Coming Soon: Trump Tower Greenland

He's Not Even President Yet, and He's Serving Up Absurdity

I received a message from a friend in Oslo this past week on Trump’s press conference where he implied he may use military force to take the Panama Canal back and take Greenland from the Danes. The Panama Canal is an important shipping lane, and was actually American until Jimmy Carter gave it back to the Panamanians by treaty in 1977 and Clinton handed it over in 1999.¹ Trump is foaming at the mouth claiming China is now managing the Panama Canal, to which the Panamanians look at him and say “WTF?” In a sense, I can get why he would want to make a deal for the Panama Canal; on the other hand, it’s not going to happen so why look like a dipshit advocating for it?²

Greenland is another story altogether. Going back centuries, it’s been known that there is practically nothing there but ice. The Vikings, in a clever means of security, named their favorable island “Iceland’ to dissuade others from going there, and named this huge rock-glacier of an island in the North Atlantic “Greenland’ so that people would go there instead. It’s been under Danish rule since 1814, and has it’s own “home rule” government so the Danes don’t have to deal with it too much. The entire population of Greenland is less than that of Oshkosh, WI. It’s just home to some fishing villages, some inuit who call it home, some climate scientists doing ice core studies, and not much else. I mean, this is it’s biggest town, and I’m not embellishing when I say, this is practically the whole town.

It’s probably most noteworthy as a friendly territory to fly over when you fly to Europe. There are a couple US military installations and a bit of a kerfuffle happened in the 1960s when it was discovered we had nukes there to be used in the event of a Soviet attack, but for the most part, it’s a pretty uneventful place. We regularly patrol the sea lanes between Iceland and Greenland, since its the gateway between the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic, but not much usually happens.

But that military angle is exactly what Trump is using as pretext to try and buy it from the Danes. Always the real estate mogul, he has his eyes set on some beachfront property that perhaps with global warming might increase in value. Heck, as I write this the capital, Nuuk, is a balmy 25 degrees while I’m wallowing in single digit temperatures.³ It’s unlikely and Trump was never one to actually do WELL at real estate, often losing millions in boondoggles. Still, you never know. In 100 years, long after Don Jr. has kicked the bucket, it may look like this:

Still, the orange one thought it important enough to dispatch his son along with some MAGA cohorts to the middle of nowhere to rile up the locals and ask them if they were interested in becoming Americans. It wouldn’t really surprise me if they ended up going either way really, but try arguing about making it a state when people regularly complain about Wyoming being one with 10x the Greenland population.

Getting back to my friend on Oslo, he writes, “This is absurd, he is talking about invading a fellow NATO member…for GREENLAND.” Aside from the fact that Trump really couldn’t care less about NATO, and has threatened to pull out of it altogether, he has a valid point. My friend further… “This is like going to war with Chile over the most barren speck of land at the bottom of Tierra Del Fuego—there’s no point to it. Everyone over here thinks Trump (and Americans) are nuts and that they are going to f**k everything up (again). How did he win? How could you Americans let this happen?” Before I get bombarded by people saying my friend is a typical European socialist, he’s actually a capitalist businessman who works for one of the largest economic consulting firms in the world. Oh, and he was once asked to put together a report on the economic impacts of Norway investing in Greenland, and came to the conclusion that not only wasn’t it worth it, that there was really no reason to consider Greenland for anything much at all.

Greenland does have one, and only one attribute really. In the standard Mercator projection map, it looks much, much larger than it actually is. The projection makes it look as big as the continent of Africa, while in actuality, its about the size of Texas and California combined, and you can cram all the civilized portions of it into an area about the size of Manhattan in total.

Well, I guess perhaps that’s why Trump wants it.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Talking about Greenland gives me the opportunity to talk about my favorite war of all time— the Whiskey War. What was the Whiskey War you might ask? Well let me tell you.

In the strait between Baffin Island (Canada) and Greenland lies Hans Island. There’s nothing on it really, it’s just a big rock in the middle of the strait.

But this little outcropping was a source of a great international disagreement between Denmark and Canada, with each country claiming rights to the island. What’s interesting is that the dispute originated in 1973 with a mutual treaty between the two countries where they declared the border as running down the middle of the strait, right UNDER the island. In 1984, tempers reached a fever pitch when Canadian soldiers visited the island planted a Canadian flag, while also leaving a bottle of Canadian whisky. In a volley for the ages that will go down in history, the Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs came to the island himself later the same year with the Danish flag, a bottle of Schnapps, and a letter stating "Welcome to the Danish Island.” The two countries proceeded to take turns planting their flags on the island and exchanging alcoholic beverages in one of the most daring back and forth campaigns in modern world warfare.

The harsh cruel war couldn’t last however, as the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported on June 10, 2022, that the Canadian and Danish governments had settled on a border across the island, dividing it between the Canadian territory of Nunavut and the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland. The resolution occurred during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and was thus meant to create a symbolic example to other nations, implying to Russia that land disputes can be resolved peacefully. The resolution had the side effect of creating an actual land border between Canada and Denmark, when before they only had one (Canada with the US and Denmark with Germany).

So raise a shot of Whiskey and toast those dedicated Whiskey Warriors.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

“I went to Greenland once and it was like my balls froze in 10 minutes. That’s all I can remember about it really; it was the most unmemorable place I’ve ever been, and easy to forget other than the fact I was once there.”

-My friend from Oslo, and this is someone who lives in NORWAY.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. This was not out of the blue. Latin America was in disarray every since Communists took over Cuba and Soviet influence was taking root. Growing discontent at the US was coming to a head and the Panama Canal was a focal point of it. Carter, seeking to ease tensions made the deal, which was both principled and moral.

2. And just to demonstrate how incredibly stupid his bargaining position is, he says he wants to BUY the Panama Canal back. OK, the US is drowning in debt, has very little cash and Republicans threaten a shutdown regularly that could send the world economy spiraling. Assuming Panama WAS in the market to sell the Canal, there are a LOT of other countries in better financial position, flushed with cash, and would make a better negotiating partner than the US at this point. Panama could tomorrow go to China and say, we want to keep control of the canal but if you pay us x amount of money, we’ll stop letting the US through, and China would do it. All this is to say, that Trump’s blowhard and buffoonish remarks are horrible ways to treat a US ally.

3. It may be surprising to many but the coastal areas of Greenland can be decently warm. It’s warmed by a weaker branch of the “North Atlantic Drift” which brings warm waters from the Gulf Stream and takes them northward. Most of the drift goes towards Iceland and Northern Europe, which is why England has weather like New England even though its 10 degrees of latitude further north.