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!
{ 58 comments }
Matt 01.09.25 at 9:59 am
2) and 3) are too rational to be right. Trump isn’t actually a good negotiator (this is clear all through his history of making bad business deals), and he’s not engaged or serious enough for 3 to be right. (He’s also not a “realist” – not that that’s any credit to “realism”. The fact that people in power act for all sorts of insane reasons that can’t be justified on “realist” grounds are a serious problem for the view!) I think that something that’s left out here is that he had this stupid idea in his first term, and the less crazy (though still very bad) people in his administration – like John Bolton – did everything they could to quash it. One of his big motivations is being bitter about things like that, so I don’t doubt he’s been stewing about it and has come back to it with the thought that this time he’s not going to let any walrus mustached pipsqueak stop him.
Just an Australia 01.09.25 at 10:25 am
My 2 cents: 1-4 are all true, but in this case, it’s mainly 2 with 4 for what he actually wants.
Dan 01.09.25 at 10:54 am
Over on Slate com, Jim Newell has the answer: on the Mercator projection, Greenland looks vastly bigger than it actually is. Trump is unaware that this just a product of the map being laid out flat, and so he thinks Greenland really is bigger than Africa, and therefore worth fighting over.
Laban 01.09.25 at 12:04 pm
“The Donroe Doctrine”
Andrew Nathanson 01.09.25 at 12:42 pm
He wants to blow up NATO (because Putin wants to blow up NATO).
Alex SL 01.09.25 at 1:06 pm
The idea that he would care about what is best for his country is very funny, so options two and three are definitely off the table. Only one, four, and five are even worth considering.
I find it very difficult to believe any explanation that involves him consciously doing something strategic, be it torpedoing NATO at Putin’s behest or wanting to secure a sphere of influence from China. Strategic thinking has not been in evidence in the last few years, outside of when he tries to get out of legal trouble, where it seems he does understand that he should listen to a lawyer from time to time and was able to work out that becoming president again would solve it all anyway. We need to guard against the usual fallacy of assuming that somebody is smart because they are rich and/or powerful, in this case both. He is well known to be easily distracted, narcissistic, short-sighted, and unable to grasp mutual benefit, instead seeing everything as competitions with one winner and lots of suckers*.
Thus the most plausible explanation is fugue state, coupled with a desire for affirmation and an instinct for what statements his followers will see as tough and MAGA-like, and coupled with an understanding that his followers are cultish enough to never hold him accountable for failing to deliver the annexation of Greenland, Canada, or Panama, just as they did not care about the failure to make Mexico pay for the wall. His talent is to fool stupid people by telling them what to hear, not geopolitics or long-term planning to secure rare minerals.
*) This last point is why NATO might be in trouble. If the USA aren’t visibly dominating and humiliating their allies, he can only conclude that the USA must somehow secretly be dominated and humiliated. His personality does not allow for the third possibility of a win-win alliance. Putin isn’t even required, although he presumably does his best to steer things in that direction too.
Alex SL 01.09.25 at 1:08 pm
What they want to hear, I meant. Darn.
BenK 01.09.25 at 1:43 pm
While I normally scoff at assertions which rest on Trump having a distorted view of the world, it makes some sense that he operates with an inflated view of Greenland due to its presence on conventional maps being ‘larger than life.’ This is not entirely a bad thing; because it has an outsized presence in the awareness of the average citizen.
I believe that Trump’s interests in Greenland and Panama are very different than those of the internationalists (Left and Right) because he believes that national boundaries matter. This is a belief he shares with many and expresses in many ways, but the idea of acquiring territory peacefully – a hallmark of US action during other periods in history – is particularly distinctive among the elites. It isn’t a bad contrast to Putin or Xi. It’s a big contrast with many current US elites, and the polite opinion in those favored circles of the EU, etc.
Thomas P 01.09.25 at 2:03 pm
Is a very bad negotiating tactics. A demand like this is just making the people on Greenland more hostile to the US. Panama might possibly be more suceptible to US pressure as they have been invaded before and have more reason to worry that Trump might use force to get what he wants.
Greenland already is in the US orbit with Thule military base.
The US already is an empire. Renaming colonies to “territories” doesn’t change that.
