Why Would Trump Buy Greenland When He Can Rent It?
A mutually beneficial deal that avoids antagonizing the local population can be struck with relative ease, as Xi’s playbook for Africa shows.
Not for sale: Icebergs float behind the town of Kulusuk in Greenland.
Photographer: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP
President-elect Donald Trump still wants to buy Greenland, having previously likened it to a giant real estate deal. If so, he seems to have forgotten one relevant precept: Why own when you can more profitably rent?
When the US bought its way into the Arctic by purchasing Alaska from Russia in 1867, it also contemplated making a bid for Greenland, which is geographically part of North America but constitutionally part of Denmark. The US also offered Denmark $100 million for Greenland after World War II. Instead, Washington got a defense treaty centered on Thule Air Base, now Pituffik Space Base, the US military’s most northerly installation on Earth and strategically critical since the early years of the Cold War.