No reason for Greenland to choose to be a US colony


Trump and Vance insist that Denmark and Greenlanders must cede control of Greenland to the United States. Trump has made not-so-veiled threats to seize Greenland by force. A US invasion and military occupation of Greenland would ostensibly be justified on national security grounds, to protect the region from Russia. A similar justification has been voiced for annexing Canada as the 51ststate.

None of this makes any sense. First of all, the US and Russia are currently allied in Russia’s war of choice in Ukraine. And if Trump were worried about Russian threats to Greenland, he could beef up the existing US military base in Greenland, which currently has a skeleton staff. 

Now, JD Vance has visited that base (after he and his wife were rebuffed for civilian photo-ops) and proclaimed that Greenland has been neglected by Denmark and should embrace American overlords. But how does Denmark stack up against the US?

“So consider. The US is is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is number two (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97 and the US 84 on freedom — and the US will drop a great deal this year. An American is about ten times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and essentially free health care; Americans spend a huge amount of money to be sick more often and to be treated worse when they are. Danes on average live four years longer than Americans. In Denmark university education is free; the average balance owed by the tens of millions of Americans who hold student debt in the US is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid parental leave. In the US, one parent might get twelve weeks of unpaid leave. Denmark has children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. The US has children’s story writer JD Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five.”

I guess Vance thinks Greenlanders are as gullible as Trump voters. Trump’s only option to seize Greenland on behalf of Putin seems to be a military invasion, justified by “national security,” his go-to for much of the lawless activity of the second Trump Administration. Putin showed him the way.

 

https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/vance-in-greenland?r=2133ns&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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