Tm 01.09.25 at 2:24 pm
Part of the purpose of Trump making these statements is precisely to provoke a zillion news items and blog posts like the above and Social Media comments and so on. It’s distraction and confusion with something that the public doesn’t know how to handle. But after almost 10 years, the fact that the public, or at least professional media and political and academic types, are still unable to handle this kind of thing is an indictment. We should know better and we (as a collective) still don’t.
The correct appropach is simple: take Trump seriously and literally and act accordingly. Treat threats of military aggression not as a riddle to be solved or as cocktail party entertainment or as an opportunity for second guessing Trump’s mental state. Treat them as exactly what they are: threats of military aggression – and respond appropriately.
The oligarchic-fascist movement (for which Tim Snyder has coined the very apt term Mumpism) really wants to take us back to the 19th century. Away with democracy, away with women’s rights, away with labor rights, and also away with the UN charta, away with respect for international borders and national self-determination. Hello oligarchical capitalism, hello colonialism, hello white nationalism, Herrenmenschentum, racial superiority. Make no mistake, they are not joking for a second, they mean this. The hatred against postcolonial studies btw is no coincidence at all. There has been a movement going on to rehabilitate old style colonialism and they are methodically working to shut up critical voices.
The purpose of Trump’s threats is always to normalize. Maybe he literally wants to conquer Greenland, maybe not or not yetr, but he does want to normalize the idea that colonialism, imperialism, and racial superiority of people who look like him (yikes) are good and natural things that we should rehabilitate and “make great again”.
Sashas 01.09.25 at 3:53 pm
Tm @10 is absolutely right.
To add an extra thought here: The purpose of a system is what it does. Trump is a bumbling, racist, narcissistic clown. The first half of option (1) is just true. Trump does live in a fugue state. Tomorrow it will be something else random. I remember the scandal-a-day parade from his last administration. There isn’t a secret strategy behind it all on his part… but there doesn’t need to be. The Greenland stuff is really dumb, but he’ll do it anyway if he doesn’t encounter resistance. He throws the spaghetti at the wall and his allies go after whatever sticks. The rest of us need to get back into the habit of treating his madness as simultaneously evil AND not-newsworthy. There’s no deeper puzzle here to figure out. There’s just some dumb evil shit to oppose sustainably because tomorrow’s going to be some new dumb evil shit.
somebody who remembers what happened when biden ended the war in afghanistan 01.09.25 at 4:05 pm
Tm is exactly correct @ #10. it’s a real threat and it should be taken seriously as a real threat. europe should prepare a response and should be prepared for the united states to use furious military force to obliterate anyone who resists. trump’s popularity will go up in america dramatically when he starts invading places for no reason and obliterating our allies with drone strikes. america thirsts for blood and torture. the indirect method of sending arms to ukraine and israel is like methadone. it aint the real stuff.
Laban 01.09.25 at 4:27 pm
Some are theorising that the whole kerfuffle is to take attention away from his and Musk’s H1B proposals (not forgetting a green card stapled to every degree certificate).
Brett 01.09.25 at 4:54 pm
The real reason is that Trump probably saw a picture of Greenland on a Mercator projection map (where it looks gigantic) and thought it would be cool to have that, and now he just says it out loud and all his enablers and cultists have to repeat and say it’s a really good idea to get it. There’s no other real threats there or hidden demands I think – just him being the center of attention, which is what he wants at all times.
Lee A. Arnold 01.09.25 at 5:32 pm
I imagine that he intends to give Ukraine to Putin, so making noise about grabbing Greenland (and the Panama Canal) is a way to show MAGA voters that he tried to even the score. Of course it’s never going to happen, so it’s also the beginning of “Flood the Zone with Shit, Part 2.”
Interestingly the MAGA crowd extolling on Xhitter the acquisition of Canada or Greenland for US statehood doesn’t seem to realize that it would increase the number of Democrats in Congress.
China made inroads into trade deals with US trading partners during Trump’s first administration, a pattern that is likely to repeat because he is so shortsighted, strategically inept, with the tactics of a schoolyard bully. So I also imagine his belligerence may worsen.
Casey 01.09.25 at 5:44 pm
Trump has also made vague threats about annexing Canada. As a Canadian, what has been bouncing around in my head for the last few weeks is that: (1) we cannot win a trade war with a country ten times our size, which buys 86% of our exports, and (2) the prospect of an actual war is even more laughable, in the sense that it would be over before it started.
