Greenland.  The next geopolitical flashpoint?  Home to 0.0007% of the world’s population.  Who’d have thought it?  Will future generations be talking about Nuuk in the same way that we mention Archduke Franz Ferdinand?

While Donald Trump casts his eye across countries of the world as though they are consumables from the latest Argos catalogue, it is perhaps worth spending a couple of minutes to consider Greenland’s history.

Greenland’s earliest recorded inhabitants appear to have been migrants from now-Canada around 2500BCE.  The earliest Europeans––those venturesome Norsemen––seem to have arrived in the late-9^th century CE.  In the 17^th century, Greenland was made part of the Danish Crown, and Greenlanders became official citizens of Denmark in 1953.  Recent years have seen growing calls for independence for Greenland, and Denmark has begun to devolve some political powers to a Greenlandic government.

A US airbase––Pituffik Space Base––was established on Greenland in 1941, to defend Greenland from potential German aggression during World War Two, although the project was denounced at the time by the Danish government.  The base remains to this day.

Trump’s casual cock-waggling regarding Greenland sets a dangerous precedent.  If all the world is nothing more than an Amazon shopping cart, what will be next on a global greed wish-list?  Scotland?  It would save on those expensive golf club green fees.  Argentina?  Free beef for those fat burgers.

In this kind of unstable political climate, perhaps we should be grateful for Brexit after all?  It has made Britain so impoverished and uninviting that no global megalomaniac in his right mind would even give it so much as a second glance.

© Beery Sue

Beery Sue has one of her rare excursions flexing her political muscles.