Skip to main content

Buying Greenland: Trump’s Gaffe With a Point


President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, has entertained the idea of purchasing Greenland from it’s current owner Denmark. Both the Danish and the autonomic Greenland’s governments have promptly dismissed the idea. The spokesman of Greenland’s government stated that "Greenland is not for sale." But is that actually true?

China has been heavily buying in to Greenland and its vast natural resources. The true quantity of the resources is only slowly getting revealed as the continental ice is melting due to the climate change. At Kvanefjeld Chinese companies are planning to begin mining both Uranium and rare earth elements, the production if which China is trying to monopolize. The Chinese companies are also investing in zinc and iron mines on the island.

The Chinese investments in export commodities production in Africa have always been coupled with a complex scheme of co-operation. These deals connect the economic investments to infrastructure projects and political deals to allow the Beijing to wield considerable leverage over the respective host nations. China has already used these connections to force its clients to vote according to Chinese interests in the UN. Some parts of the Chinese built infrastructure can also be used for deployment of the Chinese troops to the region if a need should arise.

Danish democracy and civil society are naturally much more robust than the ones in any African country. After all, the Kingdom of Denmark was established in 980. But even purely economical domination of Greenland would still be a victory to the Chinese government, especially as rare earth minerals will be a crucial strategic asset in the future. Greenland’s deposits joining the Chinese holdings in China, Mongolia, Afghanistan and Africa would make the situation rather dire for the West.

If China was given a possibility to control the ports and airports in Greenland, it would cause serious problems for NATO operations in the northern European theater. The Greenland – Iceland- UK (GIUK) gap has long been the focus point of naval planning for the possible showdown between NATO and Russia in Europe.

A Chinese destroyer in the Baltic Sea

On the other hand Greenland could also be used to stage operations aimed to disable the Russian forces in the Arctic. These forces include the vital nuclear bastion at Kola-peninsula. While China and Russia are reluctant allies at the moment, there is no doubt that at some point in the future the dragon will try to subdue the elderly bear in the neighborhood.

While the USA has a military presence in Greenland, it currently has very little control over the strategically important resources there and Chinese offers may be too tempting for the largely autonomic Greenland government and the cash strapped leaders in Copenhagen.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Russian Tanks 2022: Thicker and Blinder

  Since the all out invasion of Ukraine the Russian army has lost at least 1700 tanks. This has caused the Russian army some supply problems, when they are re-forming their mauled units. Fighting has also revealed the need for upgrades on most of the Russian tank designs. The most obvious issues with the existing Russian tank fleet are the insufficient armor protection, the lack of reverse mobility and the vulnerability of the automatic loaders and their ammunition carousels. Although the last one has gifted us the sport of Turret Throwing. T-72B obr 2022 tanks Very little can be done for the mobility with the limitations of the existing transmissions and the autoloaders can’t really be replaced with better designs or human loaders either. The armor part on the other hand can be improved during the activation and refurbishment of the deep stored Soviet-era tanks. The first new design that appeared in the battlefield was an upgraded T-72B3 with additional armo,r mimicking the T-90M layo
20 comments
Read more

Russian Spring offensive 2023: Kyiv Take Two

Russian T-80U tanks stuck and abandoned in Ukraine in spring 2022   The spectacular Ukrainian victories during the 2022 forced the Russian army to the defensive. With the Russian retreat from Kharkiv and the areas north of the river Dnipro in Kherson, the focus of the fighting has returned to the Donbass. The Russian forces, with Wagner mercenaries and penal battalions doing the bulk of the fighting and dying, are trying to take Bakhmut in a battle that invokes parallels to the meat grinders of the Great war. The Ukrainian armed forces on the other hand are slowly making progress towards Kreminna. Despite the continuous rumors about a new massive round of mobilizations, the Russian army cannot sustain the present level of attrition indefinitely. By throwing enough men and material against the prepared Ukrainian positions manned by experienced and highly motivated defenders, Russians may be able to gain some localized breakthroughs. But even if the Russian mechanized forces are able to
16 comments
Read more

Redut: Russian Mercenaries Controlled by a Finnish Citizen

  The recent conflicts where Russia has been directly or indirectly involved, like the invasion of Ukraine and the civil wars in Syria, Libya and Central African Republic have introduced the public to the Russian quasi-private military contractors. The most famous of these “private military contractors”  is undoubtedly the notorious Wagner-group that is presently waging an army corps level assault on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after engaging in various war crimes across Ukraine. The group leader Evgeniy Prigozhin has used his close connections to the Kremlin to expand his private army with convicted criminals. But the Wagner isn’t the only such formation operating under the Kremlin's umbrella. Several rumors have been floating around about the increased friction between the Russian military and Wagner. Elements within the Kremlin and the Russian general staff are trying to elevate another private security company called Redut, Russian for a redoubt, to balance the growing power
2 comments
Read more