Given this, it seems to me that Canadian sovereignty, and to some extent the sovereignty of all NATO states, in an illusion. It has always relied on the goodwill of our American neighbours, the international community’s standards, and basic inertia. With the whole concept of democratic mandates crumbling before our eyes, all of those “protections” are now moot.
Trump’s aim with his Greenland (and Canada) threats is to remind us all of how he sees the world. Western nations other than America are not sovereign state, they are American vassals, and he is not (just) president, he is Emperor. There won’t be tanks rolling down the streets of Ottawa because there don’t need to be – he can extract whatever concessions he needs as the price of doing business.
DB 01.09.25 at 5:56 pm
Maybe it’s the first step in encircling and then annexing Canada? Seems unnecessary, but from a perspective of colour on the map as well as creating facts and momentum, perhaps the logic is compelling?
no-one 01.09.25 at 6:43 pm
@Casey, 16 “…they are American vassals, and he is not (just) president, he is Emperor”
Huh. But of course Canada and Western Europe helped a lot (and still do) in destroying any kind of impartial international law, replaced now with so-called “rules-based order”, where the US makes and changes rules as it sees fit. While France did play a weak dissenter during the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the drone strikes, the Saudi-Yemen war, countless military strikes by Israel, etc. went on without any objections whatsoever. So, you brought this upon yourself, don’t complain now.
Mr_Spoon 01.09.25 at 7:52 pm
Casey @16, as a fellow colonial I say you should take solace in the notion that the last time the USA was at war with Canada, you seized Washington DC and burned down the White House.
Alex SL 01.09.25 at 8:12 pm
For what it is worth, I have in the last few hours seen three posts on bsky directly relevant to the discussion.
One provided a snippet from an interview in which Trump rambled about how large Greenland is, making his ignorance of map projections a plausible part of option five, although clearly there needs to be some additional motivation beyond something being large. (And, may I say that I am so tired of people who learned only yesterday that map projections distort areas and constantly post examples on social media under the assumption that most of their peers hadn’t already figured it out twenty years ago?)
The second implied, and the third stated outright, that Greenland is a dead cat meant to distract journalists so that they don’t ask him about how he is now going to fulfill his election promise to lower grocery prices. That would theoretically make sense except I see no reason to believe that any significant number of journalists would ever have held him to account on inflation anyway, and he surely knows them well enough.
Salem 01.09.25 at 9:40 pm
We’re used to treating organisations as non-unitary actors – you’d never ascribe a single “motivation” to Congress, or Microsoft, or the NHS, or whatever – their actions are the outcomes of internal power struggles and compromises and may not have a single coherent logic. I think we should view Trump in the same light. He’s obviously impulsive and easily distracted, so the “why” of his focus on Greenland should be more about why it makes sense for the various factions vying for his ear. E.g. the “strategic” rationale is not so easily discarded by (correctly) noting that Trump doesn’t care about that kind of thing.
LFC 01.09.25 at 10:36 pm
Haven’t read every single comment, but BenK @8 makes it sound as if the U.S. has acquired territory in the past only peacefully. Ever heard of the Mexican War? The Spanish-American War? The wars against Native American tribes connected w/ westward “expansion”?
At the same news conference Trump rambled about renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Difficult to read this lunacy as anything other than playing to the hard core of his base.
Gern Blanston 01.09.25 at 10:52 pm
Some of his techie supporters have had their eye on Greenland for a while as a promising venue for setting up a libertarian utopia zone. Generally not drawn to tinfoil hats, but it’s hard for me in this case to think the connection between these visions and what Trump took the time to blurt out is only coincidental.
engels 01.09.25 at 11:44 pm
Transatlantic flights sometimes pass over Greenland and it looks awesome from the plane. Trump takes a lot of transatlantic flights.
wetzel-rhymes-with 01.10.25 at 2:29 am
Maybe information warfare analysts can see Trump’s purpose more clearly than we from Russia’s point of view. Everywhere else in the world, we say “He’s demented” or “He’s lost it”. Is it just to make a spectacle? If so, then it is a kind of propaganda. It’s kayfabe like in professional wrestling. In wrestling the violence is not real, but staged and scripted. But propaganda from a fascist government can include real violence or kayfabe as means of creating change in the social reality
We pretend what Trump is saying is real, so then we no longer have to take it seriously. If he means what he’s saying, then he’s obviously insane. However, if we understand what Trump is saying is propaganda, then we ask for what purpose?
