The recent statements by US President Donald Trump that he wants to buy Greenland from Denmark which is the sovereign state in Greenland, have caused many wonderings and questions and since Greenland is the largest island in the world with very little population due to the particularly difficult climatic conditions prevailing on this island.
by Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis-https://www.liberalglobe.com
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Greenland’s semi-autonomy regime
Greenland’s semi-autonomy regime was attributed with the adoption of the act of Semi-autonomy jointly signed (2009) Greenland (capital Nuuk) and Denmark (capital Copenhagen) entitles the Greenland government to have the full control of political decisions on all domestic and economic policy issues. On the other hand, Denmark, as the sovereign state in Greenland, has the right to exercise veto in security issues.
In fact, Greenland’s semi-autonomy regime gives its government the right to refuse to sell it even if Denmark was discussing something like that.
Both the oil fields and the natural gas deposits in Greenland are not so valuable for the US to be interested in, and since the shale gas method states that the USA is a country with exports of gas.
The Greenland deposits in rare earths are too expensive to be mined, cleaned and marketed, as they contain uranium that requires special and very precise treatment to be cleaned which is very costly.
The truth behind the possible Greenland acquisition from the US
Behind the statements to date of US President Donald Trump are the real reasons of interest in obtaining Greenland, which is the high-value geo-strategic importance of the world’s largest island for the USA and more generally for the Great powers.
The problem is not that only the US know this high-grade strategic importance of Greenland, but that China knows it. China’s efforts to place its “foot” in Greenland began in 2016, when a Chinese company proposed buying an abandoned US military base in Greenland. The purpose of the Chinese purchase proposal was the commercial type of exploitation. Denmark, of course, as an ally of the United States, refused the Chinese proposal.
China’s second attempt took place last year when a Chinese company won the tender for the reconstruction of the runways of one of the 17 airports available in Greenland. Greenland was forced to give a new project contractor, denying the Chinese company the undertaking of the project and given that if the Chinese company performed the project would automatically create political and commercial rights/benefits from China to the government of Greenland.
Photo by Author: USAF, Source: US Air Force Weather,
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The strategic character interests of the US in Greenland
One of the most important U.S. bases in the world is in Greenland. It is the air base-Thule-which among other tasks could provide logistics services to military aircrafts in the event of a US conflict with another country to claim the Arctic.
For decades, and during the Cold war, agreements between the United States and Denmark have been in force for the use of US military bases in Greenland.
In addition, in the US air base Thule which is located on the northwest coast of Greenland there is one of the most important strategic character radar/scanning systems used by the U.S. for monitoring the Arctic cycle and not only.
The Thule air base in Greenland is the northern most base of the US Armed Forces (Headquarters of the 12th US Space Warning Squadron). In fact, Thule base and from the era of Cold war, using its powerful radar, has had the duty to provide early warning to the US both for potential inbound enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles and for swarms of strategic enemy bombers.
In addition, another duty of the US base Thule and outside of the monitoring and early warning of ballistic missiles and enemy planes is the monitoring of satellites which follow low to Earth orbit and polar orbit respectively.
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At the same time, this base also features a Navy yard deep of water making it in its total the cornerstone in any attempt for occupation or retaken of Arctic by the US. Especially today at a time when Russia has shown actively its will to control the Arctic.
Greenland’s geographic location acts as a shield for both Canada and the US in terms of any extreme weather phenomena during winter. If Greenland were to be disappeared from the map, both Canada and the US could not easily be inhabited areas due to the extreme cold weather. Greenland and its geo-strategic framework for both Canada and the United States have the same role of the shield.
If current US President Donald Trump manages the US to buy/acquire Greenland and claim Greenland as the 51 state and star in the United States flag, then he will have accomplished something that only William H. Seward-United States Secretary of State (1861-1869) under the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) and the Presidency of Vice President Andrew Johnson (1865-1869)-had succeeded to buy Alaska from Russia in 1867.
Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis
