Despite the fact that Trump may soon want to put his face on Mount Rushmore, the strategic importance of Greenland and the Faroe Islands is becoming more and more apparent:
– Chinese and Russian warships are performing joint maneuvers in the arctic. China is building a Polar Silk Road.
– Biden and Trump (during his first term) built ties with both islands to counter Russia and China.
– Almost 90 billion barrels of oil and 1.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are in the areas (22 percent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas). Trillions of dollars worth of minerals–silver, copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, and rare earths–are underground there.
– Greenland already hosts a large U.S. military base with missile warning and space surveillance systems.
– Trump’s statements about the Panama Canal are due to concerns over the growing influence of Chinese state-owned companies there as well. Since 2022, the State Department has warned that Beijing’s acquisition of technologies, facilities, and infrastructure in Latin America may have other purposes.
– In 2022, the U.S. Southern Command said Chinese state-owned companies had working ports on both sides of the Panama Canal, ports which can be quickly pivoted toward military endeavors.
Trump may want to be the next Teddy Roosevelt with a new Monroe Doctrine, but hopefully he is not talking about military force. Like House Democrats have maintained, we shouldn’t be invading Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, or seizing the Panama Canal.