For my part, I believe Trump has created a permission structure within his followers for the end of international law who now fantasize about seizing Canada. With this tantrum, he is showing the international community it is as hopeless to complain about Vladimir Putin as it is about Benjamin Netanyahu, because why can’t Russia have Ukraine and Israel have Northern Gaza or the West Bank and America have Canada? The United States has the right to seize Greenland and Canada because we are more powerful than they are, so his tantrum communicates the law of fascism as a premise.
The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must, so Trump’s Canada/Greenland fantasy also represents an attack on the rule of law in general, so I think this is a fascist kind of spectacle for his followers, a kind of ritual catharsis. Right-wing fascism is nihilistic paganism where the central ritual is “sacrifice of the Other” in Mussolini’s phrase. For the world our kayfabe invasion of Canada is a favor for Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, and the broader oligarchy of bad acid tech bros, Skull and Bonesmen and Hitler clones who seem to be coming out of the woodwork like the boys from Brazil. That’s what I believe, anyway, that there is an underlying strategy or purpose with Trump all the time. I believe with Trump he is protecting Putin’s interest by attacking the foundations of international law by pretending he could break international law without consequence and pretending there is no opposing norm.
John Q 01.10.25 at 3:30 am
More important than Trump’s motivations are the consequences for the role of the US. In different ways both the EU and the Anglosphere (as represented by the “Five Eyes”) have taken US leadership for granted. Now, European countries recognise the US as a potential military threat (even if still a far-fetched) as does Canada.
An immediate implication is that any deal Trump strikes with Putin over Ukraine will be a dead letter (except in the unlikely event that Putin abandons his expansionist claims). Even a promise to keep Ukraine out of NATO doesn’t count for much given the likelihood that the US will leave NATO before any permanent peace settlement is reached.
Peter Dorman 01.10.25 at 3:41 am
I have no knowledge to add, but two thoughts. First, I agree with those who have said, in various ways, that Trump says stuff to get attention. He thrives on publicity — obviously. And, even though he comes across as rather thick, he does have an entertainer’s sense of the audience. Not every shtick works, but his batting average is high enough. That said, why Greenland in particular? One idea that no one else has mentioned is that Trump may have asked his brain trust what parts of the world will gain in value with climate change. Siberia, northern Canada, northern Scandinavia, and Greenland. Canada is a maybe, the Vikings are out, so are the Russians, but what about Greenland? Just possible, huh? And there you go.
LFC 01.10.25 at 5:24 am
JQ @26 refers to the “likelihood” of the U.S. leaving NATO. But this is something I don’t think Trump can do by fiat; it would require congressional support, which is unlikely to be forthcoming (in the required numbers). So I think it’s very unlikely the U.S. will leave NATO.
mpzrd 01.10.25 at 7:28 am
It’s not as if America hasn’t been a tad expansionist in the past. Manifest destiny! Spheres of influence! I would bet in the end he looks south, as is traditional.
Why should the bromance with Putin continue? What has Putin done for him lately? Let them fight.
rjk 01.10.25 at 10:06 am
I’m not sure that there needs to be one answer. However, one I would add to the list:
Trump’s great diplomatic concerns are with Russia and China, and both of those states are attempting to or considering how to absorb near neighbours. The US would prefer them not to do this, but most of the means of doing so are very expensive and hard to walk back.
Trump is personally disinclined to take on big, expensive commitments that are hard to back out of. That’s just the nature of the man. This happens to coincide reasonably well with the “America First” faction’s desire to avoid geopolitical entanglements, which is why they like him. And yet, allowing Russia and China to steamroller their neighbours causes a lot of problems: it makes Trump look relatively weak compared to Putin and Xi, upsets US allies, and strengthens the case for greater action of the kind that Trump wants to avoid.
