DISCUSS: Greenland

A better way forward was suggested in a Politico article entitled We Went to Greenland to Ask About a Trump Takeover.  It quoted a Greenland who is a big fan of Trump, who said, “Many want to use him to liberate us from Denmark.”

The U.S. should be about liberation, not empire.  The steps should be these:  (1)  The Greenlanders should vote on whether or not they want independence from Denmark.  As I blogged about, they have some major grievances and would probably vote to declare their independence.  (2)  If they do, there should be another referendum to see if they would like to become part of the U.S.A.

The U.S.A. should offer Greenlanders major incentives if they choose to go this route.  What I can’t get out of my imagination is the fact that the population is so small while the land is so vast.  At 57,000, it’s just over the size of Enid, Oklahoma.  We could offer every man, woman, and child in Greenland one million dollars, which would make all Greenlanders millionaires at a cost of only $57 billion.

That would make every Greenlander a millionaire for only .78% of our $7.3 trillion budget.  For comparison, we give away $61.8 billion in foreign aid.  The Department of Education gets $79.6 billion.  DOGE is probably going to zero that out anyway.  Close it down, give the money to Greenlanders, and taxpayers would still come ahead $22.6 billion.  (Thanks to the AI search engine  Perplexity for helping me with all of these figures.)

And/or, we could give Greenlanders title to their own land.  The Politico article says, “there is no land ownership in Greenland, where all land use is allowed by government permit.”  Greenland has an area of 836,330 square miles, about the size of Alaska plus Texas.  Dividing that among the 57,000 inhabitants would give each Greenlander ownership of 14.67 square miles, which comes to an estate of 9,388.8 acres.  Yes, over 80% of that land would be under ice, but any mining of rare earth metals or other development would send the royalties directly to the landowners.

Then again, why does the United States need to do any of this?  If the United States or American companies wants to develop Greenland’s natural resources, Greenland would be happy to issue the necessary licenses.  In fact, an American company has already signed a deal with Greenland to develop the largest deposit of rare earth metals in the world, which would break China’s near monopoly on raw materials necessary for the world’s electronic technology.  If the United States wants Greenland to establish a military presence to counter Russia and China’s movements into the Arctic, we already have a military base there. Right now, it only has 200 military personnel, but that could easily be ramped up as much as we need.

And there are all kinds of other arrangements that are possible–such as a Compact of Free Association such as we have with the Marshall Islands– that would tie the U.S. and Greenland together in mutually beneficial ways short of making it a territory or what would be simultaneously America’s largest and smallest state.

Another complication:  Two-thirds of Greenlanders are Lutheran.  Not only that, they have a state church, being officially affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark.  While we Lutherans might like the idea of a place to flee to if necessary like the Saxon immigrants did, would U.S. law require the disestablishment of the state church, or does the First Amendment only apply to the federal government not being allowed to?

I’m thinking that the main attraction of the U.S. acquiring Greenland is the inspirational value, the recovery of the pioneer spirit, the sense of making American great again.

Though all of this stimulates my imagination, I’m not sure my rational mind agrees.

So, after all of this buildup, the discussion question of the weekend is this:  Should the United States try to acquire Greenland?