Everyone now knows what they maybe didn’t know a week ago, about Greenland, and Trump’s designs on it.

They may however wonder why tiny Denmark presently has (partial) control over this vast but sparsely populated island. The Danish connection goes back to the early 18^th century; but before then to Viking times (many of the Vikings were from what today is called Denmark), when Eric the Red rediscovered the country on a sea voyage westwards from Iceland; and even before him to the Inuits who had come down from the North American continent centuries before. (But don’t entirely trust me on this early stuff. It is after all – resorting to the professional historian’s hoary old excuse – ‘not my period’.) The Inuits still comprise the great majority of Greenland’s 60,000-plus population, with the Danes mainly living on the coasts. In 1979 Greenland became formally part of Denmark, as an autonomous territory, or colony, within the Danish kingdom; and with the latter subsidizing it to the tune of 50% of its national income. Which makes one wonder why Denmark is so keen to keep it.

American interest in the island is supposed to derive from the latter’s perceived strategic value, just across the North Pole from Russia. It was in response to this that Denmark and the USA concluded a treaty between them in 1951, granting America more or less everything she wanted, or could reasonably demand, in respect of military bases and mining rights. That’s what makes it even more difficult to understand why Trump should now want to own the place; let alone to take it by military force, as he has threatened to do.

It may have something to do with the sheer size of Greenland; or at least as it’s depicted on those Mercator-projection world maps. What a boost that would be to his ego: to have added so much territory to the USA; with no doubt Canada (the ‘fifty-first state’) to follow. (That of course is unlikely: Canadians I’ve met generally define themselves in apposition to the USA.) In this regard Trump seems to have a very old-fashioned – even imperial – idea of international relations: which he shares incidentally with Putin; seeing the diplomatic game in terms of defeating and absorbing rivals, with the ‘winners’ being those who landed up with the biggest empires at the end. It also has much to do with the economic gains that conquest can bring, turning that 50% debit into to a credit figure on America’s financial account. That of course is how a property developer would see it. And a property developer is what Trump has always been, from his days as a (largely failed) real estate capitalist, whose values and methods have dominated his outlook ever since. Why should he own what he could have without owning it? – He gave us his answer to this in an interview recently: it’s because renters have less interest in keeping their properties safe. Morality, international rules, and the wishes of non-owning inhabitants have no place in this proprietary view of diplomacy. America holds all the cards, he thinks, and so can do what it wants.

Anti-Trump commentators often attribute this to his personal character: his amorality, greed, narcissism, insecurity, lying, small-mindedness, ‘madness’ even, and all the other traits that make up this deeply unpleasant man. If I were more persuaded of the ‘great man’ – or ‘evil man’ – interpretation of history, I might agree. But the interesting thing about Trump is that his personal characteristics also reflect features of general US history which are just as likely to have brought his country to this pass, as does anything more personal about ‘him’. I’ve touched on this in previous posts: the national traditions of slavery, aggression, racism, ignorance, proto-fascism and cruelty which are as threaded into the otherwise democratic, liberal and idealistic story we used to be told of the ‘Great Experiment’ from its earliest days; and are now personified by the president. And – to be more controversial – all these enduring national characteristics stem au fonde from the underlying American story: which is the untrammelled development of capitalism over the last two centuries, reaching its apogee at the present day.

Of course this affects the wider world too. Trump’s use of tariffs as his main weapon against those countries that don’t support his Greenland policy is an original – but of course typically Trumpian – weapon, and surely one that only a capitalist would think of. (The Art of the Deal is all played with money.) Amour propre also comes into it. Disappointed at not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he only recently wrote to the Norwegian Prime Minister to say that he would be imposing 10-25% tariffs on Norway as a punishment. (Also, that he wasn’t interested in peace any more.) This is a dangerous psychopathic bully; leading a nation half of which could be diagnosed the same way.  

Swedes of course are firmly behind the Danes on this. We are only a few kilometres from Denmark after all. And much of southern Sweden, like most of eastern England, used to be ruled from Copenhagen, as Greenland is today. More to the point, however, Sweden is far more wedded to internationalism – the sanctity of treaties, rules-based diplomacy, national democracy, peace – than Trump seems to be. And we’re now in NATO, supposingly representing these values; and so would be fighting against another NATO ally if Trump invaded. Partly for these reasons, we Swedes and demi-Swedes simply wouldn’t trust him with Greenland. Would anybody?