So far as I can tell, Trump has a genuine belief in the power of personal diplomacy with other world leaders, albeit an idiosyncratic kind of diplomacy. He needs bargaining chips. If he can go to Xi and say “OK, you want Taiwan, but we want Panama, and when we get it we’re going to double tariffs on any Chinese ship passing through the canal”, then perhaps there’s a deal to be done. If he says to Putin “you want Ukraine, but we want Greenland, and when we get it we’re going to dominate the Arctic like you’ve never seen before”, then perhaps there’s a deal to be done.
Obviously, in both cases, the deal could either be “you stand down and so do we” or “you double down and so do we”.
Biden and the EU’s threats toward Russia have been mostly economic, and Putin presumably feels that neither the EU nor the US has the will to freeze Russia out forever. He knows his people can tolerate economic hardship for a decade or two, and if at the end of that they get to keep the part of Ukraine they care about, then he might see that as worth it. In the end, the sanctions would go away, and Putin’s legacy safe. But US military bases in Greenland wouldn’t go away. This is, in some ways, a better bargaining chip.
Even better for Trump, it’s a bargaining chip that costs no money to create – you just have to believe that he might be serious about it. It costs nothing to trade away a claim over Greenland for a claim over Ukraine. Any action Trump takes to strengthen that claim – some showbiz “negotiations” with Greenland, say – is easily walked back, much more so than the seizure of Russian assets or the open-ended funding of Ukrainian military defence.
I’m not sure that I believe any of this myself. However, I’m also not sure that I buy the reasons given by some other commenters for dismissing the idea that Trump has some kind of rationality here. In general, I think most people are rational in the sense that they’re really trying to pursue their own sense of what’s right and good. Trump is just very confusing to us because his sense of what’s right and good is very different to most of ours, and his means of pursuing it are highly idiosyncratic. This means it’s really hard to figure out which things, for Trump, are means to ends, and which are ends in themselves, because we neither recognise the ends he pursues, nor the means of pursuing them.
MisterMr 01.10.25 at 12:59 pm
@rjk 30
But there is already one USA base in Greenland?
Plus Denmark ios part of NATO, so if Trump said “Hey Denmark, we need to put a pair more american bases on Greenland to scare Putin” perhaps Denmark would have agreed, whereas this way Denmark and many EU states are quite mad at Trump and will not welcome new USA bases.
It seems to me it is more likely Trump just wants something like access to the rare earths, and thinks this is the fastest way to get it since the others (Denmark, EU, Candada etc.) are unlikely to fight back.
Seriusly, how many soldiers is France wanting to send to die to protect Greenland in a war that, if the USA was serious, France cannot win? How many Italy? This is an open question but maybe Trump just expects EU countries, Canada and Panada to roll over.
nonrenormalizable 01.10.25 at 2:40 pm
A version of 1. summed up by this video is the most likely explanation for a lot of what Trump does, though I don’t exclude the other possibilities as being why this particular topic was in his mind.
As others have noted, this kind of outlandish talk short-circuits the media into entering the now common failure mode of: “that’s not completely right/possible, but …”, where hosts/producers get to bring in their favorite pundits/rent-a-quotes to expound on the issues at hand, backslapping each other at the ridiculousness of it all, and feeling they’ve done good journalism.
JimV 01.10.25 at 2:58 pm
Something my old friend Mario once told me seems relevant: “Jim, don’t try to make sense out of a senseless world!” (Which is not to say that most of the comments haven’t been interesting.)
somebody who remembers the order to the military to fire on protesters in 2020 01.10.25 at 4:42 pm
lfc @ #28 is confident that the US “can’t” leave NATO without congressional support. to which i say, simply, that it absolutely can. As MisterMr @ #31 wonders, “maybe Trump just expects EU countries, Canada and Panama to roll over”. that’s exactly what he expects and any resistance will be met with overwhelming, bloody and brutal military force with all war crimes explicitly authorized. this isn’t 2017 when he didn’t have full control of the military. this time he has a full staff of officers he will bring in and fire the “woke generals” who wouldn’t follow his orders to fire artillery shells at BLM protesters. how long is nato going to want to keep a united states that attacks denmark in? you think theyre going to wait for the us congress to act?
