It was again in August 2019, simply in regards to the time Democrats had been losing everybody’s time with the primary pretend impeachment scandal, when Donald Trump initially launched the thought of shopping for Greenland from Denmark.
On the time, the notion was dismissed by the pointy-headed arbiters of proper and flawed often called the mainstream media, who concluded that Trump should see his presidency as an prolonged season of “The Apprentice.” On this episode, the modern-day land baron outsmarts the Scandihoovian rubes who didn’t know the “green” in Greenland was chilly arduous money.
Like virtually each different preconception of Trump in his first time period, that take was nonsensical. There was appreciable historic and geo-political justification for Trump’s proposal to rescue Greenland from European colonialism, and maybe if his enemies had not sprung the Ukraine cellphone name impeachment hoax shortly after the Greenland gambit was proposed, it may need turn out to be a significant accomplishment of Trump’s first time period.
I wrote in regards to the unique proposal on Aug. 26, 2019, for RealClearPolitics in an article that declared “Trump’s No Safe Bet; He’s a Leader.” The premise was that not like the feckless, washed-out, safety-in-numbers politicians who lead by following polls, Trump used frequent sense and instinct to search out options to issues nobody else even favored to consider. Constructing a wall to maintain out unlawful immigrants may appear to be an apparent concept now, however earlier than Trump, nobody would have dared to say it.
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The identical is true of his want to reclaim Greenland as North American territory. Few if any of Trump’s contemporaries had thought of the thought, however it was not with out precedent. Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward had sought to buy Greenland for the US in 1867, the identical 12 months he famously acquired Alaska from Russia.
Today, it might appear jarring to speak about shopping for massive chunks of actual property for the aim of nationwide aggrandizement, however it wasn’t at all times so. Along with Seward’s buy of Alaska, the US can also be pleased about Jefferson’s Louisiana Buy, which practically doubled the scale of the nation, in addition to for the largely free acquisition of Florida from Spain. Land offers should not simply in Trump’s blood; they’re a part of our nationwide heritage.
They will also be important to nationwide safety. Actually everybody can agree we had been infinitely higher off through the period of the Soviet Union as a result of Alaska was now not within the arms of the Russian oligarchs. And President-elect Trump alluded to an analogous profit on Fact Socialwhen he appointed his ambassador to Denmark in December:
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Trump elaborated on that sentiment final week throughout his impromptu press convention at Mar-a-Lago.
“We need Greenland for national security purposes. … People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world. You don’t even need binoculars. You look outside, you have China ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen. We’re not letting it happen.”
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So once more, now we have the Russian risk, however this time added on high of the even perhaps better Chinese language risk. As I identified 5 years in the past, China has its personal eyes on Greenland, not only for the strategic significance however as a result of it’s a repository of uncommon earth minerals and different assets:
“President Trump was well aware that the Chinese had already expressed their own interest in Greenland, offering to fund millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements on the island as part of the plan for global economic domination known as the ‘Belt and Road Initiative.’”
Luckily, stress on Denmark largely thwarted China’s Greenland ambitions, however in the meantime Trump’s urge for food for American expansionism was whetted.
It’s maybe important that the play for Greenland has been paired with Trump’s risk to take again the Panama Canal, which was turned over to the nation of Panama by Jimmy Carter within the late Seventies. The canal zone, in any case, has confirmed to be a profitable foothold for China within the New World, and gives a chilling warning of what may occur if somebody of Trump’s stature didn’t step ahead to carry the communist state out of Greenland.
And one factor is for certain. Nobody is laughing at Trump this time round for his pitch to Denmark. Far-fetched? Perhaps, however nobody dares to underestimate Trump any longer. His willpower is a drive of nature, and if he says he desires Greenland, don’t depend him out.
Trump has already turn out to be the dominant drive on the world stage weeks earlier than he takes workplace. His attendance on the reopening of Notre Dame triggered ripples all through Europe. Mexico and Canada had been placed on discover that there was no extra free journey as soon as Trump took workplace, as he threatened them each with tariffs. Trump’s jest about making Canada the 51st state deserves quite a lot of the credit score for (Governor?) Justin Trudeau’s resignation as prime minister. And that’s just the start.
You don’t should take my phrase for it. Time journal ran a little-heralded essay by Ray Dalio that examined “How a Second Trump Administration Will Change the Domestic and World Order.” Dalio, one of many world’s strongest hedge-fund managers, is not any good friend of Trump. Earlier than the election, he lamented that Trump led a “strong, unethical, almost fascist Republican Party.”
However after the actual fact he was pressured to acknowledge that Trump’s election would result in “a giant renovation of government and the domestic order aimed at making it run more efficiently” and that China could be “widely considered the United States’ single greatest threat.”
Though Dalio is nostalgic for the post-war worldwide order, he acknowledges that underneath the brand new guidelines, “The U.S. and China will be competing for allies, with China generally believed to be in a much better position to win over nonaligned countries because China is more important economically and does a better job exerting its soft power.”
Except you’re a secret admirer of Xi Jinping, that evaluation makes one of the best case for why Donald Trump is the correct particular person for the job of restoring American dominance. Nobody does a greater job of exerting “soft power” than the forty fifth and soon-to-be forty seventh president. He has already modified the dialog simply with a social media put up and a press convention. So what occurs when he will get in workplace?
I’m not the one one taking Trump severely. So are each Republicans and Democrats.
Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat, for example, mentioned, “I do think it’s a responsible conversation if they [Denmark] were open to [the United States] acquiring it, you know, whether just buying it outright. If anyone thinks that’s bonkers, it’s like, well, remember the Louisiana Purchase.”
And MAGA celebrity Charlie Kirk, the founding father of Turning Level USA, accompanied Donald Trump Jr. to Nuuk, Greenland, final week to check the waters for Making Greenland America Once more.
“What we learned is a couple of things,” he instructed his big YouTube viewers. “Number one, the people of Greenland are awesome. They’re tough people, they have tough winters. They’ve been through a lot and they feel forgotten, but they are the most lovely people. Number two, they feel as if they’re mistreated right now by the Danish government, that the Danish government is not treating them the way they’d like to be treated, and they want to be wealthy again.”
In only one week, the actual work begins after Trump is sworn in. There’s no assure that he’ll accomplish his purpose of shopping for Greenland, however together with his salesmanship, one factor is sure – it’s extra doubtless that Greenland will turn out to be the 51st state than that Canada will.
Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Every day Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His e-book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” is out there from his Amazon creator web page. Go to him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or observe him on Fb @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
