Vance’s
posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically
disastrous
Timothy
Snyder
Thanks to
Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things
that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking
Mon 31 Mar
2025 06.00 BST
No one would
allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so,
he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.”
– Hans
Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes
Elon Musk
and Donald Trump inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality,
and are taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and
relationships that underpinned the largest economy in world history. This too
they are breaking.
The American
vice-president, JD Vance, visited a US base in Greenland for three hours on
Friday, along with his wife. National security adviser Mike Waltz and his wife
also went along. Fresh from using an unsafe social media platform to carry out
an entirely unnecessary group chat in which they leaked sensitive data about an
ongoing military attack to a reporter, and thereby allegedly breaking the law,
Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip
that was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.
The overall
context was Trump’s persistent claim that America must take Greenland, which is
an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan had been that Usha Vance
would visit Greenlanders, apparently on the logic that the second lady would be
an effective animatrice of colonial subjection; but none of them wanted to see
her, and Greenland’s businesses refused to serve as a backdrop to photo ops or
even to serve the uninvited Americans. So, instead, the US couples made a very
quick visit to Pituffik space base. (Pete Hegseth, another group chatter,
stayed home; but his wife was in the news as well, as an unorthodox participant
in sensitive military discussions.)
At the base,
in the far north of the island, the US visitors had pictures taken of
themselves and ate lunch with servicemen and women. They treated the base as
the backdrop to a press conference where they could say things they already
thought; nothing was experienced, nothing was learned, nothing sensible was
said. Vance, who never left the base, and has never before visited Greenland,
was quite sure how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to
Greenlanders, none of whom was present, or anywhere near him. He claimed that
Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and that
the US would. Greenland should therefore join the US.
It takes
some patience to unwind all of the nonsense here.
The base at
Pituffik (formerly Thule) only exists because Denmark permitted the US to build
it at a sensitive time. It has served for decades as a central part of the US’s
nuclear armoury and then as an early-warning system against Soviet and then
Russian nuclear attack.
When Vance
says that Denmark is not protecting Greenland and the base, he is wishing away
generations of cooperation, as well as the Nato alliance itself. Denmark was a
founding member of Nato, and it is already the US’s job to defend Denmark and
Greenland, just as it is Denmark’s job (as with other members) to defend them
in return.
Americans
might chuckle at that idea, but such arrogance is unwarranted. We are the only
ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato
treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as
many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers.
Do we remember them? Thank them?
The threat
in the Arctic invoked by Vance is Russia; and of course defending against a
Russian attack is the Nato mission. But right now the US is supporting Russia
in its war against Ukraine. No one is doing more to contain the Russian threat
than Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine is in effect fulfilling the entire Nato mission,
right now, by absorbing a huge Russian attack. But Vance opposes helping
Ukraine, spreads Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and is best known for
yelling at Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office. On the base, Vance blamed
the killing in Ukraine on Joe Biden rather than on Vladimir Putin, which is
grotesque. Vance claimed that there is now an energy ceasefire in place between
Russia and Ukraine; in fact, Russia violated it immediately. Russia is now
preparing a massive spring offensive against Ukraine; the response of
Musk-Trump has been to ignore this larger reality completely while allowing
Biden-era aid to Ukraine to come to an end. Denmark, meanwhile, has given more
than four times as much aid to Ukraine, per capita, than the US.
Greenland,
Denmark and the US have been enmeshed in complex and effective security
arrangements, touching on the gravest scenarios, for the better part of a
century. Arctic security, an issue discovered by Trump and Vance very recently,
was a preoccuption for decades during and after the cold war. There are fewer
than 200 Americans at Pituffik now, where once there were 10,000; there is only
that one US base on the island where once there were a dozen; but that is
American policy, not Denmark’s fault.
We really do
have a problem taking responsibility. The US has fallen well behind its allies
and its rivals in the Arctic, in part because members of Vance’s political
party denied for decades the reality of global warming, which has made it hard
for the US navy to persuade Congress of the need to commission icebreaker
ships. The US only has two functional Arctic icebreakers; the Biden
administration was intending to cooperate with Canada, which has some, and with
Finland, which builds lots, in order to compete with Russia, which has the
most. That common plan would have allowed the US to surpass Russia in
icebreaking capacity. This is one of countless examples of how cooperation with
Nato allies benefits the US. It is not clear what will happen with that arrangement
now that Trump and Vance define Canada, like Denmark, as a rival or even as an
enemy. Presumably it will break down, leaving Russia dominant.
As with
everything Musk-Trump does, however, the cui bono question about imperialism in
Greenland is easy to answer: Russia benefits. Putin cannot contain his delight
with US imperialism over Greenland. In generating artificial crises in
relations with both Denmark and Canada, America’s two closest allies these last
80 years, the Trump people cut America loose from security gains and create a
chaos in which Russia benefits.
The American
imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It
is strategically disastrous. The US has nothing to gain from it, and much to
lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through
alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the
atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last 80 years, all of the
mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or
for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this
easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen:
trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and
annexations. Musk and Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in
which the US will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks
ago, were there for the asking. And, of course, wars rarely turn out the way
one expects.
Much effort
is spent trying to extract a doctrine from all this. But there is none. It is
just senselessness that benefits America’s enemies. Hans Christian Andersen
told the unforgettable tale of the naked emperor. In Greenland, what we saw was
American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain.
As a parting
shot, Vance told Greenlanders that life with the US would be better than with
Denmark. Danish officials have been too diplomatic to answer directly the
insults directed at them from their own territory during an uninvited visit by
imperialist hotheads. Let me though just note a few possible replies, off the
top of my head. The comparison between life in the US and life in Denmark is
not just polemical. Musk-Trump treat Europe as though it were some decadent
abyss, and propose that alliances with dictatorships would somehow be better.
But Europe is not only home to our traditional allies; it is an enviable zone
of democracy, wealth and prosperity with which it benefits us to have good
relations, and from which we can sometimes learn.
So consider.
The US is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is
No 2 (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 10 times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes
have access to universal and essentially free healthcare; 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 12 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.
Timothy
Snyder is the Richard C Levin professor of history at Yale University, and the
chair in modern European history supported by the Temerty endowment for
Ukrainian studies at the University of Toronto. His latest book is On Freedom.
This post originally appeared on his Substack, Thinking About
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