The Unfortunate Greenland Kerfuffle

...we need a new approach...

It would be an understatement to say that I am not all that pleased with where we are in January 2026 with the Greenland question. This would not have been the productive path I would have recommended because, in the end, this is a very serious issue.

Sure, in the first few months of 2025, the meme-ish nature of it all was fun and funny…but only to a point.

In 2026, Denmark is not going to sell or otherwise transfer Greenland to the USA like they did with the now-U.S. Virgin Islands a bit more than a century ago.

However, before we go further, if you have a knee-jerk reaction to support or oppose anything or any topic because DJT is involved, please repress that feeling until at least the end of the post. It isn’t productive, enlightening, or good for your health—so give it a rest for a bit until we are done, then you can carry on as before.

Next, let’s do as we should in most things: let’s go to the chartroom.

Object Zero’s crayon work on the Arctic Institute’s map is superb to illustrate that point.

The Europeans have whipped themselves into an almost comical lather over it all. Having lived with their NATSEC nomenklatura for years, I’m not shocked. They tend to be very narrowly read, get their ideas about the USA from NYT, WaPo, the usual suspects in East Coast Universitlandia, and their nomenklatura is worm-ridden with the same people who opposed Cold War NATO efforts to counter the Soviet Union’s militarism and supported every anti-USA trend of the fiscal quarter, etc. It is always 1968 or 1983 with these people.

Unhelpful to trans-Atlantic cooperation has been an almost gleeful approach to triggering these people who never thought DJT would come back to power, and from 2020-24 acted like it. The vengeful and bitter are fighting with the frag-pattern hitting everyone else.

Behind that triggering and, at least from this side of the pond, trolling, is a very serious security concern in the high north that Greenland is, literally, right in the middle of.

The great circle route from Russia’s nuclear weapon delivery platforms to CONUS all go over the high Arctic over or around Greenland. It isn’t just Russia. Here is the great circle route from the center of Iran to the center of CONUS:

Then you have the natural resources of Greenland being utilized by China and Russia. Yes, yes. I know.

There is a better way. It isn’t as fun. It is slow, it is frustrating, but it is doable.

Denmark is a small nation of almost 6 million souls in a space of land about 2/3 the size of West Virginia. In the last year she finally started spending her fair share on defense, but even before then, she had been a solid ally. She already let us have bases in Greenland. If we need more we can sell the concept—along with Canada—as part of mutual defense. When it comes to keeping Russia and China at a distance, in backrooms we can work deals and twist Danish elbows. We won’t get all we want, but we should be able to get 80%. That’s good enough with friends.

I don’t get antagonizing the Danes like this. I think it is unnecessary and counterproductive. $0.02.

Yes, I would love to have American ownership of Greenland, but that isn’t a realistic option right now…especially after the last year. What we can have—if the Danes will let us—is an expanded presence on the island as needed.

I really wish that was where we were trying to go. Maybe we are, but we are not doing it in a productive way, and to be blunt, it is moving things in the wrong direction. It is time to try a different track.

Again, it won’t be as fun, but it has a better chance for success than the present plan. In the end, if maximizing Greenland’s geography for North American security is as serious as we say, we would change course.

h/t NJ5.