LFC 01.10.25 at 8:18 pm
The Guardian article linked by engels in another thread — https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/08/france-warns-trump-against-threatening-eu-sovereign-borders-greenland — underscores something that’s been clear for quite a long time, namely that Trump, partly because he is almost completely historically illiterate, fails to understand that the most basic rule of international relations since WW2 is that embodied in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter: the threat or use of force against any state’s territorial integrity or political independence is impermissible. Like almost any rule, this one is sometimes violated (the U.S. and UK (arguably) violated it, for ex., when they went into Iraq in 2003, Putin is violating it in Ukraine, etc.), but its status as a basic rule is not undermined unless the violations become constant and routinized (which they haven’t). In Trump’s world there are essentially no rules, no notion that a ban on aggression is in the interest of virtually all members of the UN because, even though it locks in a sometimes inequitable territorial status quo, it helps prevent local conflicts that can carry the potential for spiraling out of control.
This norm or rule has been up to now so internalized by most governments, including the U.S., that the question of invading, say, the Bahamas (to use Wendt’s example in his Social Theory of International Politics) never even crossed the mental radar screens of contemporary (U.S.) policymakers. They didn’t have to consider it and reject it; it simply never appeared in their consciousness as an option. Trump, partly because of his ignorance of history and of international law, not to mention his displacement of ordinary intelligence and discernment with whatever bizarre cylinders his synapses are firing on, is not in the same mental space, so to speak, as other recent US presidents, and one consequence is that he spouts these juvenile and asinine ideas about, for ex., Greenland, causing the German chancellor and French president to warn him that sovereign borders are inviolable. That this warning had to be delivered at all speaks volumes about the current situation and specifically about Trump.
qwerty 01.10.25 at 8:34 pm
“more american bases on Greenland to scare Putin”
What Putin objects to is NATO installations east of the 1996 version of NATO (specifically, missiles in Romania and Poland), because NATO wasn’t supposed to expand to the east. Greenland doesn’t seem to be a problem.
Jim Harrison 01.11.25 at 12:31 am
Trump is a big part of how it plays out, but the basic issue is that the world is going through a drastic demographic transition at a time of climate crisis. Many, many people, especially men, have a problem with the rise of women that goes with the new population regime; but if you put things in an even deeper way, the fundamental problem us that the human race needs to guide its actions by reason and it simply doesn’t want to or at least enough folks want to rely on the “instincts” their upbringing installed in ’em to finally explain the Fermi Paradox.
Tim Worstall 01.11.25 at 9:28 am
If it’s 2), for the minerals, then that’s simply not worth it. There’s nothing there that’s not already available in vast abundance elsewhere.
That rare earths claim, for example. The originator of that adventure was run off the Australian markets for, well, not being wholly in accord with market rules shall we say.
I’ll let JQ inform all on how bad behaviour has to be to get run off the markets for Australian junior mining companies….
rogergathmann 01.11.25 at 1:32 pm
Isn’t this just Trump’s search for another white state that would vote republican? As the Ds have missed decades of opportunity counterbalancing white GOPlandia with Puerto Rico and DC, it would make sense for the GOP to hustle in there. 2 senators, a Rep, three extra electoral votes.
Makes great sense to me.
Chip Daniels 01.11.25 at 3:29 pm
One of the hallmarks of authoritarians, and Trump in particular, is the desire to have such power as to warp reality itself.
Trump likes performative public lying, the grander the better, for the thrill of watching his minions parrot it. He loves being able to be the unaccountable power, to wave a hand and change the reality of the world.
The power is the thing, the straight line connecting his rapes to corruption to fascism.
engels 01.11.25 at 7:29 pm
Is it impossible he confused it with Iceland (as President Bush confused Slovakia and Slovenia)?
engels 01.11.25 at 9:37 pm
Maybe Hollywood could be relocated there?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/09/la-wildfires-halt-jimmy-kimmel-and-greys-anatomy-filming/
bad Jim 01.12.25 at 12:29 am
Trump may be thinking of his place in history, and wants be as famous to future generations as James K. Polk.
Alan White 01.12.25 at 6:23 am
If Trump even knows who James K Polk is I’ll eat a bug. But his ego always drives everything he says or does, no matter how insane it is. That he is the president-elect is the greatest shame on this country ever, and damn us to hell.
MisterMr 01.12.25 at 9:28 am
Maybe it is just an 11 dimensional chess move to force EU countries to spend 5% of GDP on defence, it might even work.
