Greenland, the globe’s most sensitive political tripwire

POTUS 47 is on a high, the dangerous and delirious kind. From his latest Venezuelan escapade, he has come to believe in his own invincibility, or omnipotence of you will.

In the four military expeditions he has been involved in, no American servicemen or servicewomen, for that matter, have suffered any casualties. This has made his administration plan and execute wars, the kind where no casualties could be contemplated.

When assuming the presidency for a second stint, US President Donald Trump authorised the bombardment of Puntland, a breakaway province of Somalia. A mere twelve days in office, this was his first foray into a kinetic theatre of conflict. Needless to say, this adventurism did not result in any loss of military personnel.

Six months later, the Donald struck Iran with ferocity. In Operation Midnight Hammer, DJT dispatched the B-2 bombers carrying bunker-busting Tomahawk ordnance in order to destroy the nuclear facilities in the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, the Natanz Nuclear Facility and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre.

After the lightning-fast air bombing campaign, President Trump claimed with growing braggadocio that the successful Operation Midnight Hammer, “the very best in the world”, “the likes of which have never been seen”, had obliterated Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and its technical capabilities to spin their centrifuges and produce weapons-grade highly enriched uranium. In his ‘obliteration’ tour, he reminded his countrymen and countrywomen that his bravest pilots went in and out safely.

To feed his growing war confidence, the ‘peace’ president found the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine a very convenient cauldron to feed his two basic instincts. The first is the proclivity to use deception as a key instrument of US statecraft and its diplomatic normative precept. The second is his overweening obsession with dominating news.

The latter sentiment stood at variance with the popular clamour to release the Epstein files. The potential of the release of these reams upon reams of deposed-to files and video footage was horrifyingly disturbing. For the first time, something salaciously sensational would make Donald Trump the news. This is in contrast to Trump’s philosophy and his expectations of what the Office of the Commander-in-Chief entails. He makes the news. Not the other way round.

Awhile, in order to eschew the possibility of incurring casualties in the high seas, he quietly negotiated with the Al Ansar movement of northern Yemen, derisively referred to as the Houthis, specifically ensuring in their agreement that no US seacraft or warship should suffer the indignity of being sunk by ballistic missiles.

The stage was set. Thenceforth, it was predictable that whatever other war DJT would embark upon, would ensure that it would be in stealth, unprotracted and targets hit with precision.

In a high drama of airstrike rehearsals, the ebullient Commander-in-Chief chose the innocence and effervescence of yuletide to attack Sokoto in northern Nigeria. According to various spokespersons of the Trump administration, the Donald has christened himself as the anointed protector of Christianity throughout the world. He would not tolerate the massacre of Christians by Muslims in that country or anywhere else in the world, except Christians in Gaza.

The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Alhaji Bola Tinubu, for his part, sought his slice of glory from this aerial bombardment episode. After all, he is the one who invited the US military for an intervention against some complex version of domestic terrorists and ISIS-inspired jihadism in that part of the country. To do what exactly is disputed by Trump’s self-aggrandising narrative.

Eight days later, the US Delta Force, supported by 150 helicopters, hoisting drones and other radar-supported munitions, struck many targets in Venezuela, ranging from military bases to power transformers, including thirty Cuban military personnel who composed the perimeter security detail of the Presidential compound. Also, an approximate number of eighty more innocent civilians needlessly lost their lives.

Resulting from the euphoria of kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, a technically flawless operation that recorded not a single American casualty, the Washington neocon cohorts started listing the number of countries where Trump will be attacking next. It is an eclectic mix of countries to be sure, which on the face of it, seem somewhat unrelated. They include, but are not limited to, Cuba, Iran, Colombia and Mexico.

These countries stand accused of a number of things, which conveniently can be categorised into two. The first category of these is those countries considered to be facilitating the narco-trafficking enterprise. The second category consists of those countries considered to be supporting Hamas.

To all of these, there are two exceptions. Cuba and Greenland. As for Cuba, it is neither a facilitator of narco-trafficking nor is it accused of supporting Hamas materially. They are in that list only because a Cuban regime change operation represents a family commitment which the Secretary of State Marco Rubio must fulfil.

Enter Greenland!

In respect of Greenland, the entire edifice of deception and hypocrisy assumes extremely complex and elevated levels of sophistication. Greenland itself or its first nation owners are perplexed by the sudden spotlight on its virtues and, in similar measure, agitated by the deafening decibels of re-colonisation.

It has become apparent that if the man with a gun wrests them off from the current Danish colonisers, they shall be re-colonised for their rare earth minerals, notwithstanding the much-vaunted pretext that their country represents US national security interests in the Arctic. They too, as owners of the country, want these rare oxides for no other reason than to underwrite the continuity of their nationhood, their sustained economic development and the prosperity of their post-decolonised sovereign.

Notwithstanding many other extraneous considerations, Greenland is a colony of the Kingdom of Denmark. Denmark is a member of the European Union. Another layer of complexity is that Denmark is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO for short. But Denmark and its European partners are looking at the wrong defence mechanism.

Somehow, they keep referring to Article 5, a provision of collective defence against third-party aggression. For certainty, aside from the fact that NATO is the United States circus and everyone else in it is their clown, nothing in Article 5 imagines that all the EU countries can conjoin and club against their overlord, the United States of America.

At the back end of that complication is the fact that Denmark is powerless to prevent the US from taking over Greenland. Not even the entire leverage of the European Union is adequate in forcing ‘daddy’, as Mark Rutte once described Trump, into re-thinking his strategy. And even while the post-World War II Marshall Plan for the reconstruction and development of Europe had laid the basis for turning the entire Europe into a US vassal, it was Trump who had reduced political Europe into a toothless and voiceless echo chamber.

However, Greenland or Denmark or both would be very complicated undertakings for the United States. What with all the pretence to civility and the ‘rules-based order’ façade! Not so for Donald Trump. He intends to take Denmark, and most likely he will. The fact that a new Congress resolution stipulates that Trump must seek congressional approval before going to war with a foreign country would not stop Trump from getting approval for Greenland.

Two critical instruments are at Trump’s disposal. Trump may announce that the US is leaving NATO, thereby de facto dissolving the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. This move alone will force all other EU member countries to turn against Denmark. They would insist that for the safety of Europe and the unity of purpose, it is not worth keeping Greenland.

Trump may also buy Greenland on an instalment lay-buy. That way, the whole enterprise would look consensual, and the US will remain in NATO after all!. Supposing, however, that resorting to force became inevitable, it would suit Trump’s playbook, for not a single American soldier would be hurt.

Whether by military acquisition or by lay bye, taking Greenland from Denmark would snap the last invisible, fragile thread that holds the legend of Western civilisation together. But Donald wouldn’t care.

So which country is next?

Denmark here we come!

* Amb. Bheki Gila esq. is a Barrister-at-Law

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.

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