Greenland and Munich.

More on comparing dictators.

Like spectators at a tennis match, the world warily watches the back-and-forth between Trump and Denmark over the status of its autonomous region, Greenland. The idea of the US taking control (annexing) Greenland, peacefully or by invasion, has floated around for 200 years since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declared its total opposition to any form of European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Note that Monroe didn’t proscribe American colonialism, of which there has been plenty.

Trump apparently said something about Greenland during his first term but it returned with a vengeance after the election last year. In December, he said controlling Greenland was “an absolute necessity” for US security, although he didn’t bother explaining what had suddenly changed compared with the past 75 years. It popped up at different times but was thrust into the world’s face on January 7^th when Donald Trump Jr decided to go Greenland to hand out MAGA hats. As is true of most things Trump Jr touches, that turned into a bit of a fiasco when the only people who would accept them were a bunch of hard drinkers he corralled in a pub. Next day, at a press conference, Trump Sr. refused to rule out using military force to take control of either Greenland or Panama. Canada was apparently a bit too big for the Army to digest but he hoped the Canucks would see reason. The fact that both Denmark and 85% of Greenlanders are totally opposed to any affiliation with the US doesn’t bother the Trumpists one iota.

Today’s script is that Trump insists Greenland is essential for US national security: “We need Greenland, very importantly, for international security. We have to have Greenland. It's not a question of: 'Do you think we can do without it?' We can't.” (March 27^th). He has previously said he will take control of it “one way or another.” The reasons are obscure. The first and most commonly quoted is military security. This is nonsensical. As a member of NATO, Denmark has granted extra-territorial rights to the US for its large and strategically vital military base at Pituffik, NW Greenland (formerly Thule) whose huge radar sets face the Arctic coast of Russia, watching for missile launches. Under the accession treaty from 1949, the US can expand its bases in Greenland or establish new ones without Danish consent. Today, as the Arctic ice cap recedes due to global warming, there is increasing Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic Sea, including newly-opened trade routes, exploration for gas and minerals and, of course, military activity. However, whether the US takes control of Greenland or not, its actual position there and security risks haven’t changed in the past fifty years.

The second reason we hear is that Greenland has very large deposits of largely untapped essential minerals, including rare earth minerals, which are essential for the IT, renewable energy and electric car industries. At 2.16million km², Greenland is the world’s largest island (Australia is about 7.7m km2) but, due to its isolation (mostly within the Arctic Circle) and forbidding climate, there hasn’t been much mineral exploration until recently. As a result, little is known of its resources. Bearing in mind that Trump wouldn’t know rare earths from coffee grounds, and he thinks the periodic table is the counter in the supermarket that sells tampons, this hasn’t come from him. People are telling him and he falls for it, like he fell for the fairy story that Ukraine has $15trillion worth of rare earths; chief suspect is cousin Elon, who does know about rare earths and renewables and IT and is insatiably greedy and power-mad (and, the rumours go, addicted to ketamine).

For myself, I don’t believe it has anything to do with Russian missiles dropping unannounced on Manhattan, because that’s already covered by Pituffik, or with minerals, because Trump doesn’t do holes in the ground. Instead, the idea is a two-fold itch that rattles around in the ever-expanding spaces between his ears. Itch Number One is the Monroe Doctrine: he looks at a map of the Western Hemisphere and asks: “What’s that funny flag stuck on that big island up there?” When he’s told it’s the Dannebrog, Denmark’s flag, it annoys him intensely. He doesn’t like Europeans, especially if they don’t speak English, and he doesn’t want any outsiders poking their noses in what everybody knows is America’s God-given Zone of Influence. Also, even he can see Greenland is much closer to Noo Yark than to Europe, and if the US took over, it would have Canada surrounded on three sides and therefore much easier to digest. Or something like that. Again, interesting, but I don’t think that’s the Really Big Itch.

The title of this blog is Narcisso-Fascism, where Trump is the latest and greatest Narcissus to bloom in the White House and his twitching, seething retinue make up the fascists standing in a row. In ten weeks’ time, he will turn 79. By this stage of life, people start to wonder about their place in the history books, and he’s no different. As a real estate wheeler and dealer, naturally he has often thought about the great real estate deals that made the US: the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 (2million km² bought from France); the Florida purchase of 1819 (187,000 km² bought from Spain); the Texas Annexation (a million km² stolen from Mexico and the Navajo); the Oregon Deal (750,000km², snaffled from Britain) and the one everybody remembers, the Alaska Purchase of 1867, 1.75million km² purloined from Russia for less than two cents an acre. By being the one who “got Greenland one way or another,” Trump wants to go down in history as the last and greatest of all American (and indeed world) real estate tycoons. Nobody could possibly trump that deal. He would even name it “The Trump Deal.”

