It does not take much time to shift attention in Washington DC or for the media to drop their existing high-profile stories like hot potatoes. Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro are not exceptions in this scheme of things. From chasing drug boats and oil tankers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, soon it was Caracas and the Presidential Palace where the strongman and his wife were sleeping in the wee hours of a Saturday morning. Before long the high-profile couple were on their way to the USS Iwo Jima enroute New York via Guantanamo.

It certainly was not a law enforcement operation involving a few police cars in downtown Caracas. It was a full-fledged military operation involving boots on the ground, at sea, some 150 air force jets of various types including the B1 and the involvement of some twenty bases. In a rapidly changing environment that took the world by surprise, the obvious question could not be skirted: what next? And after Maduro who? The answers were either not forthcoming or generally not quite thought of. Suddenly national security seemed to take on a different direction, focus and intent. Cuba, Columbia, Mexico and Iran now seemed to matter for different reasons. 

And Greenland was not to be left out, an unfinished agenda item of President Donald Trump from his first term but always in the radar of the United States even before the end of the second world war. An autonomous territory within Denmark that is responsible for defense, foreign policy and monetary affairs, the self-government act of 2009 recognizes the right to self determination and hence potential full independence for Greenland. The rhetoric and anxiety over this Arctic land of some 850,000 square miles heightened after the fall of President Maduro with officials of the Trump administration saying that Greenland should belong to the United States or that “nobody’s going to fight” Washington over this, according to a top White House official Stephen Miller. 

It is not that climate warming has melted ice to the point of paving the way for Manhattan type skyline in Greenland that is of immediate attraction of the President Trump and his administration but that the security and strategic value of the island is home to not just oil and natural gas but vast deposits of rare earths and minerals that include copper, gold and uranium. “One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” President Trump has said giving the impression on different occasions that the United States is somehow a better protector for the interests of the 60,000-odd people living in the territory from Russia and China. 

President Trump is not the first leader to talk of buying Greenland for the simple reason that the states of America like Florida, Louisiana, and Alaska have come about in this fashion. Or that the U.S. Virgin Islands was bought from Denmark in 1917. In 1946, the Truman administration is said to have offered some US$ 1 billion for Greenland. Over the decades since then people of Greenland and Denmark have talked about independence or different forms of association but have refrained from a specific time frame or whether Greenland should move closer or a part of the United States. 

In an address to Congress, President Trump said, “We strongly support your right to determine your own future and, if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We will keep you safe. We will make you rich.” In fact, at different times there have been references or attempts at connections between the Inuit population of Greenland to that of Alaska, the suggestion being that Greenland can become a part of Alaska. But in the very recent past, the national security seems to have become a fixation, the focus on Russian and Chinese ships off the Arctic cost. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” President Trump maintained. Buying it or simply taking it by force being the options. 

Analysts have made the point that all this huffing and puffing is unnecessary for under a 1951 agreement with Denmark, the United States can just about do anything it wants with its “sweeping military access.” It is well known that Washington has got rid of many installations with the exception of the Pittufik Space Base that plays a critical role in monitoring missiles traffic in the North Pole. The United States, the argument goes, can get anything it wants, only that it had to be addressed properly; and that calls to “buy” Greenland is not going to go down well. “Greenland is not for sale,” its politicians and people have made clear before, and more forcefully now. 

The talk of taking Greenland by force has also not gone down well in Europe with a near consensus that the move will see the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The argument is that the NATO sees an attack on a member as an attack on the entity and nothing of one member taking it out on another. But in the present circumstances, the dismemberment of the NATO should Washington forcibly move against Denmark and Greenland is unlikely to make much of an impact in the Trump White House, especially for a President who has always been critical of alliances and traditional allies on grounds of riding piggyback—or free loading– on issues of collective security spending. 

Of interest has been the role of China and Russia to the goings on over Greenland: the silence from Moscow and Beijing saying that Washington is using “the so-called ‘China threat’ as a pretext for itself to seek selfish gains” in Greenland. The largest Arctic nation controlling some sixty percent of the coastline and having varied domestic, regional and global interests, the silence of the Kremlin would seem to go beyond observing the Christmas and holiday season. Nothing serves Moscow’s objectives more than Washington keeping its obsession with Greenland, especially a takeover by force that would doom the NATO.

President Vladimir Putin knows full well that under the present circumstances he cannot take on the military and economic might of the NATO. The other best option is the dismemberment of the NATO on its own steam. As Jamie Shea at the Chatham House has said. “The Russian stake in Greenland is tiny. The U.S. would have a larger presence in the North Atlantic [if it increased its presence in Greenland] but NATO is already limiting what Russia can do in the High North with Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the U.K. all increasing their military presence and capability in the region, and Sweden and Finland joining NATO. So not much would change for Russia strategically.”

Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.

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