Herewith the BBC using it’s typical reportage on the issue of the Greenland Crisis: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpqyn58v0dxo
For those interested in more than just the human interest angle:
Remember, “It’s the economy stupid!” ???
Well, the Greenland Crisis just HAS to be all about the map!
Four days ago, on what would have been my late mother’s 105th birthday, I used the above image. I use it again to make a point: This particular style of map; a Mercator projection.
The Mercator projection is a conformal cylindrical map projection first presented by Flemish geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. In the 18th century, it became the standard map projection for navigation due to its property of representing rhumb lines as straight lines. When applied to world maps, the Mercator projection inflates the size of lands the farther they are from the equator. Therefore, landmasses such as Greenland and Antarctica appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator. Nowadays the Mercator projection is widely used because, aside from marine navigation, it is well suited for internet web maps. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
The one thing we can deduce from President Trump’s behaviour, is that he attaches much importance to image and style; the outward appearance. Hence his focus of the White House ballroom project and the “Arc de Trump”! This focus has percolated into areas of federal policy. Mr Trump’s plans to construct the large guided missile cruisers with the USS Defiant as the lead ship. A ship that President Trump insists the USN will class as a “battleship” using the designation BBG (the “G” standing for “guided missile”) and not CBG the USN using the designation “CB” for a ship (the Alaska class) that it designated as large cruisers and not “battlecruisers”.
Mr Trump appears to be a dangerous type of man: a man who ignores professional advice!
Presumably, Admiral Daryl Caudle, the present Chief of Naval Operations will have sought to advise Mr Trump that a large surface vessel whatever it’s size and displacement CAN NOT be described as a battleship, if it’s largest guns are of 127 mm (5 inch) calibre and even if Mr Trump were to authorise development of a naval version of the US Army’s M198 howitzer, that has a calibre of 155 mm (6.1 inch). NB: Second London Naval Treaty signed by it’s participating nations on 25 March 1936 defined cruisers possessing a maximum calibre of 155 mm (6.1 inch) as “light cruisers” USN designation “CL”.
Thus by no stretch of naval nomenclature can the USS Defiant be described as a “battleship”!
Why am I labouring these points?
Because although to the vast majority of US Citizens and also the citizens of Denmark and of Greenland these are insignificant details, to Mr Trump they are very significant!
Mr Trump demands that the USN will possess a dozen battleships! You see, these large surface combatants have a feature that to Mr Trump is pre-eminent: Size and size gives presence! The FACT that concentrating so much military hardware in one vessel rather than distributing it across several – making the combined military hardware more effective – matters little! This because “presence” and “image” is what matters to Mr Trump!
À propos of the Greenland Crisis, Mr Trump is NOT acting rationally!
Denmark and Greenland will give the US ALL the security guarantees and access it desires!
As to the thorny issue of the “rare earths”, these will not be economically viable until the Greenland ice sheet has melted significantly – at which point the world economy and the world’s geography will have altered dramatically!
Then we have the issue of the processing of these “rare earths”. China – an authoritarian state – processes 90% of all rare earths. It has a plentiful supply of rare earths within it’s own borders but imports large quantities of ore from other states for processing in China?
Why?
Because refining/processing “rare earths” is an environmental and heath and safety nightmare – which is why the USA closed down it’s refining capacity and exported it to China where public objections counted for little!
As for the oil between Canada and Greenland, this would be vastly expensive to extract and the cost to insure against catastrophic environmental consequences is prohibitive!
So what does Greenland offer the USA?
Two things:
#1: An increase in land area of 836,330 sq mi (2,166,086 km2) making the USA 4,633,072 sq mi (11,999,606 km2) the second largest nation state on Earth after Russia! Putting Canada into 3rd place!
#2: Due to it’s geographic location (far North) the size of the land mass is enhanced due to the effects of the Mercator projection!
For the US Government to destroy the NATO alliance for this, is INSANITY and international politics as it’s most ridiculously banal!