Fact Check Friday - Trump and Greenland

President’s obsession with arctic nation acknowledges belief in climate change

America seems to be moving into its second Imperial Era.

The Trump administration, aided by a rabidly greedy billionaire who seems to have taken a bit too much Ketamine, is picking fights with whole Western Hemisphere.

We’re going to get Greenland “one way or another,” we’re going to take back the Panama Canal, and we’ve basically started parking our car on the next door neighbor’s lawn by telling Canada they’d be better off if they became the 51st state.

On the issue of Greenland, Trump keeps talking about the need for American control of the nation - which is a territory of Denmark - for national and international security.

I got curious about this obsession and started digging around. I learned a few interesting facts.

First, Trump isn’t the first U.S. president with ambitions to take over the country. President Andrew Johnson offered to buy the country in 1867. Then, in 1910 William Taft made another offer. During WWII, the United States set up a military presence in Greenland - which we still maintain today. Then-President Harry Truman again made an offer to buy the arctic circle nation. Trump, during his first term, made another offer on Greenland.

There are three primary reasons for escalating interest in the country.

1. Rare Mineral extraction. Due to climate change and a melting tundra, more of the arctic area is accessible for mining.

2. The much fantasized Northernwest Passage that connects the Arctic to the Pacific Ocean is opening up and becoming a more viable navigation path.

3. China and Russia have been working together to develop trade and military power in the Arctic region.

This is an excerpt from the Arctic Institute, which actually has a number of very interesting reports about a part of the world most of likely give little attention…

“The Arctic is insufficiently prioritized amidst the United States’ competing global interests. The future battlefield is melting and demands US attention, as a partnership between Russia and the People’s Republic of China fuels strategic competition in the Arctic. Thus, the United States must adopt a proactive Arctic strategy, working with its NATO Allies to ensure that the Arctic remains stable and free from conflict.”

(Note: I haven’t done much research on the Arctic Institute, so I don’t know how good of a source they are. But I haven’t seen anything overtly concerning. They are focused on the security of Arctic nations, and seem to be research oriented, though I don’t know if any of these papers are peer reviewed. But I still find them interesting).

That partnership between Russia and China is called the Polar Silk Road and is an extension of China’s Belt and Road Initiative - in which the Communist Country is strategically investing billions of dollars in Eastern Hemisphere infrastructure.

Here’s from another paper published by the Arctic Institute…

“The events of 2022 proved to be a year of great geopolitical changes. In February 2022, just days before Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Xi Jinping and Putin met in Beijing, where they discussed among other things the development of the Polar Silk Road (PSR).¹⁾ The PSR was jointly announced in 2017.²⁾ The Arctic was declared as a potential area of cooperation between the two countries, and the PSR was considered by some as the fulcrum of the Russo-Chinese cooperation. In March 2023, a year after the previous visit, Xi Jinping again visited Russia, marking China’s continued commitment as Russia’s partner – albeit not a partnership without limits. As Russia indicated a strong desire for China’s presence in the Arctic, the PSR has largely disappeared from the official Chinese discourse, raising more questions about China’s long-term intentions with its Arctic policy and its wider strategic approach to the global order.”

So on the surface, it does seem to be a legitimate security need for increased U.S. presence in the arctic region. I’m not sure telling sovereign nations that we’re going to just plant our flag and do as we please is the best approach. What this administration lacks in diplomacy it more than makes up for in egotistical bravado.

What’s interesting to me in all of this is that the obsession with Greenland is an outright acknowledgement that Climate Change is real and that the atmosphere’s temperature is rising. Trump’s desire to take over Greenland is rooted in the knowledge that shipping and battle lanes will open up as Polar ice melts - and that long hidden mining resources will be uncovered by further climate change.

Politically, however, there’s no such acknowledgment.

There’s a group of politicians who are screaming Drill Baby Drill, and there are oil industry lobbyists doing all they can to curb U.S. Development of renewable energy. They know they are schlepping a product with shrinking supply, and they plan to capture every dollar they can until the wells run dry. This, to me, is also a bad strategic move for America - because other countries, especially China, are developing the technology we’ll eventually have to buy from them. And we’re missing out on the investment and jobs that would come with developing the next generation of energy. U.S. taxpayers have long subsidized the petroleum industry infrastructure because at the time it was strategically smart. The same could be said now, about renewable energy and our future.

To me it seems the Trump administration sees what is happening and has decided that America must make a play in the Arctic region - for national defense, for trade, and for resource extraction. All due to the reality of climate change and melting Arctic ice. That acknowledgment is baked into his Greenland policy and philosophy.

But the rhetoric he’s using at rallies and such is dishonest, at best. He is actively working to undo previous U.S. efforts to combat climate change, and he has frequently spoken about the evils of any effort to mitigate climate change.

Often, I heard people say that one shouldn’t judge Trump by his words. That he sometimes says things he doesn’t mean, or mentions things that he won’t really do. Judge him, they’ll say, by his policies and his action.

OK. I will.

His actions and his words, at least on policy, tell me that his administration not only believes in Climate Change - it’s planning for an inevitably altered world because of it.