So, for any viewers of my channel older than three, you might remember back in 2019 when
former US President Donald Trump expressed his interest in the United States purchasing
the country of Greenland.
Now, at the time, this obviously sounded pretty stupid, and we all had a good laugh at the
stupid, stupid thing, and then we went back to licking subway tiles or whatever it was
that people did before 2020.
But what’s interesting about this particular crackpot scheme is that Trump was far from
the first person to propose it.
In fact, the US actually has a really long history of wanting to buy Greenland—back
in 1867, US Secretary of State William Seward considered making a bid for Greenland, but
was ultimately shot down after buying Alaska and killing the country’s hype over desolate
arctic wastelands.
Then in 1910, the US came a little closer, drawing up an actual formal proposal to trade
the island of Mindanao to Denmark in exchange for Greenland, so that Denmark could trade
Mindanao to Germany for Northern Schleswig, because back in 1910, populated islands were
basically like colonial Pokémon.
The closest the US ever came to buying Greenland was in 1946, when we actually offered Denmark
$100 million in gold for the island, and Denmark was like, “weird, no.”
So, clearly, the US has had its sights set on Greenland for quite a while, and no offense
to Greenland, but you kind of have to wonder…
why?
Well that’s a complicated question, but don't worry, because we have an even more
complicated question to answer first: “Can you even buy an entire country?”
The short answer is “no,” but the long answer is “kindaaaaaanotrealllllybutmaybeeesortaaaaa?”
The main example that people point to is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which—in
a sense—was purchased in the late 1800s by Belgian King Leopold II, who privately
bought up territories in Africa and declared it a country.
But that example’s not great, given that the local leaders didn’t know what they
were signing, the country never really operated as a real country, and King Leopold ended
up killing 10 million people in the process.
I mean, can you say I purchased an apple if I didn’t pay for it, it’s not an apple,
and also I lit the grocery store on fire?
Maybe, I’m not a scientist, but if this is the best example of countries being bought
in modern history, then buying countries seemingly isn’t a thing.
The biggest problem with the idea of buying an entire country—not just an island or
a large chunk of territory like Alaska—is that there usually isn’t anyone to buy the
country from.
I mean, a country could theoretically “sell” itself to another country, but that’s just
two countries choosing to merge, like when Syria agreed to basically get absorbed into
Egypt in the 50s to save themselves from their own Communist party.
But we’re not talking about just any country here, we’re talking about Greenland.
And Greenland is in a bit of a unique situation—you see, when Trump talked about buying Greenland,
he was talking about buying it from Denmark, claiming repeatedly that Denmark owns Greenland.
But unlike normal facts, that fact has the special quality of not being true.
So not true, in fact, that Denmark had to release a whole statement about how they don’t
actually own Greenland.
They do, however, have some control over Greenland—you see, Greenland is still part of the Kingdom
of Denmark; while they did break off from Denmark to become a fully-fledged, self-governing
country, Denmark still provides military defense and controls most of their foreign policy,
in addition to, most importantly, propping them up with that sweet, sweet Kroner.
Now, the United States might not be able to purchase Greenland from Denmark, but they
could, theoretically, outbid Denmark to become Greenland’s new sugar daddy, because the
key to being the best sugar daddy in town is being $30 trillion in debt.
But, let’s just set aside the complicated geopolitical truth for a minute and fantasize
about a world where the United States can buy whatever they want without the soyboys
at the UN whining about “self-determination”—what use does the US have for this massive Scandinavian
ice cube?
Well one particularly boring answer is that this massive Scandinavian ice cube is full
of crude oil, coal, zinc, copper, and iron, which makes it pretty bad at being an ice
cube but pretty great at building more fighter jets that don’t do anything.
There is, however, a more interesting answer, and it has to do with this place: the Northwest
Passage.
Right now, the only practical way to ship stuff through the Americas is to go all the
way down to the Panama Canal, because this is pretty much all ice… or at least it was
all ice until the oil companies of the world banded together to right this grave injustice.
In recent years, shipping companies have started shaving days off their shipping routes by
hiring ice-breakers and trudging through the arctic, but by 2060, this entire route will
likely be completely open during the months of August and September.
And if our heroes at Chevron keep it up, we might also get to see the theoretical Transpolar
Sea Route get some use for at least a couple of years before we all die.
So this general area is going to become one of the most important economic regions in
the world in the next decades, and as you might’ve noticed, Greenland is sitting smack-dab
in the middle of it.
It’s also no coincidence that the US started panicking about Greenland a year after China
started calling itself a “near-arctic” state, which is about as true as calling Sweden
a “near-African” state, but that didn’t stop them from planning their own arctic shipping
routes and also asking if they could pretty please start buying military bases in Greenland.
So, hey, if you were in the market for a Greenland, you probably want to do that sooner rather
than later.
But if instead of buying Greenland you just want to know more about the US’ weird long
history with acquiring territories around the world, I’d recommend checking out Daniel
Immerwahr’s book, How to Hide an Empire.
And the best way to enjoy this book, at least in my opinion, is to listen to it for free
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