Donald Trump has wanted America to annex Greenland for a very long time. He now has a concrete plan to do it. As reported by the New York Occasions, the president’s Nationwide Safety Council has instructed a number of authorities departments to get to work on buying the island.
Trump has made it clear that using navy power stays on the table. However, a minimum of for now, it appears the plan will rely totally on persuasion.
The primary element is a coordinated promoting and social media marketing campaign geared toward convincing Greenlanders that their future lies underneath the celebrities and stripes. The administration plans to inform the island’s residents that they are going to be extra affluent and safer as a part of the US.
Driving that message dwelling will likely be an uphill battle. A ballot in January 2025 discovered that 85% of Greenlanders oppose the thought of being annexed by the US. A parliamentary election in March additionally showed little support for it. The most effective-performing occasion was the pro-business Demokraatit, which needs to gradual stroll adjustments to Greenland’s worldwide standing.
To beat this resistance, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to attraction to shared ethnic and cultural ties between Inuit Greenlanders, who make up about 88% of the island’s inhabitants, and Indigenous peoples within the US state of Alaska. Greenlanders are prone to query that strategy for numerous causes.
Mads Claus Rasmussen / EPA
These ties should not fully imaginary. Greenland Inuit are descended from the Thule folks, who migrated from Alaska round 1,000 years in the past. There are similarities between the languages of Alaskan and Greenland Inuit.
However these folks have been separated by 2,000 miles for hundreds of years, and within the interim have been formed by their divergent histories. Although their languages are related, they are generally not mutually intelligible.
One of many most important components separating Alaskan and Greenland Inuit is their separate colonial histories. Greenland was colonised by Denmark, and Alaska by the US. The small print of this colonial historical past are seemingly to present Greenlanders pause.
Alaska grew to become a US state in 1959. Earlier than then, it was a territory – a colonial holding just like Puerto Rico or Guam immediately. Throughout its time as a territory, the US authorities and white settlers handled Alaska’s Indigenous folks with a mix of disinterest and malice.
Till discrimination was outlawed by a state regulation in 1945, Indigenous Alaskans lived in a system of segregation and restricted rights just like the “Jim Crow” insurance policies of the southern US. Indigenous Alaskans, like African Individuals within the southern states, weren’t assured the appropriate to vote, and “whites solely” indicators have been commonplace in companies.
Throughout the second world conflict, the US authorities feared a Japanese assault on the Aleutian islands, which kind a part of Alaska. Because of this, it forcibly evacuated the Indigenous inhabitants, burning their villages to forestall invading Japanese troops from utilizing them as housing. Evacuees have been pressured to stay in unsanitary camps on the mainland for years, the place a couple of in ten died.
The US authorities justified this as a geopolitical necessity. However provided that great power politics can also be behind its drive to manage Greenland, the island’s residents ought to query whether or not their rights will likely be revered in the event that they battle with one other perceived geopolitical necessity.
Shopping for favour
One other plank of the Trump administration’s plan is monetary. The White Home apparently needs to exchange the subsidy that Greenland presently receives from Denmark with a cost of US$10,000 (£7,600) per resident. It’s not clear if this cash is meant to go on to the inhabitants, or to the island’s central authorities.
This works out at simply over US$568 million (£429 million) a 12 months. If it’s a subsidy for the central authorities, then it’s barely lower than the island currently receives from Denmark. And if it’s a cost on to the inhabitants, then it’s unclear how public providers on the island could be funded.
Right here once more, a have a look at the expertise of Indigenous Alaskans is instructive. Indigenous Alaskans, who obtain numerous US authorities providers by way of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, have a much higher poverty rate than the overall inhabitants, lower rates of well being protection and worse educational outcomes.
Additionally they typically don’t stay as long. Based on the latest figures, the life expectancy for Indigenous Alaskans is 70.4 years – a lot decrease than the statewide common of 74.5.
Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA
Financial growth – or, maybe extra precisely, exploiting Greenland’s pure assets – can also be a part of Trump’s plan. Trump is apparently interested in Greenland’s “uncommon earth minerals, copper, gold, uranium and oil”.
Greenland does certainly have huge mineral wealth. However it’s unclear if it may be safely accessed within the island’s present inhospitable surroundings.
Such useful resource extraction may additionally simply result in environmental injury, because it has performed in Alaska. In 1989, for instance, the Exxon Valdez oil supertanker spilled greater than 10 million gallons of crude oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
In the meantime, with out sturdy regulation and taxation, the wealth generated may simply accrue to companies reasonably than Greenlanders.
There’s a lengthy historical past of colonising powers claiming that solely they, reasonably than “the natives”, can ship prosperity and progress to a rustic. Trump’s plan, which tries to show the expertise of Indigenous Alaskans into one which Greenlanders ought to need to emulate, suits squarely into this style.
However the historical past of US involvement in Alaska and its remedy of Indigenous Alaskans offers misinform that story. For Greenlanders to commerce their sovereignty to the US in return for a assure of prosperity and safety could be a dangerous gamble certainly.