J-D 01.12.25 at 10:42 am
I figured that was the joke.
zerorest 01.12.25 at 11:35 pm
Trump wants to go back and win all the battles he has lost unopposed. He has never won a fair fight in his life.
AnthonyB 01.13.25 at 1:18 am
“The first people to set foot in Greenland arrived around 4-5000 years ago from the North American continent via Canada when the sea froze in the narrow strait at Thule in northern Greenland.”
So when Trump takes Canada, doesn’t he get all those Canadian Inuit in Greenland?
Chris Corrigan 01.13.25 at 5:32 am
As a Canadian I don’t find any of Trump’s posturing remotely funny. I don’t think it should be passed off as a joke. Jean Chretien published a healthy rebuttal to Trump’s ideas in the Globe and Mail on the weekend. It was his 91st birthday present to the nation.
Trump has people whispering in his ear that have far more sinister plans than he alone is capable of dreaming up. He is the prototypical useful idiot. You give him a line, he likes it, he utters it and riffs, gets a response and doubles down. Meanwhile, whoever sent up the trial balloon starts getting information about how people will react. Hands are tipped. Patterns of response are hinted at, vulnerabilities exposed. What they are learning from Canada at the moment is that this is going to be a piece of cake. The most vocal opponents of Trump at the moment have been populist conservative premiers who share a base of supporters with the President-elect. They fawn on the one hand, dismiss on the other with a pretend show of defiance and probably are shitting their pants in private. Populists are crap at governance. Watch Doug Ford’s pathetic appearance on the Jesse Watters show on Fox News last week. If this is our best response we might as well hand him Canada now.
The idea of the US annexing Canada is plausible in a few different ways. I can see it playing out in a way that the USA acquires our oil, mineral, water and electricity either through what he has already called “economic coercion” or straight out military occupation of these resources. In exchange for not actually starting a war (and what would NATO do? Never mind, doesn’t matter, collateral benefit!), the US places troops in Canada to “defend us from Russia and China” and safeguard critical resources. Later, because they are no longer getting revenues, provinces face massive funding shortfalls for essential services like health care and education and the federal government, led by the Quisling Poilievre and free-market premiers (Ford, Smith, Moe) who have already been destroying public services, open up markets for health and education. Canada then becomes reliant on American capital for our own social services and the USA acquires a new territory, and all the resources it wants and avoids the messy business of actual governance.
Meanwhile the border stays in place, because capital must be allowed to freely flow, but not labour. Quebec likes this, because they can finally manage their borders like the nation they want to be, laced with the racist laicite that is threading through nationalist rhetoric at the moment. They will be unable to form a state however, because their resources will have been expropriated in exchange for the ability to promote Quebec culture and preserve the French language and the distinct society.
This might not happen in the next four years, but ever since the Canada Us Free Trade Agreement was signed in the 1980s this is where we have been going.
We need to take him seriously and tell him to fuck off right now. Someone with the stones of Jean Chretien needs to take the mic.
Tm 01.13.25 at 9:12 am
“Isn’t this just Trump’s search for another white state that would vote republican?”
This remark seems to be serious so let me point out that the population of Greenland is overwhelmingly indigenous. Also, they don’t like colonial rule and have voted to ban uranium mining. Sure, the 56000 inhabitants couldn’t do much against an actual military invasion. In strategic terms, it would be idiotic because Greenland already is partr of a NATO ally and even a successful invasion would get the US far less than it already has – reliably allies in the Arctic region. Remember that Putin pushed Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
Tm 01.13.25 at 9:21 am
49: I can see it playing out in a way that the USA acquires our oil, mineral, water and electricity”
The US itself has plenty of resources, plenty of oil and mineral resources, and plenty of sun and wind that could easily be harvested to generate huge amounts of electricity. And what the US doesn’t have that Canada has they can (in most cases) easily get via trade. So none of this really makes sense, strategically or economically. Still it needs to be taken seriously because it reflects the truth about the underlying ideology. Trump and many in his orbit really I think have this anachronistic 19th century concept of big power politics, which Putin also seems to believe in. Putin has acted on it and Trump might very well, and even if he doesn’t he ultimately validates Putin’s aggression. Putin and Trump both in power will be an unfathomable disaster for the whole world.
