Greenland
In general and all else equal, peaceful U.S. territorial expansion in the western hemisphere would be a good thing. Good for the United States on balance and good for the acquired territories on balance. Obvious security and/or economic benefits for all involved.
I see a lot of people denying #1, but if Greenland were up for sale, it would be a no-brainer to consider buying it. We are a wealthy nation and it is hard to imagine a scenario where paying market price for Greenland would not be worth it.
Greenland is not currently up for sale.
That alone does not mean we shouldnāt test the market. At some price, Greenland probably is for sale. It canāt hurt to offer a price and/or make it known that we are a motivated buyer. See #1 and #2 above.
We have essentially done this, and Denmark is still not currently interested in selling.
That should mostly be the end of the story. Thereās nothing inherently wrong with leaning on them a littleāwe drive hard bargains and leverage hard/soft power all the time with even the closest of our allies (e.g. Canada, UK)ābut shifting from market transactions to coercive diplomacy implicates a much wider cost/benefit analysis.
Denmark is a close democratic ally, a highly cooperative security partner and, to a somewhat lesser degree, a highly cooperative economic partner. There is no reason to believe any of those things are likely to change in the short or medium term.
Consequently, most of the benefits of acquiring Greenlandāand nearly all of the security benefitsācan pretty easily be obtained without actually purchasing it. This isnāt the Danes rejecting U.S. military planning or strategic leadership in Greenland. Itās closer to the opposite. If there are strategic reasons to increase US or NATO presence in Greenland, we can just do it.
Could that change? Sure. Is there any reason to believe it will? No.
The costs of acquiring Denmark coercively are anything but small. A trade war with Western Europe isnāt good for us in the short-term, and pushing our closest allies into tighter economic alliances with our major rivals is a huge medium/long term mistake. Just dumb.
And blowing up NATO over Greenland is so unthinkably dumb, it makes a trade war look appealing. NATO is the basis of the western security system, and that makes it the basis of the western economic alliance. Acquiring Greenland at the cost of NATO makes absolutely no sense; it would be a huge blow against our security and against our economic interests.
The Trump administration has never been fond of NATO, and there are problems with it. But many of those problems are creatures of its success. NATO is like a vaccine; it has worked so well at its core purpose that people now have trouble understanding why it is necessary to continue it. Itās insanely cheap at the price we pay; no one in 1935 would even believe it possible.
We could survive without NATO. But if we were to militarily take Greenland, it might not just be the end of NATO, it might also jeopardize our security/economic relationship with Canada. That is beyond unthinkable. The military alliance for the strategic defense of North America is so valuable that even a modest crack in it would be a huge blow to our entire global position.
I doubt the Trump administration has any intention of a military invasion of Greenland. It would be an existential threat to Trumpās presidency and an earthquake in the global markets, two things Trump is keenly protective about. But they have already taken the coercive diplomacy to a level that is destabilizing NATO and the corresponding economic alliances.
I also doubt that Trump has any intention of a serious trade war over this. It almost seems like the perfect time to go long on a TACO trade. What I think Trump never accounts for is the cost of bluffs. This isnāt poker, where you play hard at the table and when you get up everyone is friends. The whole thing is endogenous, and every action colors every future relationship.
But Trump also seems unhinged about this, and unhinged in general lately, even conditional on his usual behavior. Undoubtedly, that has some benefits in coercive diplomacy. And he plays the madman well. But the downside risk of this is enormous, and the upside gain so little.
Itās absurd how much this is obviously a vanity/spite project for Trump, and how anti-modern his understanding of international relations is. The whole Nobel Prize thing is like a deleted scene from Idiocracy and the imperial desires of Trump recall the world of the 19th century, before 20th century economics de-linked national wealth from territorial expansion and great leaders were still often judged by such conquests. That Trump canāt even stay on script about the Arctic security situation for 2 minutes without going back to his Nobel slight is darkly comical.
The endgame here seems obvious. Trump will cut a face-saver ādealā that we could have had wideout all this nonsense. The administration will crow about it. Partisans will view it through their partisan lenses. Our short-term situation will not be much affected. But our medium-term economic and security relationship with Europe/NATO will be further eroded.