NEW DELHI: Imagine an island of the size of a continent. Except for certain coastal pockets, it is largely covered by surreal icy landscapes. The island has a coastline of 27,000 kilometres—greater than the total circumference of the earth at the equator—and a land mass of 21.6 lakh kilometres. Over this vast area lives a sparse population of just 56,000 people.
Welcome to uninhabitable Greenland—a territory all but forgotten till yesterday. Currently, it grabs global headlines because President Trump is determined to possess it at any cost.
Why is he so obsessed with Greenland? It is difficult separating genuine geopolitical considerations from the workings of his own narcissist personality which requires him to project himself as the winner in every transaction he enters. “You just don’t have the cards,” he will tell you, regardless of whether you are his friend, partner or foe.
Even so, this vast territory does have some strategic significance for the US: it dominates the north Atlantic shipping routes, which have become critical because of the melting of Arctic snows, consequent to global warming. In World War II, the great powers realised the strategic importance of this North Atlantic gap—often referred to as the Greenland gap—simply because flights could not travel directly from Europe to America without refuelling somewhere in between.
Aircraft now routinely do so, but the isolation of this land still needs to be bridged, because of the great power rivalry in the Arctic and the north Atlantic shipping lanes. There are other reasons too. Greenland possesses 10% of the earth’s fresh water resources and is rich in mineral wealth (it has reserves of 25 key minerals required by industry). Since the northern hemisphere’s snowstorms often originate here, Greenland is important meteorologically to predict weather conditions in Europe and North America. It is also an ideal launchpad for intercontinental ballistic missiles and to set up early warning defence systems.
However, even these do not justify Trump’s blatant landgrab attempt. Since Greenland belongs to Denmark, it is very much NATO territory. Denmark would never resist the US setting up military bases or exploring mineral wealth here.
Why then this desire to grab Greenland in gross defiance of the UN Charter and the rules based order which the US itself helped set up in 1945? The answer: He must massage not only his own ego but also that of his MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters. He must always be seen to win, friends, allies, partners and foes alike be damned.
The consequences of this whimsical, un-nuanced foreign policy are huge: President Trump is unleashing chaos and instability in the world. As the international order created in 1945 collapses, the insecurity unleashed by him is uniting old enemies and driving neutral countries like India into new groupings such as RIC (Russia, India and China). Also, to shore up their security, Germany, Japan and South Korea, all pacifist countries, are now contemplating nuclear options.
Europe is in a state of disarray. Largely dependent on the US for its security, it finds itself pretty much abandoned, as the US has announced a new tariff of 10% from 1 February (25% from June) on the European countries who oppose this takeover. Their resistance notwithstanding, the annexation will spell NATO doom: an attack on a member is under Article 5 of the NATO charter an attack on all. What becomes of this Article when the leader of the Alliance purchases or annexes territory belonging to a smaller member country without any real or meaningful consultation with the inhabitants of this land?
US neighbours are smarting under repeated insults and threats. One of them—old ally Canada—has been compelled to retaliate with its own set of tariffs, even as it enters into a $1 trillion investment and trade deal with China. The other neighbour, Mexico, defiantly exports oil to Cuba, an old US foe. In South America, Venezuela has felt the full brunt of his wrath when it was invaded. Others struggle to deal with their insecurity with the recent version of the Monroe doctrine. Nearer home, China is fuming. It has lost nearly $60-$100 billion in investments in Venezuela as a result of CIA’s operations there.
India’s exports to the US from certain labour intensive sectors continue to suffer, but it refuses to give in to his extraneous and unreasonable demands, because that will only whet his appetite. Greenland is not the problem; it is only a symptom of the disease. The disease is the megalomania and insecurity of one man. Unfortunately, he happens to be the most powerful person on earth.
The writer was Chief Commissioner of Income Tax and is the author of “Moral Compass: Finding Balance and Purpose in an Imperfect World”, Harper Collins India, 2022.
