GreeningLand
To set the tone for MaxNotes, the first words go to author Michael Klaire from his 2019 book All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change.
“The region is also thought to harbor vast deposits of vital minerals, including iron, copper, uranium, and rare earths; Greenland is believed to contain especially significant deposits of such minerals, and prominent foreign mining firms—including some from China—have begun operations there. Many valuable fish species reside in or migrate through the region, representing an increasingly valuable source of animal protein. As the ice cap shrivels, moreover, the Arctic could provide a cost-effective shortcut for maritime trade between the Atlantic and Pacific. As these interests proliferate, American strategists believe, the risk of competition and conflict over the Arctic’s resource wealth is bound to grow.”
Is Trump crazy or crazy like a fox?
Don’t worry, I’m not going neoliberal on you. The cold political reality of this part of the world is that it is indeed coveted by friends (Europe and Canada), competitors (China) and foes (Russia) alike. We’re not the only ones with designs on extracting Greenland’s resources and opening up strategic military and trade outposts on this vast and nearly uninhabited expanse.
The U.S. military has been dispassionately tracking the impact of climate change on our domestic and international bases and outposts since the 1990s. For the military, climate change is a very real and ever present reality that is supported by science. There’s no debate, no hysteria, no arguments over science and pseudoscience. Just cold, hard observations that our rapidly changing world provides both new threats and new opportunities.
According to a U.S. Navy report from 1990, New Orleans will be under water by the middle of this century along with low lying areas in parts of Asia. Several of our bases will therefore be under water as a result. They believe that rising sea levels will be far more catastrophic for China than it will be for the United States. Furthermore, they estimate that enormous swaths of the Global South will be uninhabitable due to extreme heat and violent weather patterns.
These findings were made before Al Gore’s documentary but long after ExxonMobil scientists buried their own similar findings from decades earlier.
The resident bull in the world’s china shop is running amok and doing what he does best—smash things and make a scene. But the fact of the matter is that he will likely move forward with little authentic pushback from military advisors and members of Congress who have been privy to these reports for decades. They will publicly denounce Trump’s methods and behavior but make no mistake. We want Greenland. Behind closed doors, I gauran-fucking-tee they are cheerleading this development.
Forget the fact that Denmark, the official “owner” of this icy colonial outpost, is a founding member of NATO. Or, as the New York Times noted, “A treaty between the United States and Denmark, signed in 1951 at the end of the Truman administration, gives the United States broad rights to reopen the 16 or so military bases that it once had on Greenland.”
There are so many straightforward and productive ways to optimize our presence in the Arctic without blowing up NATO, getting into a trade war with Europe and showing our hand to the world that we want to build a massive missile defense system. Instead, Trump wants to purchase Greenland because it’s so fucking big and authoritarians love big prizes. In his mind, land grabs immortalize a president and all can be justified under the cloak of national security.
His behavior obscures the fact that this part of the world is indeed strategically important. Trade. Natural resources. Offense and defense. Oil and natural gas. It’s all on the table so it’s not unreasonable to be having a grownup conversation about strategy and national interests. But that’s not the point I want to make here.
Trump has once again managed to bury the conversation we should be having by putting himself in the center of it all. We’re talking about NATO. Defense systems. China and Russia. Boats that landed in Greenland 300 years ago. Self determination versus colonialism. Land rights. Mineral rights. Drilling rights. The 60,000 Greenlanders who want nothing to do with us. Trump the mad imperialist who will stop at nothing to overthrow countries and destroy alliances. The United States has gone mad. It’s a proper Trump shitshow that once again obscures the most horrifying aspect of this entire story.
We should be able to access this part of the world so easily.
The only reason Greenland is a point of contention is because the polar ice caps are melting around it. As Klaire points out, this area of the world has only recently become strategically meaningful because climate change has given the world a “new ocean.”
Donald Trump is so absurd that he has managed to overshadow this monumental information.
Read: Building the Climate Industrial Complex