GMcK 01.20.25 at 5:35 am
Just to add a coda to the discussion, it seems to me that this was just one of Trump’s emperor-id notions that appear from time to time in his stream of consciousness rally rants, and the media ran with it because it makes a grabby headline, and then they couldn’t stop.
Nevertheless, I remain astonished that (a) nobody has counted the number of electoral votes that would come with a 51st state with a population larger than California, or “worse” if each Canadian province was granted its equivalent status, i.e. statehood, and figured out how many would go for D or R in the next election. Trump’s id doesn’t care, there won’t be another election for emperor of North America anyway.
And (b) the population of Greenland is less than 57,000, so you could pay every man, woman and child on the island a few million dollars and barely dent the US government budget. If I were Premier of Greenland, I would start the bidding at $25 million each, for a total of less than $1.5 trillion. In installments over ten years, a bargain!
Tm 01.20.25 at 8:33 am
GMcK: You are not the first to make these observations. Of course Canada as a voting part of the US would not be in the interest of the GOP, to say the least. Despite Alberta, Canada’s population is overall way more liberal than the US, and culturally and politically more aligned with New England. At least that used to be the case (see https://www.environicsinstitute.org/michael-adams/books/fire-ice) and I don’t think it has massively changed, despite the consolidation of a US style hard right in recent years.
Your second suggestion won’t you know it has already been widely discussed on our broken media as if it were totally normal to pressure a foreign population to sell its independence. Greenland is a solf-governing polity. Greenlanders decide their own fate with little interference from Denmark (apart from them paying substantial sums). They decide whether and how to mine resources. As pointed out, they banned uranium mining.
The US would gain nothing by buying the island and leaving self-government intact. The idea to “buy out” Greenlanders makes only sense if they give up all the rights they fought for for decades. And they certainly won’t do that.
MFB 01.20.25 at 10:23 am
Naval bases, control of the north-west passage, untrammelled use of airbases (I don’t know if there are any restrictions on Thule, which was part of the “Chrome Dome” permanent nuclear airborne alert in the 1960s and Greenland has the radioactivity to prove it, but obviously there would be even less if Greenland were annexed), unfettered access to the 200-km continental shelf oil and gas resources.
Not bad for a small investment, and then there’s the kudos from adding a fresh territory to the US which appeals to the Republican base (and probably to a lot of Democrats).
As for the Danes, European NATO and Canada, they would bluster and then roll over and surrender as they always have.
engels 01.20.25 at 1:36 pm
We need to talk about anorthosite
https://www.investing.com/analysis/anorthosite:-what-it-is-and-why-you-should-care-164250
noone1 01.20.25 at 8:05 pm
What I find amusing here is the idea of buying-selling the place. Like a feudal manor with serfs. If I lived in a place being bought-sold like this, I would’ve felt insulted.
Sounds like the West still has a feudal state of mind. What happened to the idea of having a referendum, and then, based on the results, seceding from your current country and, perhaps, asking another one to allow you to join? …But of course when Catalonia tried doing it civilized way a few years ago, the Spanish regime resorted to repressions…
engels 01.20.25 at 10:17 pm
In case anyone prefers informed analysis:
https://jacobin.com/2025/01/greenland-trump-climate-imperialism-mining/
Tm 01.21.25 at 2:18 pm
Interesting. I hadn’t heard of this before:
“ETM is currently embroiled in investment arbitration against Greenland to force either compensation amounting to an eye-watering US$11.5 billion or an extraction license. In 2021, a new Greenlandic government, led by the left-wing anti-mining party Inuit Ataqatigiit and favored by independence-seeking Indigenous Inuit, canceled the licenses previously handed out to ETM due to uranium pollution risks.”
Of course investment arbitration would only protect actually invested money. This case should be laughed out of court under normal legal standards.
So far, ETM hasn’t had any luck, but one never can be sure what these semiprivate kangaroo courts end up deciding.
https://jusmundi.com/en/document/other/en-greenland-minerals-a-s-gmas-v-government-of-greenland-and-the-government-of-the-kingdom-of-denmark-press-release-of-energy-transition-minerals-ltd-on-update-on-arbitration-brought-by-etms-subsidiary-gmas-against-the-governments-of-greenland-and-denmark-wednesday-10th-january-2024
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