From: user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid
On 1/7/26 10:55 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 10:27:51 -0800, Dude wrote:
>
>> On 1/6/2026 6:55 PM, dart200 wrote:
>>> On 1/6/26 6:53 PM, dart200 wrote:
>>>> On 1/6/26 10:21 AM, Julian wrote:
>>>>> It was the Viking, Eric the Red who, in AD 986, first saw Greenland’s
>>>>> potential. He wanted to colonise his newly-discovered island, and in
>>>>> a blatant piece of tenth-century spin-doctoring hit on a wizard
>>>>> wheeze to encourage other Norse people to come to this bleak, icy and
>>>>> remote corner of the unknown world:
>>>>>
>>>>> ‘In the summer, Erik left to settle in the country he had found,
>>>>> which he called Greenland, as he said people would be attracted there
>>>>> if it had a favourable name.‘
>>>>>
>>>>> More than a thousand years later, US president Donald Trump is
>>>>> proposing something similar.
>>>>>
>>>>> ‘It’s a large real estate deal. Owning Greenland is vital for US
>>>>> security… and economic security… It’s an absolute necessity and I
>>>>> cannot assure you that we would not use military or economic coercion.‘
>>>>>
>>>>> That may sound outlandish. But Trump’s ambition isn’t new. America
>>>>> has controlled Greenland before: during the Second World War, it
>>>>> became a de facto US protectorate. The US has also previously sought
>>>>> to buy Greenland; in 1946, it offered $100 million in gold bullion;
>>>>> around $7 billion in today’s money.
>>>>>
>>>>> For now, Greenland belongs to Denmark. But Denmark’s ownership of
>>>>> Greenland is itself a piece of bare-faced colonialism, as a glance at
>>>>> their policy of forced assimilation in the 1940s and 50s makes clear.
>>>>> As a result, the Danes are much resented by most Greenlanders.
>>>>>
>>>>> Greenland has been moving towards independence almost as long as it
>>>>> has been a colony of Denmark. They were granted Home Rule in 1979.
>>>>> This was expanded to full self-rule with the 2009 Self-Government Act
>>>>> – legislation that also handed Greenland the right to declare
>>>>> independence. Today, Denmark retains control only of defence, foreign
>>>>> affairs, and monetary policy. The 2023 Greenlandic constitution
>>>>> explicitly commits the island to independence; and in his 2025 New
>>>>> Year speech, Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Egede, called for an
>>>>> end to ‘the shackles of colonialism’ and a future shaped by
>>>>> Greenlanders themselves.
>>>>>
>>>>> The final umbilical cord linking Greenland to Denmark is the annual
>>>>> block grant of 3.9 billion kroner (roughly £410 million), making up
>>>>> about 19 per cent of Greenland’s GDP. But to put that in perspective,
>>>>> it is less than the amount annually spent by the US on the city of El
>>>>> Paso, Texas. And it is minuscule compared to the mineral wealth
>>>>> Greenland could one day command in partnership with a deep-pocketed
>>>>> ally, of whom there are at least three: America, China and Russia.
>>>>>
>>>>> China, in particular, has shown intense interest. At one point,
>>>>> Beijing proposed a $2.5 billion (£1.8 billion) investment in a
>>>>> Greenlandic mine (more than the island’s entire GDP), which would
>>>>> have brought in 5,000 Chinese workers. Then they proposed massive
>>>>> infrastructure investments, including a deep-sea port and two
>>>>> international airports. These would require capital which would leave
>>>>> Greenland beholden for all time. Denmark and the US, unsurprisingly,
>>>>> blocked these plans.
>>>>>
>>>>> So why are the great powers so keen to own Greenland? Natural
>>>>> resources are a big reason why. The great powers’ unashamed lust for
>>>>> Greenland’s rare earths is but one element of a global race to
>>>>> control the production of the strategic minerals which are essential
>>>>> components of batteries, phones, electric vehicles and all modern
>>>>> computing devices. It’s about silicon, germanium, phosphorus, boron,
>>>>> indium phosphide, gallium, graphite, uranium, copper, lithium, cobalt
>>>>> and nickel, among others. He who controls their production holds the
>>>>> key to the digital globe.
>>>>>
>>>>> Odd as it may sound, it’s also about Taiwan. Taiwan manufactures over
>>>>> 60 per cent of the world’s semiconductors and more than 90 per cent
>>>>> of its most advanced chips. If China were ever to carry out its
>>>>> threat to invade Taiwan (which some observers think may be imminent,
>>>>> perhaps encouraged by Donald Trump’s daring raid on Venezuela), it
>>>>> would gain near-total control of the global microchip supply. Do we
>>>>> really want to be dependent on China for every phone, computer and
>>>>> electric vehicle produced in the West?
>>>>>
>>>>> The US needs to develop chip-making capabilities comparable to
>>>>> Taiwan’s. To achieve this it needs reliable sources for the 50 or so
>>>>> critical minerals required. And Greenland holds concentrated
>>>>> quantities of 30 of them, amounting to a considerable chunk of the
>>>>> world’s total rare earth reserves. But the reality is that with a
>>>>> population of just 57,000 – many of them Inuit fishermen and hunters
>>>>> – Greenland lacks the industrial infrastructure to extract these
>>>>> minerals. Both China and the US would be keen to fill that gap.
>>>>>
>>>>> Another great attraction of Greenland is its strategic position. As
>>>>> the ice melts – at a rate of as much as 270 billion tonnes per year –
>>>>> several strategic sea routes are being opened up. The world is waking
>>>>> up to the potential strategic value of Greenland, the largest non-
>>>>> continental island on Earth. Greenland controls the top end of the
>>>>> Greenland–Iceland–UK Gap. This area is crucial to Nato submarine
>>>>> surveillance and was vital in resupplying Europe during WWII. It also
>>>>> hosts the Thule Air Base (now renamed Pituffik Space Base), an
>>>>> essential part of US air defence and missile early warning systems.
>>>>> Any Russian missile strike on the US would pass directly over
>>>>> Greenland. Since 2017, Thule has housed a key ballistic missile
>>>>> detection system, with nearly $4 billion (£3 billion) in upgrades
>>>>> recently approved.
>>>>>
>>>>> The increasingly ice-free Northwest Passage skirts Greenland’s
>>>>> shores. There’s even talk of a deep-sea port to serve the emerging
>>>>> Northern Sea Route or NorthEast passage), either in Iceland or – just
>>>>> possibly – in East Greenland. In 2019, Mike Pompeo called Arctic sea-
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