Why is Trump interested in Greenland?

Forecasts suggest that global warming could create a shortcut from Asia to North America and new routes for trade, shipping - and attack.

Source: The Guardian
Translation: Telegrafi.com

Another week, another strange weather phenomenon you've probably never heard of. If it's not the "weather bomb" of extreme winds and snow that Britain is struggling to cope with as I write, it's the reports in The Guardian for reindeer in the Arctic who are facing the opposite: unusually warm weather that brings more rain, which freezes and creates a type of snow that they can't easily dig through with their hooves to reach food. In a habitat as harsh as the Arctic, where survival depends on proper adaptation, even the smallest changes in the weather have far-reaching consequences - and not just for reindeer.

For decades, politicians have warned of coming climate wars – conflicts caused by drought, floods, fires and storms that force people to move, or force them to compete with their neighbours for dwindling natural resources. For anyone who imagined this as something that would happen far from Europe’s doorstep, in drought-stricken deserts or on Pacific islands slowly sinking into the sea, this week’s White House discussions – about taking ownership of Greenland – are a loud wake-up call. As the first commander of the British Navy, General Gwyn Jenkins, has told anyone who will listen – the melting North, driven by the climate crisis, has long triggered a fierce competition in the melting Arctic: for resources, territory and strategic access to the Atlantic. To understand how this threatens Northern Europe, look at the globe from above, not the map.

By the early 2040s, projections suggest that global warming could render the frozen waters around the North Pole—the ocean that separates Russia from Canada and Greenland—almost ice-free in the summer. This could open up a new shortcut from Asia to North America, not through the middle of the planet but from above, creating new routes for trade, shipping, fishing—and, most worryingly—attack.

A new theater of war is emerging as the ice melts, and China, Russia and the United States are increasingly embroiled in a battle for dominance. Meanwhile, as rising temperatures turn the High North into a chessboard for autocrats, territories unfortunate enough to be in the way — from Greenland to Canada to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, which Russia has long coveted — risk becoming pawns.

Almost as dangerous for these countries as the threats posed by the melting Pole are the opportunities it opens up. Why does the US feel it needs to annex friendly Greenland to protect this critical Arctic border? After all, they have had troops stationed in this autonomous Danish territory since World War II, and Denmark has made it clear that they are welcome to bring more. Interestingly, the only benefit that comes exclusively with ownership is the right to the subsurface resources that may be discovered as this frozen land warms up!

Greenland is a rare and untapped resource not only for oil and gas, but also for rare earth minerals used to make everything from electric car batteries to data center processors, which are the US’s hope for winning the technology race with China – as rubber from Malaysia or cotton from India were for former colonial economies. While it is often a mistake to look too much for logical method in the apparent presidential madness, there is no shortage of ideologues and tech leaders in Trump’s orbit who are able to connect all this together and sell it to him. And even if exploiting the Arctic is not economically viable for many years, Trump’s complaints this week about “Chinese and Russian ships everywhere” suggest that someone has convinced him that he cannot allow rivals to beat him to a valuable development opportunity – a concept any former real estate mogul can understand. After all, in Ukraine, Trump demanded rights to extract rare minerals in exchange for security guarantees, and in Gaza he thought about building hotels on bombed-out ruins: why not try to profit quickly from an environmental disaster?

And while to the British this all sounds like a new age of empire, to the MAGA faithful it perhaps echoes a much more American story – that of settlers making their fortunes by joining caravans westward, pushing the nation’s borders endlessly forward, claiming the lands of indigenous peoples and holding them back through a brutal mix of trade and violence. The aim is not to conquer Greenland, explains US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but to buy it – or at least lease it for exclusive military access. It is indicative of how quickly the relationship between the US and its former allies has collapsed – in little more than a year – that this is said to calm things down: come on, friends, we just want to exploit you, not kill you!

Given the president’s legendary short attention span, it’s hard to say what fate awaits Greenland. Perhaps it will simply get bored and move on elsewhere, especially after the midterm elections are over and there is no longer a need for foreign drama to distract from domestic failings. Or, conversely, perhaps the White House will borrow Putin’s playbook, exploiting Greenlanders’ desire for independence from Denmark to foment all sorts of domestic unrest — easily ignited in the age of social media — before presenting the United States as a benevolent savior coming to protect and enrich them.

But, in any case, we better get used to the idea that this is the beginning, not the end, of the conflicts that may come as global warming rewrites our maps, undoes old alliances, and creates deadly new rivalries for land, water, and natural resources.

It will certainly be worse for those already living on the edge of survival – in deserts too dry to grow anything, or in coastal cities already struggling with rising sea levels, or in countries too poor to protect themselves from increasingly violent storms – than for Europe’s mild and fortunate climate. And, of course, these risks could be better managed by cooperative governments that treat events, like the melting of the North, as a collective challenge for humanity to face together, rather than as a deadly race for national advantage.

But in the week that Trump announced he would withdraw the US from a series of international climate initiatives, it is clear that this is not the world we live in. So, at the very least, let poor, exhausted Greenland serve as a reminder that the climate crisis will have geopolitical consequences that we have only just begun to understand, and that anything we can do to limit rising temperatures or mitigate their effects still matters. Even, or perhaps precisely because, we cannot yet undo the damage that has already been done intentionally. /Telegraph/