Greenland: a fine piece of real estate
Donald Trump has spent much of his life in real estate, said Tom Barnes in The Independent. But the US president may now be eyeing up his biggest deal yet: according to media reports, he has asked aides to look into the possibility of the US buying Greenland. Viewed purely as an investment, it would make sense, said The Economist. At 2.2 million sq km, Greenland is the world’s largest island, and 25% bigger than the biggest US state, Alaska. It boasts rich deposits of rare earth minerals, gold and diamonds, and possibly oil and gas too. Then there are its geopolitical features: already the site of the US’s most northerly military facility, at Thule, Greenland offers fine views of Russian missile launches (via radar), and useful control over a naval “choke point”, known as the GIUK gap, that is used by Russian subs to reach the Atlantic. It’s a drawback that 80% of the island is covered by ice, but this could be a “temporary condition” – and “with a name like Greenland, it certainly sounds like it ought to have golf courses”.
The only trouble is, Greenland is not for sale, said The Daily Telegraph. It is officially part of Denmark, but the island’s 57,000 inhabitants (mainly native Inuits) have considerable autonomy. And both sides have made it clear they regard the idea as ridiculous. True, Denmark has made similar deals before. In 1917, it sold the Danish West Indies to the US for $25m (they’re now the US Virgin Islands). But it has already rejected one US attempt to buy Greenland: President Truman offered $100m for the island in 1946.
The US has a long history of buying territory, said Paul Musgrave in Foreign Policy. It bought Louisiana from France for $15m in 1803, and Alaska from Russia for just $7.2m in 1867. No doubt Trump would love to secure his legacy with the purchase of Greenland – but the colonial days are over. That Denmark would sell the island and its people is unthinkable. Which is just as well, when you consider the way the US mistreats its existing colonies (such as Puerto Rico) – not to mention the precedent it would set. Such a transfer would usher us into a dangerous new era of “great power competition”, as Russia, India and China started to scramble for new colonies of their own.