Agreed, he was briefly interested in redeveloping Gaza without any pesky Palestinians to spoil the view but Greenland dumps on Gaza from a great height. But, you may object, that’s completely irrational. The US can get a lease on another military base for next to nothing, and get permits to build mines, and even permission to build a Trump Hotel for the miners and a brothel, all in the family tradition, and you’re right. All of that is true and makes perfect sense but we’re talking politics here, and if it made sense, it wouldn’t be politics. In fact, we’re talking about humans. This has nothing to do with rationality and everything to do with the universal human drives of greed and fame taking the form of Trump doing a Napoleon and crowning himself as the greatest US president of all, totally eclipsing his mortal enemy, Obama. Oh, and Biden, it’s so easy to forget Biden. The whole Greenland thing is all about and only about that greatest of human failings, the drive to dominate: “I’m the greatest so bow down and worship me.” At this stage of his life, domination is all he has left.

The process of negotiating with Denmark, if such chaos can be called a process, goes back and forth. Their latest sally was not just a SNAFU but a FUBAR of truly epic proportions. It seems the Vice-President’s wife decided to take one of the sprogs to Greenland for a few days to see a dog sled race. Normally, that would take months of planning and coordination with the various security agencies and military transport, not to mention the courtesy of letting the Royal Palace in Copenhagen know that a bigwig was on the way, but she didn’t think of that. Soon, the VP himself decided to tag along, then the locals pulled out of the little party they had planned as it would send the wrong message, so Mr and Mrs gave the dog race a miss and settled on half a day at the military base (at a total cost of millions). There, as VP, the frighteningly inexperienced but ludicrously self-confident JD felt the need to give a rousing speech to the assembled troops but he forgot to notify the speechwriters and gave it off the cuff.

We can start with a few excerpts from his rambling tirade (compiled from various sources as I can’t find a copy of the speech on the White House site):

Our message to Denmark is very simple. You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have under-invested in the people of Greenland and you have under-invested in the security of this incredible, beautiful landmass. We need to ensure that America is leading in the Arctic … This place, this base, this surrounding area, is less secure than it was 30-40 years ago, as some of our allies have not kept up... Europe (has) not kept pace... with military spending, and Denmark has not kept pace in devoting the resources necessary to keep this base, to keep our troops, and in my view to keep the people of Greenland safe from a lot of aggressive incursions from Russia, China, and other nations…. We do not think that military force is ever going to be necessary. …Mr Trump is a president of peace … We respect the self-determination of Greenlanders, we believe in the self-determination of the population of Greenland…. What the president has said... is that we need to have more of a position in Greenland.

What the troops thought of his performance we’re not told (in the American military, troops are treated as having no brains; see Kissinger, H: “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy”). What I thought of it was “Hang on, déjà vu strikes again. Let me think, 1938, Munich, wasn’t it? Let’s see what we can find.” What emerged was chillingly familiar. After Germany forcibly annexed Austria in the Anschluss of March 1938, it wasn’t long before Hitler turned to his next project, to “recover” the 3.5million ethnic Germans who had remained in Bohemia when Czechoslovakia became independent in 1919. With a fifth column of provocateurs causing trouble in what was known as the Sudetenland, meaning the extensive Czech borderlands abutting Germany and Austria, Hitler began his familiar routine of saying Germans were being mistreated and unless it stopped, Germany would be forced to intervene to keep the peace: “It is not Germany who is to blame for the fact that there is a Sudeten German problem at all.” Necessarily, this involved the Western Powers that had guaranteed Czechoslovakia’s independence, and Hitler played them perfectly, with threats and complaints alternating rapidly with pleas for assistance and support and whining victimhood.

The crisis peaked in September 1938. In a speech before the Reichstag, September 1^st, 1939, Hitler said: “That the problems had to be solved was clear … You know the endless attempts I made for a peaceful clarification and understanding of the problem of Austria, and later of the problem of the Sudetenland, Bohemia, and Moravia. It was all in vain.” That is, it was all the other side’s fault, they were unreasonable, Germany was trying to help but all his efforts were treated with contempt so now Germany was running out of patience. For the sake of peace and the Germans trapped in Czechoslovakia, Hitler was prepared to lay his life on the line, as he had done for four years during World War I, etc. He also appointed Hermann Göring as his successor, followed by Heinrich Himmler, which doesn’t sound as though he was expecting a peaceful time. During this speech, he stunned the world with the news that Germany and the USSR had concluded a non-aggression pact: “Any struggle between our people would only be of advantage to others. We have, therefore, resolved to conclude a pact which rules out for ever any use of violence between us.” Not dissimilar, one may say, to Trump’s sudden turn toward Russia after he couldn’t get what he wanted from Ukraine.

