump's recent diplomatic problems.
I'm not even being sarcastic, really. This is literally it. This is how it went down, recreated live.
If you want to defend the position that asking to buy land is inherently disrespectful please do that in plain language.
What are you expecting me to say? There are things that are commonly understood to not be for sale. You do not peer through someone's window and then ring their doorbell and ask how much they want for the plush sofa. You don't negotiate for someone's virgin daughter. You don't try to purchase the largest part of a country's territory, especially when said territory is nominally self-governing. Doing these things is not going to be greeted by interest or by a long explanation of the sociological details that lead to such requests being considered inappropriate. It's going to be greeted by an invitation to take a long walk off a short pier.
Ignoring people's desire not to give you something, up to and including refusing to rule out taking it by force, then makes that 100x times worse.
If you must have a long discussion on the long-term effects of postwar American third-worldism, and how WW2 affected people's understanding of the appropriate relationship between large strong nations and smaller weaker ones, especially ones who were already loyal allies, and how economic interests (don't) trade off against sacred values, I suppose we can, but frankly I don't want to and I doubt it will make any difference to you.
Virgin daughter? Melodramatic. I'm afraid you have made a sacred taboo out of something that is not sacred at all. Peaceful land deals are historically normal, the United States was built on them, Europe was built on them. (Do you have this same attitude when Spain asks the UK for Gibraltar? You are never going to convince a Manhattan real estate developer that asking, simply asking for a land deal is inherently offensive.)
Not even the Danish politicians involved are this precious about it.
Sometimes I get the sense talking to Europeans that they have a fixation with keeping borders static. I understand that Europe has seen a lot of war and that the World Wars were especially devastating and that Europeans today regard the current order as a step forward into a different future. This stability is somewhat romanticized (borders have changed in Europe post-1945, quite a lot), but I can at least respect the ideal itself.
(The ideal tends to glaze over extreme post-WWII "population migration"-genocides of minorities in postwar national borders. It also effectively sweeps the Soviet Union under the rug if you want to talk about the appropriate relationships between larger states and smaller states. So the ideal is extremely recent, only applies to Europe, only to a particular part of Europe, and masks the literal violence that was predicate to establishing it.)
So I don't want to put words in your mouth -- but when I hear that even asking to negotiate is inherently offensive, I have to speculate because what is America even supposed to do with that? What am I arguing here supposed to do with that? Europe denied America the use of many of its bases in the war with Iran, so it's perfectly rational for America to want to prevent that from happening in Greenland, and it's perfectly rational for America to improve its Arctic and Home Defenses through Greenland. So, what, asking to buy some land is itself offensive? Because this is the most peaceful disruption possible to the ideal of stable borders, and if Europe can't negotiate these things rationally it will not like when America also decides to get irrational.
I'm not being snarky, but a big part of America's historic pitch during the Cold War was that you guys were genuinely better than the Soviet Union. Not just in a Capitalists vs. Commies way but in terms of genuinely caring about the relationship between larger states and smaller states. That was always a propaganda-augmented talking point, it swept a lot of stuff under the rug, but I think also the need to appear the moral superiors of the USSR constrained America in a lot of ways. America no longer seems to consider that relevant. I'd go so far as to say that a big part of Trump's appeal for Americans is throwing off the voluntary constraints that the USA placed on itself during the Cold War, eliciting predictably negative international reactions.
Just... don't? It's totally rational for America to want Greenland. Hell, I'd love the UK to have Greenland if we could swing it. But if we offered to buy Greenland we'd get the same reaction that Trump got, and not just because we couldn't afford it.
Again, I'm not being snarky here. The world is full of things that people want and can't have. I wasn't being melodramatic talking about people's daughters: everyone understand why you might want somebody's daughter, and historically it used to be perfectly acceptable to buy one, even if you had to dress up the transaction a bit. Now it's not. And if you say, "What am I supposed to do with that? I don't have children and I'm in love with her and I really, really want her," what kind of reaction do you think you'll get?
I'm aware, and this is the other element. You think people have forgotten this even for a moment? Even the most idle request from America comes with the implied threat of economic sanctions or even military sanctions on refusal. Ten times so for Trump because, as mentioned, he's clearly uninterested in norms and self-constraint. That's why people are so sensitive to this behaviour from America specifically. Like, seriously, you're telling me you wouldn't have a negative reaction if Xi said those kinds of things while trying to buy American territory?
Errata:
Historically normal, yes.
You're asking a British guy if he's offended when Spain keeps trying to steal our territory? Of course I do. We went to war for the Falklands barely thirty years ago.
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