On Wednesday, I published an article that discussed President Donald Trump’s plans to take over Greenland, under Denmark’s watch, and as time goes on, it’s becoming clear that he means business: the United States will take Greenland away from Denmark whether they like it or not.
It is now becoming clear: it’s a matter of national security, because if we don’t seize Greenland, Russia or China will, and that means that our nation could in theory be at risk, leaving us no other choice than to take the island nation of 57,000 over before someone else does. Today, Trump made it clear: we will own Greenland “the easy way” or “the hard way.” He’s not messing around, folks.
If our country does in fact take Greenland over, it will be the largest transfer ever, even larger than the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803 from France and the takeover of Alaska in 1867 from Russia. Neither purchases resulted in immediate statehood; Louisiana became an official state in 1812 and Alaska received its statehood in 1959.
What that means is that if (and it’s a big if!) we receive Greenland one way or another, it may not become a state for many years, if at all. After all, we do have territories or possessions that we have that will likely never become actual, legitimate states.
Puerto Rico, for example, will never become our 51st state, despite the fact that we invaded and overtook them in 1898. Guam was seized in the same year and will likewise never achieve statehood. It will remain a territory. Those two entities are relevant to this article because it shows that if Trump gets his wish one way or another, Greenland would remain a possession or a territory, but never a state.
Reuters reported this week that Trump was willing to give a stipend of up to $100,000 per Greenlander as a way to convince them to join the United States willingly. This revelation comes in the wake oof Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s address to members of Congress.
Anything can happen at this point, but it’s quite obvious that Trump will not let this go. He will almost certainly and literally order in the troops. That will bring forth a military confrontation between our fine country and Denmark, whose military is pretty much non-existent, as well as NATO allies.
In other words, things are likely going to get worse before they get better. Again, I have to ask: is all of this really willing to have blood on his hands over a want, not a need?