Yesterday’s debacle in Greenland was a farce. It was originally conceived that Second Lady Usha Vance would somehow be the amatrice of diplomacy for the ‘land of the Kalaallit’. She would lead the way. Who got that impression, I don’t know. Making Usha into a diplomat is a bit like making Melania into an intellectual and we’ve seen how that goes. (Anybody hear her speak all these foreign languages yet?)
All that happened is that the Vance advance guard sent people door to door to see if anybody wanted to host Usha and the answer was a resounding “no.” A tourist office which had originally agreed to a visit and photo op then withdrew its invitation. Even the dogsled race which Usha was to attend got canceled. Gee, do you think there’s a message here? Then J.D. decided he would accompany wifey and handle things and OMG here is the result.
That’s a special kind of koolaid . “We can’t ignore the President’s desires.” Wow
— Gigi 😏 (@Gigisaysthis1) March 29, 2025
What Vance just said is a lie. The U.S. has not rescued Denmark or Greenland but the Danes came to our rescue when they sent troops to Afghanistan after the United States invoked Article V of the NATO treaty after 9/11. European historian and Yale professor, Timothy Snyder, is telling the truth. Listen to him and not J.D. Vance’s lies.
Musk-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 an American base Greenland for three hours yesterday, along with his wife. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and his wife also came along. Fresh from illegally 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, Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip which was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.
The overall context was Donald 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 American couples all 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.) […]
The base at Pituffik (formerly Thule) only exists because Denmark permitted the United States to build it at a sensitive time. It has served the United States for decades as a central part of its nuclear armory 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 American’s job to defend Denmark and Greenland, just as it is Denmark’s job (as with other members) to defend the United States.
Americans might chuckle at that idea, but such arrogance is unwarranted. We are the only ones ever to have invoked Article 5, the mutual defense obligation of the NATO treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita more Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war than were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?
This is exactly the kind of question I would like to see put to J.D. Vance, Mr. Gratitude, who so boorishly humiliated Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. And you may recall Trump demanding that Zelenskyy publicly apologize for his own behavior on American TV. Did you see that spectacle? No. And you won’t. That was Trump’s reality TV head going off, but Zelenskyy wouldn’t cave.
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 United States 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 Biden rather than on Putin, which is grotesque. Vance claimed that there is now an energy cease-fire 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, as does the United States.
Greenland, Denmark, and the United States 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 only a couple hundred Americans at Pituffik where once there were ten thousand; 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 United States 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 U.S. Navy to persuade Congress of the need to commission icebreakers. The United States 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 United States to surpass Russia in icebreaking capacity. This is one of countless examples of how cooperation with NATO allies benefits the United States. 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 American imperialism over Greenland. In generating artificial crises in relations with both Denmark and Canada, America’s two closest allies these last eighty 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 United States 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 eighty 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-Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the United States 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.
Um….J.D.? You might want to check your facts and figures on that. Canada has the ability to inflict economic pain on the United States. Canada can plunge part of the United States into darkness if it wants. Canada is America’s second largest trading partner (Mexico being the first) but number one export market. They’re holding plenty of cards. Steve Schmidt said in his newsletter today “Please know that Canada has all the cards it needs to spiral the United States into a depression, and it should if it becomes necessary.”
The sublime irony is that people voted for Trump believing his insane lies that he would magically bring down the cost of living on day one and in fact all that Trump has done is wreck the markets and set us at odds with our allies and friends. Canada can ruin us if it wants to.
Greenland doesn’t need us. And Denmark isn’t going to put up with Trump’s antics forever. Neither will the European Union. Vance can strut like John Wayne and talk the big talk about how we’re holding all the cards. Stupidity mixed with hubris laced with sheer lunacy. That is the flavor of kool-aide that we are all drinking. Unbelievable.
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Just Dumb Vance would never have had any sex life if it wasn’t for the whole concept of Pitiffuk. It’s the only reason he went to Greenland in a, no doubt, vain hope.
Oh. did I spell that base name properly?
Two functioning arctic icebreakers, one non-functioning administration and soon to be zero allies/partners. Welcome to the golden age.
I didn’t think I could ever say this, but this clown is even less likeable than his boss.
Every day and every way it’s becoming more obvious: the President of the United States is insane. But he’s so dangerous because the entire Republican Party and hundreds of phony-tough toadies like Musk and Vance have become his enablers. Thank God that more and more ordinary Americans are at last seeing them for what they are. But only the next four years will disclose the extent of the damage they’re doing to the nation…