The Musk-Trump couple inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality and are now
taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and relationships that underpin
the largest economy in world history. They are breaking that too.
How Greenlanders ignored Vance’s visit
US Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife visited the US base in Greenland for three hours. Timothy Snyder announced this, reports “24 Channel”.
National Security Advisor Mike Walz and his wife also arrived. After illegally using a dangerous social network to conduct a completely unnecessary group chat, during which they leaked confidential data about a military attack to a reporter, Walz and Vance may have hoped to change the subject. So they joined a trip that was initially billed as a trip by Vance’s wife to watch a dog sled race.
The general context was Donald Trump’s insistence that America should take over Greenland, an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan was for Usha Vance to visit the Greenlanders, perhaps on the logic that a second lady would be an effective embodiment of colonial subjugation.
But no one wanted to see her, and Greenlandic businesses refused to provide a backdrop for photo ops or even to serve uninvited Americans. So instead, the American couples made a quick visit to the Pitufik space base.
At the base, in the far north of the island, the American visitors took photos and ate lunch with military personnel. They viewed the base as a backdrop for a press conference where they could say what they thought. Vance, who had never left the base and had never visited Greenland before, was quite sure of how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to them, even though none of them were with him. Vance argued that Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and the United States would. Therefore, Greenland should join the United States.
It will take some patience to unravel all this nonsense.
The United States is destroying relations with its allies
The base at Pitufik (formerly Thule) exists only because Denmark allowed the United States to build it at a difficult time. It served the United States for decades as the centerpiece of its nuclear arsenal, and later as an early warning system against nuclear attack by the USSR and Russia.
When Vance says that Denmark is not defending Greenland and the base, he is dreaming of years of cooperation and NATO. Denmark was a founding member of NATO, and it is already the American job to defend Denmark and Greenland, just as it is Denmark’s job (as well as other members) to defend the United States.
Americans might laugh at this idea, but such arrogance is unwarranted. We are the only ones who have ever invoked Article 5, the mutual defense obligation of the NATO treaty, after 9/11. Our European allies have responded. Per capita, more Danish soldiers died in the Afghan war than American soldiers. Do we remember them? Do we thank them?
The threat in the Arctic that Vance is talking about is Russia. Defending against Russian attack is NATO’s mission. But now the United States is supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine. No one is doing more to deter the Russian threat than Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine is effectively fulfilling NATO’s entire mission right now. But Vance opposes aid to Ukraine, spreads Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and is best known for yelling at the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office.
On the base, Vance blamed Joe Biden for the killings in Ukraine, not Vladimir Putin, which is grotesque. Vance said that there is an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine right now. Russia effectively broke it right away. Russia is now preparing a massive spring offensive on Ukraine. The Musk-Trump response has been to completely ignore this larger reality by allowing Biden-era aid to Ukraine to be cut off. Meanwhile, Denmark has given Ukraine more than four times the amount of aid per capita than the US.
Greenland, Denmark, and the US have been a complex and effective security partnership for the better part of a century, dealing with the most serious scenarios. Arctic security has been a concern for decades during and after the Cold War. There are now only a few hundred Americans on Pituffik, down from ten thousand; there is only one U.S. base on the island, down from a dozen. But that is American policy, not Denmark’s fault.
We do have a problem with taking responsibility. The United States has fallen far behind its allies and rivals in the Arctic. Partly because members of Vance’s political party have denied the reality of global warming for decades, making it difficult for the U.S. Navy to convince Congress of the need to deploy icebreakers. The United States has only two operational Arctic icebreakers.
The Biden administration wanted to work with Canada, which has few icebreakers, and Finland, which is building many to compete with Russia, which has the most. This joint plan would allow the United States to surpass Russia in icebreaking capabilities.
This is one of countless examples of how cooperation with NATO allies benefits the United States. It is unclear what will happen to this arrangement now that Trump and Vance identify Canada, like Denmark, as a rival or even an enemy. The arrangement will likely fall apart, leaving Russia to dominate.
However, as with everything the Musk-Trump couple does, the question of “cui bono” (who benefits – “24 Channel”) about imperialism in Greenland is easily answered: Russia wins. Putin cannot contain his admiration for American imperialism in Greenland. By creating artificial crises in relations with Denmark and Canada, America’s two closest allies for the past eighty years, Trump’s people are stripping the United States of its security gains and creating chaos that benefits Russia.
A Strategic Disaster for the United States
American imperialism directed against Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is a strategic disaster. The United States has nothing to gain from it, but it has much to lose. There is nothing that the Americans could not gain from Denmark or Canada through an alliance.
The very presence of the base in Pitufik is evidence of this. In the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed for the past eighty years, all the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be sold on good terms or, for that matter, explored by American companies.
The only way to challenge all this easy access is to follow the course Musk and Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk-Trump are creating a bloody, marasmic situation in which the US will have to fight wars to get what it could have gotten on demand just a few weeks ago. Of course, wars rarely end as expected.
Much effort is spent trying to extract a doctrine from all this. But there is none. It is simply nonsense that benefits America’s enemies. Hans Christian Andersen told an unforgettable tale about the naked emperor. In Greenland, we saw American imperialism without clothes. Naked and useless.
Comparing life in Denmark and the US
In parting, Vance told the Greenlanders that life with the US would be better than with Denmark. Danish officials were too diplomatic to respond directly to the insults directed at them from their own territory during the uninvited visit of imperialist hotheads. Let me just give a few possible answers that come to mind.
Comparing life in the US and life in Denmark is not just polemical. Musk-Trump treat Europe as a decadent abyss and believe that alliances with dictatorships would be better. But Europe is not just home to our traditional allies. It is an enviable zone of democracy, wealth and prosperity with which we benefit from good relations and from which we can sometimes learn.
So think about it. The US ranks 24th in the world in terms of happiness. That’s not bad. But Denmark is second (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97th and the United States 84th in freedom—and the United States will fall significantly this year.
An American is about ten times more likely to be imprisoned than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and virtually free health care. Americans spend a fortune getting sick more often and being treated worse when they get sick. Danes live, on average, four years longer than Americans.
In Denmark, college education is free. The average student debt of tens of millions of Americans is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid leave to care for a child. In the United States, one parent can take 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
Denmark has a children’s author, Hans Christian Andersen. The United States has a children’s author, J.D. Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five.
Timothy Snyder,
“Channel 24”
