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[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Not a shot fired, not a snowball thrown... if President Donald Trump is genuine in his blustering threats to seize Greenland for the United States, military experts believe it could be easily and bloodlessly done.
But the geopolitical earthquake will be vast – more seismic even than that set off by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ‘In military terms, it would probably not be a difficult operation,’ warned General Sir Richard Shirreff, Nato’s former deputy supreme allied commander Europe yesterday.
‘But its political implications would be massive. And the one person who’s going to be more delighted about it than anybody else is Vladimir Putin – because it could tear Nato apart.’
Until Trump’s incendiary comments this week, followed by the unexpected visit of his son Donald Jr on the family’s private jet (nicknamed Trump Force One) to the capital Nuuk, few people knew more about Greenland than can be gleaned from an Arctic wildlife documentary.
It has walruses and a dwindling number of polar bears, and is dark for nearly half the year. It is a Danish territory. In 1916 the 28th US president Woodrow Wilson – also tempted by Greenland’s resources – ceded all interest in the island as a sweetener in a deal to buy the Virgin Islands from Denmark.
Greenland is mostly icebound which – as we know – is melting fast. Glaciers are disintegrating, with experts warning the Arctic Ocean could soon see its first ice-free summer for the first time in recorded history.
The melting ice is crucial to Trump’s urgent interest in claiming the territory – for four powerful reasons.
Firstly, as the seaways become navigable, a route between the Atlantic and the Pacific opens up – the fabled Northwest Passage between Greenland and northern Canada. That route could partly replace the Panama Canal as the link between America’s east and west coasts. If it does, Trump will want to control it.
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