{"id":989,"date":"2019-08-22T14:49:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T11:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=989"},"modified":"2019-09-05T15:14:57","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T12:14:57","slug":"why-does-the-president-of-the-united-states-want-to-buy-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=989","title":{"rendered":"Why does the President of the United States want to buy Greenland?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The recent statements by US President Donald Trump that he wants to buy\nGreenland from Denmark which is the sovereign state in Greenland, have caused\nmany wonderings and questions and\nsince Greenland is the largest island in the world with very little population\ndue to the particularly difficult climatic conditions prevailing on this\nisland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>by <strong>Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis-<em>https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:12px\"><em>(Prohibited by intellectual property law or in any way unlawful use\/appropriation of this article, with heavy civil and criminal penalties for the offender.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/320px-GreenlandWorldMap.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-990\" width=\"557\" height=\"245\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/320px-GreenlandWorldMap.png 320w, https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/320px-GreenlandWorldMap-300x132.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 557px) 100vw, 557px\" \/><figcaption><strong>Greenland in World Map<\/strong><br>Photo by Author: Election world assumed, Source: Own work assumed,<br>licensed Public Domain, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Public_domain<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Greenland&#8217;s semi-autonomy\nregime<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greenland&#8217;s semi-autonomy regime was attributed with the adoption of the\nact of Semi-autonomy jointly signed (2009) Greenland (capital Nuuk) and Denmark\n(capital Copenhagen) entitles the Greenland government to have the full control\nof political decisions on all domestic and economic policy issues. On the other\nhand, Denmark, as the sovereign state in Greenland, has the right to exercise\nveto in security issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, Greenland&#8217;s semi-autonomy regime gives its government the right to\nrefuse to sell it even if Denmark was discussing something like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both the oil fields and the natural gas deposits in Greenland are not so\nvaluable for the US to be interested in, and since the shale gas method states\nthat the USA is a country with exports of gas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Greenland deposits in rare earths are too expensive to be mined,\ncleaned and marketed, as they contain uranium that requires special and very\nprecise treatment to be cleaned which is very costly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The truth behind the possible Greenland acquisition from the US<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Behind the statements to date of US President Donald Trump are the real\nreasons of interest in obtaining Greenland, which is the high-value\ngeo-strategic importance of the world&#8217;s largest island for the USA and more\ngenerally for the Great powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The problem is not that only the US know this high-grade strategic\nimportance of Greenland, but that China knows it. China&#8217;s efforts to place its\n&#8220;foot&#8221; in Greenland began in 2016, when a Chinese company proposed\nbuying an abandoned US military base in Greenland. The purpose of the Chinese\npurchase proposal was the commercial type of exploitation. Denmark, of course,\nas an ally of the United States, refused the Chinese proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>China&#8217;s second attempt took place last year when a Chinese company won the tender for the reconstruction of the runways of one of the 17 airports available in Greenland. Greenland was forced to give a new project contractor, denying the Chinese company the undertaking of the project and given that if the Chinese company performed the project would automatically create political and commercial rights\/benefits from China to the government of Greenland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/320px-Thule_air_base_above.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-991\" width=\"564\" height=\"296\"\/><figcaption><strong>Thule Air Base, Northern Greenland, looking west to Saunders Island<\/strong><br>Photo by Author: USAF, Source: US Air Force Weather,<br>licensed Public Domain, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Public_domain<br><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The strategic character interests of the US in Greenland<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the most important U.S. bases in the world is in Greenland. It is\nthe air base-Thule-which among other tasks could provide logistics services to\nmilitary aircrafts in the event of a US conflict with another country to claim\nthe Arctic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For decades, and during the Cold war, agreements between the United States\nand Denmark have been in force for the use of US military bases in Greenland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition, in the US air base Thule which is located on the northwest\ncoast of Greenland there is one of the most important strategic character\nradar\/scanning systems used by the U.S. for monitoring the Arctic cycle and not\nonly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Thule air base in Greenland is the northern most base of the US Armed\nForces (Headquarters of the 12th US Space Warning Squadron). In fact, Thule\nbase and from the era of Cold war, using its powerful radar, has had the duty\nto provide early warning to the US both for potential inbound enemy\nintercontinental ballistic missiles and for swarms of strategic enemy bombers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition, another duty of the US base Thule and outside of the monitoring and early warning of ballistic missiles and enemy planes is the monitoring of satellites which follow low to Earth orbit and polar orbit respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Reconnaissance_from_Thule_Air_Base.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-992\" width=\"529\" height=\"337\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Reconnaissance_from_Thule_Air_Base.jpg 446w, https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Reconnaissance_from_Thule_Air_Base-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\" \/><figcaption><b>Reconnaissance from Thule Air Base<\/b><br>Photo by Author: Unknown<br>licensed Public Domain, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Public_domain<br><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>At the same time, this base also features a Navy yard deep of water making\nit in its total the cornerstone in any attempt for occupation or retaken of\nArctic by the US. Especially today at a time when Russia has shown actively its\nwill to control the Arctic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greenland&#8217;s geographic location acts as a shield for both Canada and the US\nin terms of any extreme weather phenomena during winter. If Greenland were to\nbe disappeared from the map, both Canada and the US could not easily be\ninhabited areas due to the extreme cold weather. Greenland and its\ngeo-strategic framework for both Canada and the United States have the same\nrole of the shield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If current US President Donald Trump manages the US to buy\/acquire\nGreenland and claim Greenland as the 51 state and star in the United States\nflag, then he will have accomplished something that only William H.\nSeward-United States Secretary of State (1861-1869) under the Presidency of\nAbraham Lincoln (1861-1865) and the Presidency of Vice President Andrew Johnson\n(1865-1869)-had succeeded to buy Alaska from Russia in 1867. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent statements by US President Donald Trump that he wants to buy Greenland from Denmark which is the sovereign state in Greenland, have&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,3],"tags":[954,161,952,655,951,713,58,953,70],"class_list":["post-989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america-geopolitical-issues","category-geopolitical","tag-arctic","tag-china","tag-denmark","tag-donald-trump","tag-greenland","tag-rare-earths","tag-russia","tag-us-air-base-thule","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":993,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}