By Stephen Smoot
President Donald Trump has moved back into his comfort zone on foreign policy – working on a real estate deal for Greenland that would even outstrip Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.
Communist China continues to nudge the world back toward an imperialist mindset as they follow the old Soviet Union’s example of buying influence in struggling Third World countries. This has sparked concern in the United States and Europe and has led to Trump making aggressive moves as first steps to secure Greenland and the Panama Canal to keep them from undue foreign influence.
Greenland has significant importance both in a strategic and national security sense and also economic. The largest island in the world hides tremendous mineral wealth under the ice.
Moves such as those made by Red China and the possible coming American countermoves resemble conditions that date back over a century and a half. Britain launched its second wave of colonial acquisitions after the 1860s in response to France (both the Second Empire and Third Republic) and the German Empire expanding influence through collecting territory across the Eastern Hemisphere.
The United States had “closed” the Western Hemisphere to colonization with the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. Only France seriously challenged America on this – and that only during the Civil War.
President Trump’s goal lies in acquiring Greenland outright, but his experience in real estate gives him the understanding that the United States can skin that cat in a number of different ways.
Greenland has a population of approximately 56.000 (which means that under the 1787 Northwest Territory legislation, still the law of the land, it would need to add 4,000 to even enter consideration for statehood) and a growth rate of 0.2 percent. Almost the entire population lives on the southeast and western coastlines. It occupies a similar status vis a vis the Kingdom of Denmark as Australia and Canada had a century ago. Greenland handles its own domestic affairs, but retains a sovereign connection to Denmark through the monarchy.
Currently, according to the CIA World Factbook, Denmark must currently subsidize the territory. This includes the lucrative fishing industry.
Denmark has often found itself in the crosshairs of Great Power conflict and ambition. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Emperor of France pressured neutral Denmark to join his side and contribute use of the moderately formidable Danish Navy. Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington and Prime Minister landed at the capital of Copenhagen while the Royal Navy seized the fleet. Prussia and Austria, during Bismarck’s ploys to unify the German state, found itself defeated by both powers and two territories attached to the Danish Crown seized.
During World War I President Woodrow Wilson, using a rationale not dissimilar to Trump, pressured Denmark to sell its Virgin Islands colony in the Caribbean to the US to keep the German Empire from seizing them and using them as a base to attack the US or British interests in that sea.
Secretary of State Robert Lansin made an offer that Denmark could not refuse. Take $25 million for them or the United States will seize them without paying.
The biggest hurdle lies in the people who adamantly oppose living under the American flag. The population is a mixture of natives and Danes with a sprinkling of residents from the three other Scandinavian countries.
Since the Great Powers seem to be gearing up for another round of imperial competition, Trump should look back to that era to find the compromises possible to strike a deal.
The United States could obtain what it needs in Greenland with almost no effect on the population through a long-term lease. For example, the United States has a perpetual lease from Cuba for Guantanamo Bay Naval Base which was negotiated decades before Fidel Castro’s ruinous revolution.
That would likely serve as a non-starter as a model for Greenland, but another example could be workable. Great Britain secured (albeit by coercion) a 99 year lease from the Chinese Empire in 1898 for Hong Kong. Britain left Hong Kong in 1997, faithfully observing the terms agreed upon.
A workable solution could come from the British example in Hong Kong. Trump could negotiate for a 99 year lease from the Kingdom of Denmark for 80 to 90 percent of the island, but only from the lands currently uninhabited or, frankly, uninhabitable. Leave the coastal towns and cities in the care of the Greenland government, ultimately under the sovereignty of the Danish monarchy.
Make sure to get both surface and mineral rights, of course.
Do not offer a fixed monetary amount. Cuba was originally paid $2,000 a year for the Bay. Under President Gerald Ford, the US agreed to up the payment to over $4,000 a year for land that, in the free market, would be worth many millions.
Instead of offering a yearly sum that inflation would erode over time, negotiate a severance tax rate that US companies and others extracting resources from Greenland would have to pay to the Danish monarchy, which could then distribute back to Greenland’s government. The United States government could also pay a negotiated property tax rate on top of the severance taxes.
These revenues could serve as a huge benefit to Denmark, which could use them in lieu of its national budget to subsidize what the people in its territory need from them currently.
And, finally, the US should work into the offer the right of first refusal on the part of the United States once the 99 year lease ends.
Trump’s style of negotiation starts with the hardball tactic to get his target off kilter, then moves toward the middle as the process continues. He has applied the roughneck strategy learned in the real estate brawling conducted in New York City in the 80s and 90s in a number of different ways. It never fails to strike those unused to it off guard, but it generally ends in a deal that all can live with.
Trump’s style is not without historical precedent. Prince Otto von Bismarck as Chancellor of the German Empire used alternating styles of abrasiveness and reasonableness to great effect and became one of the great masters of foreign policy – and after the Franco-Prussian War, peacemaking.
