Friends, my latest article, soon to appear in
American Greatness, addresses the kerfuffle over President Trump's interest in the purchase of Greenland. Many leftists are lampooning the proposal, but, and this may shock you, I regard it as...brilliant! The United States hasn't had the vision to pursue further territorial expansion in generations. Leave it to Trump to rediscover the charms of Manifest Destiny! There are excellent economic and strategic reasons why it would benefit the United States to acquire Greenland, and there are good reasons to believe the transaction would benefit the Danes and the Greenlanders too. Read all about it:
The Great Greenland Gambit of 2019
Recently,
a small-minded
tattletale
revealed that President Trump has been exploring the possibility of
the U.S. purchase of Denmark's overseas territory of Greenland.
Greenland is a vast, icy wasteland lodged in the northern Atlantic
and southern Arctic Oceans. It is also, however, the home of key U.S.
military bases — controlling space assets and providing early
warning of potential nuclear attacks — and contains a treasure
trove
of natural resources, including a variety of metals, gemstones, oil,
fish, and hydroelectricity. It is sparsely inhabited by impoverished
native Inuits and could benefit tremendously from an infusion of U.S.
investment and technical expertise. For the Danes, Greenland is a
financial burden they would likely be glad to shed.
The
proposed U.S. purchase of Greenland therefore makes a great deal of
sense, but whomever leaked word of the hypothetical transaction
seemingly did so with only one end in mind: giving a black eye to the
international pariah and supervillain, Donald J. Trump. Sadly, the
people of the United States, Denmark, and Greenland may all suffer
because of this leaker's slavish devotion to Trump Derangement
Syndrome. There is a chance, however, albeit a slim one, that the
damage wrought by this agent
provocateur
can be undone.
The
reaction in the United States and in Denmark to the precipitous
release of information about the proposed purchase of Greenland has
been predictable: U.S.
liberals and the vast majority of Trump-hating Danes have recoiled in
horror,
thunderstruck by the notion that the hapless natives of Greenland
would be handed over to the tender mercies of the cruel and “racist”
dictator Trump. They have also cast the hypothetical transfer of
sovereignty as a crass real estate deal writ large (an analogy
unwisely embraced by Trump himself), when the full implications of
the sale of Greenland to the United States are far more complex.
Not
just profits and losses are at stake, for all three peoples, but
livelihoods, identities, and questions of national security. Trump,
and those who support the deal, instead of describing it as a massive
exercise in property development, would have been better off focusing
on the transaction's human dimensions. They should have cited, for
instance, the
many communities of Native Americans in the United States, especially
in Alaska, which are thriving
because of federal assistance, entrepreneurship, and private-sector
exploitation of their natural resources. Greenland's natives, by
contrast, suffer appalling rates of suicide, alcoholism, and
unemployment.
Yes, transformative change can be frightening, but it is those who
embrace it who prosper in this world, not those who cocoon themselves
against modernity. Given the fact that climate change is opening up
huge new expanses of Greenland to settlement and economic
development, Greenlanders can legitimately question whether the tiny
Kingdom of Denmark is the logical choice to lead their ice-bound land
into the future.
Proponents
of the U.S. purchase of Greenland can also point to the fact that the
inherent logic of such a move has caused it to be proposed
before:
Secretary of State William Seward, who negotiated the purchase of
Alaska from Russia in 1867, also wished to buy Greenland. In
addition, President Truman (ironically, a liberal icon) wanted to
purchase Greenland in 1946 because of its strategic value in the
Atomic Age.
In the end, we must hope that the people of the United States,
Denmark, and Greenland, once they have had time to recover from the
latest paroxysm of Trump-hatred, reconsider their hasty dismissal of
President Trump's outside-the-box proposal. The existing state of
affairs may be acceptable to the three peoples concerned, but the
potential benefits of a transfer of sovereignty are tremendous.
At a stroke, the United States of America would be close to one
million square miles bigger, and it would have a permanent presence
in the North Atlantic and Arctic for the first time. Denmark would be
richer and it would be rid of one of Europe's last colonies left over
from the Age of Exploration and Imperialism. The people of Greenland
would live in a land as dynamic and rich as Alaska — America's
“Last Frontier” that has become a mecca for industry and tourism,
as well as the home of some of our proudest and strongest native
communities.
Let's take a deep breath and, instead of condemning President Trump
for his boldness and ingenuity, acknowledge that the U.S. purchase of
Greenland could be, instead of “Trump's Folly,” a masterstroke of
diplomacy and economics.
There is a saying that all great empires are either expanding or
they are dying. Kudos to President Trump for having the vision to
propose that our American Empire expands (peacefully and
benevolently) to the north.