Speaking on Sept 26^th 1938, Hitler continued his onslaught:

But I must also declare before the German people that in the Sudeten German problem my patience is now at an end. I made an offer to Herr Benes (Czech president) which was no more than the realization of what he had already promised. He now has peace or war in his hands. Either he will accept this offer and at length give the Germans their freedom, or we will get this freedom for ourselves.

Compare this with Vance: You Danes have let everybody down so we’re going to have to fix up your mess. Next day, Sept. 27^th, as British PM Chamberlain and French PM Daladier invented shuttle diplomacy, US Pres. Roosevelt cabled Hitler, who quickly responded with a long letter. Again, he was doing his best, the Czechs were an impossible race and if the situation led to war, it wasn’t his or Germany’s fault:

I can and must decline all responsibility of the German people and their leaders, if the further development, contrary to all my efforts up to the present, should actually lead to the outbreak of hostilities…. conditions in the Czechoslovak State, as is generally known, have in the last few weeks become completely intolerable. Political persecution and economic oppression have plunged the Sudeten Germans into untold misery…. the deprivation of rights of 3.5 million Germans in Czechoslovakia must cease, and that these people, if they cannot find justice and help by themselves, must receive both from the German Reich. However, to make a last attempt to reach the goal by peaceful means … It now rests, not with the German Government, but with the Czechoslovak Government alone, to decide if they want peace or war.

A few days later, at a conference in Munich to which the Czechs were not invited (like the one Trump’s team had with the Russians re Ukraine), the Western Powers agreed to hand to the Reich most of the borderlands of Bohemia, along with their entire population (including many ethnic Czechs, Slovaks and Ruthenians as well as Germans who didn’t like the Nazis) and industry and, most significantly, the Czech army’s very potent border defences. Czechoslovakia was finished, and the last chance to avoid war slipped through the bloodless fingers of the politicians.

This pattern of an ever-changing barrage of threats, pleas, blandishments, whining and blackmail is de rigueur for dictators, militarists and other bullies (see George W Bush and A Blair re Iraq, 2002), with the various roles bouncing back and forth between the carefully selected “good guys” and the baddies to confuse everybody and make the audience lose patience with the intended victims. Trump does this all the time, it’s how he conducted his businesses: “Yeah, we’re interested, no we’re not, go away, you stuffed it up, leave it to me, I’ll sort it out, OK final offer, nobody else will be interested - who did you say? They’re stupid, they haven’t got any money, they’ll cheat you, you gotta deal with us, we’ll look after you but don’t annoy us or we’ll kneecap you blah blah.” It’s the bad faith negotiator’s version of the gross Steve Bannon’s approach to public relations: “Flood the zone with shit.” It always works because normal people assume the other side is negotiating in good faith (Rules for Negotiators No. 11(b): Anybody who uses this method of “negotiating,” better known as the psychopath’s method, is not acting in good faith and must be avoided).

The legal position is that the disposition of Greenland is entirely a matter for the Greenlanders to decide but Washington has never given a shit about international law, only the law of the jungle. All the bluster coming from the White House is part of the process of softening the other side and manipulating them to make them appear the aggressors, just so the real aggressors can sneak in and steal what they want.

Trump wants Greenland, that much is clear. He doesn’t have the slightest interest in anybody else’s opinions, nor for the effect it would have on America’s already seriously damaged reputation in the world. This plan is not for America, nor for Greenland, nor for security, or mines, or anything rational: this is for the greater glory of Donald J Trump alone, to assure his place in history. International relations reduced to the level of a single very disturbed individual’s psychopathology. Two million years of evolution and this is the best we can do?

But the message from Munich is germane: giving in to bullies doesn’t make it stop. If the world suddenly caves in and hands Trump his dream of being the greatest real estate tycoon in history, he will immediately start on something else (Musk: “You interested in Mars? Great views, wide open spaces …”) Why will he? Because that’s what humans do. I’ll correct that. That’s what evil humans do. For them, domination is more important than peace.

BTW, as I warned last week, Netanyahu wants Iran destroyed, along with Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Lebanon. Trump is now using the same process of softening against Iran.

Oh, and China, while they’re whipping the world into shape.