The Great Greenland Crisis has ended, and Donald Trump has declared victory. Last Friday, the president announced that he had reached a deal with the Danes that would give “the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many U.S. concerns.” The barren, icy prize is finally ours.
Or is it? Despite the usual bluster, bravado, and social media posts showing Greenland colored in with the Stars and Stripes, Trump’s avowed aim of annexation was not accomplished. The Dannebrog will still flutter in the Arctic breeze. According to a statement put out by Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen Friday, the deal “recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom [of Denmark] and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination.”
Nor does the new agreement appear to give American firms new economic privileges, another reason Trump has cited for taking the island (although, interestingly, it does come two weeks after a U.S.-based company closed a deal for a big Greenlandic mining concern).
Rather, so far as can be determined without seeing the actual text—which is due out this week, to be signed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly—the deal amounts to a kind of tinkering with the status quo.
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