Donald Trump is not just trolling on a takeover of Greenland, writes Michael Pascoe. Will it be the money or the gun … or both?
If Donald Trump offered you, say, $1,000 to become an American citizen, would you do it?
Lots of people, millions of people, would be happy to pay that much and more for US citizenship let alone be paid, but in light of what the US has become, maybe not you.
How about $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000? That’s a lot of zeros. It could buy you a better-than-average house. OK, it would be in Adelaide, but it would still be better-than-average for that city.
Maybe your citizenship simply isn’t for sale. I don’t like to think this but, at a price, I’d bet most Australians would sell. It’s like the possibly apocryphal story of George Bernard Shaw and the society lady:
Shaw: “Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?”
Woman: “Certainly.”
Shaw: “Would you sleep with me for one pound?”
Woman: “What do you think I am?”
Shaw: “Madam, we’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
If the price is right
That moral issue of haggling over the price is likely to be a question sooner rather than later for Greenlanders.
There are only about 60,000 of them. If the price of a house is a general yardstick for a large, impactful, mind-changing amount of money, 5 million kroner for every man, woman and children would do it.
That’s about US$500,000 each, so a total cost to the US of US$30 billion, only about what we’re paying for a single nuclear-powered submarine we’re not going to get as part of AUKUS.
To buy Greenland for US$30 billion would be an absolute steal. Trump would be pulling off the real estate deal of the century, something he’d no doubt like even more than the Nobel Peace Prize. We can only imagine how much commission he’d somehow collect.
Heck, let’s be generous and make it 10 million kroner for each Greenlander, US$60 billion all up for the US Treasury, $89 billion in our money, the price of two phantom subs. And throw in some Trump crypto for the Danish royal family as a tip. “Our” Queen Mary might get an autographed Trump bible.
But for Denmark
Of course it’s not quite that simple a transaction or as speedy. There’s Denmark to deal with. Buying off the 6 million Danes would be more expensive, yet “buying” rather than invading Greenland is what Trump’s foreign secretary Marco Rubio has said is the main plan.
To buy cheaply, Trump’s operatives need the Greenlanders to go ahead with achieving full independence from Denmark, something that was already on the domestic Greenland political agenda.
In normal American imperial times, that would involved generous sponsorship of local politicians and perhaps the odd unfortunate accident for any leader proving difficult. Once the Greenlanders were free of Denmark, the haggling over price could commence.
Oh wait, they’re already doing the old American imperial thing as well as the new-old Superpower bullying. From those lefties at The Economist: ( )
“The CIA and the National Security Agency have also reportedly stepped up surveillance of Greenland’s independence movement, and been tasked with identifying locals sympathetic to America. The Danish government summoned American diplomats three times last year over reports of spying and running a covert influence campaign in Greenland. Denmark’s military-intelligence service raised concerns about America in its annual threat assessment last December.”
But these are not normal American imperial times.
Trump is in a hurry.
The worse things get for him at home, the more he’s inclined to focus abroad. It’s so much easier.
He could look to history for inspiration. The Spanish American war, America’s last big colonial land grab, started with a mysterious explosion aboard an American ship in Havana harbour, an explosion blamed on Spain with enthusiasm for war whipped up by ratbag American press. Cue Fox News.
(From that 1898 war, America seized the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and Wake Island. While it was in the mood, it annexed Hawaii as well.)
Time for a false flag?
It is not beyond the imagination of the Trump gang to have a security crisis at its existing missile security base in Greenland and thus move to “secure” the place.
Yes, that would be the end of NATO which wouldn’t worry Trump. A win-win.
The threat of such an action could speed up the haggling over price. If Greenlanders sensed they could be made instantly much more wealthy or simply be annexed, how many zeros was that offer again?
It is a bleak scenario, a depressing return to the international lawlessness of the 19th century when might was blatantly right, not just effectively so.
The money or the gun?
Consider what it would be like for Australia to be in Greenland’s position, if we were smaller and closer to the US. Here’s the money or the gun.
Life would go on much the way it does. American companies, especially those that donate to the Trump gang, would control our resources, run our most profitable businesses. Major media companies would follow the right-wing line. Chinese companies would not be welcome. Criticism of the government would be unwise. There would be American military bases.
Like I said, life would go on much the way it does now, America already has its bases. That’s why it won’t happen, along with the fact that we are, thankfully, outside the hemisphere Trump has declared as belonging to America. We know our place.
It looks like Greenland will have to decide it’s place. The final word goes to Financial Times columnist Edward Luce:
if you think Trump is just trolling on Greenland, book yourself a holiday in Caracas.