Commentators in Europe are understandably agog about Trump’s rumblings that the US might somehow, possibly, annex Greenland at some point in the future. One would think asking Greenlanders how they see their future might have been a better idea. But I’m curious about how we should take these rumblings. Several possibilities suggest themselves, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive:
- Trump lives in a fugue state. Today it’s Greenland, tomorrow it will be communists putting red stripes in our toothpaste. Or maybe it’s just a plea for attention. Move on.
- Trump’s modus operandi is always to make outrageous demands in the hope of getting something much smaller. So perhaps he wants a somewhat bigger US military presence in Greenland, or a stake in its minerals. This is his way of getting there.
- Trump is seriously worried about Chinese and Russian power. This is another example of his tendency to say the quiet (realist) part out loud: Greenland is going to fall into someone’s orbit; so it had better be ours.
- Trump has a bad case of dictator envy. He thinks (all facts aside) that it’s unfair Putin and Xi Jinping have empires while he doesn’t.
- Something else entirely.
Speculate away!