GEOPOLITICAL LOGIC BEHIND CREEP1'S SPOKEN MADNESS ON

Here are a couple of basic geo-economic facts.

1 Contrary to the ways in which most liberal media talks about it, Greenland is not quite "part of Denmark" but a Danish post-colony. For lack of a better word, a dependency. Its relative separation from Denmark is recognized by the Danish state as well, as, since 1978, when it ceased to be a de jure colony, Greenland has had a limited arrangement of self-determination. In practice, national sovereignty of a colonial power over the dependency is considerably different from the sovereignty of a "mainland" territory (which is, in turn, of course, also limited in practice by a host of other considerations, e.g., by peaceful arrangements, as in the supra-state entity commonly called the EU, which in fact represents a "sharing and pooling" of the member states' sovereignties, down to various threats and actual uses of political violence, including war, etc.) In short, the best way to summarize the question of sovereignty, including Greenland's, is this: "it's complicated." That of course is not a blanket justification for seizure of land, it has never been. But it needs to be said that the idea of snatching a dependency from another colonial power is not exactly un-heard-of in the history of the capitalist colonial world-system, and it is not the same thing as a major NATO power engaging in land grab against another NATO-member state. It will definitely be interesting, really fun to watch for those who like absurd drama, to see Denmark invoke NATO's famous, oft cited Article 5, claiming it has been attacked by a foreign power. That happens to be a founder and by far the most powerful member of NATO.

But, anyway.


2 Of course, the US already has a military presence in Greenland and the current official US policy is that there are no plans to increase it. Coincidentally, the US troops serving at a base on Greenland have just started undergoing "diversity training." HOWEVER: Due primarily to global warming and the attendant, simpler, easier availability of northern Eurasian ports and shipping routes to cargo vessels (which provide often vastly shorter, i.e., less costly routes between long-distance trading partners, especially east Asia and northern Eurasia on the one hand and western Europe and north America on the other), the Arctic is fast becoming a venue of maritime trade--with the gigantic island of Greenland smack in the middle of the various emerging major shipping channels. Significantly, the Arctic routes, once fully developed, will allow avoidance of some geopolitical-military chokepoints (more on those below). This is clearly at play, beyond the obvious presence of rare mineral and other deposits that are now also becoming easier to exploit with a warming climate.

source: https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Arctic-Shipping-Routes-Map-legend-1.png 

3 The US federal government has indeed (as pointed out by various pro-Creep1 sources as a sort-of justification for "taking it back"), "built" the Panama Canal--it was a gigantic off-shore, infrastructural government subsidy to business, primarily, although not exclusively, to US business--but the story is slightly more complicated. For,

• canal construction was begun by the French state in the late 19th century (accidents and disesase killed approximately 20.000 workers in the process. "An estimated three-quarters of the French engineers who joined Lesseps in Panama died within three months of arriving." (ibid.) Most workers who built the Canal were from the Caribbean.)
• Panama gained independence in 1903
• the US acquired the canal-under-construction from the French in 1904 and undertook to complete the construction immediately, again mainly with imported labor from the Caribbean islands (Official records put the number of workers who died in the completion of the project at 5609.)
• the US Army Corps of Engineers finished construction of the canal in 1914
• 1977: the Torrijos-Carter agreement to return the canal to Panama was signed.
• Under the 1979 Neutrality Treaty the United States and Panama guarantee the permanent neutrality of the canal, with nondiscriminatory tolls and access for all nations. No nation other than Panama may operate the canal or maintain military installations within Panamanian territory 
• 1999: Panama finally has control over the canal . Panama is what the World Bank considers "a middle-income country," with 5-10% of the GDP coming from the canal.

For a succinct but detailed summary of the history and current situation of Panama, click here. 

source: https://assets.blog.siemens.com/uploads/2023/09/Panama-Canal.png 

In addition to other sea narrows like the Suez Canal, the Horn of Africa, the Straits of Melaka, and Hormuz, Panama is a potential chokehold on global maritime container trade. Also significant, especially for the EU and Russia, are the narrows of Gibraltar, the Bosphorus and the Danish Straits.

According to paper produced at the Center for Strategic and International Studies three years ago, currently the Panama Canal registers approximately 14 thousand transits, involving circa 6% of world trade. Almost exactly two-thirds of the cargo that crosses at Panama involves the US as at least one of its end points. The share of Chinese products passing through the canal stands at 13% but US observers note that China has been increasing various institutional forms of its presence around the Canal.

The geopolitical point about direct, "own-territory" placement near the potential chokepoints is not just, or necessarily about being able to prevent sabotage. The key point is of course control over who and what is allowed to pass and under what conditions. The idea seems to be that, strictly speaking, a vast part of world trade--including non-US, non-EU trade--would have go through sea narrows (the waters around Greenland and the Panama Canal) that be controlled, under the concept of state sovereignty, by one power, the United States (or two, as in the case of the US and Canada for Greenland, until Canada "cries Uncle Sam" and joins the US--to me a pretty far fetched, unlikely scenario). Currently neither of them is. In other words, this is all about making global trade more controlled by one power (beyond its current control over half of the world's military budget, a vast proportion of the satellite and other sensitive communication technologies and of course being the arbiter of the USD, the de facto world money.)

Considering those points, I can't exclude the possibility that, while Creep1 is, clearly, a creep, a sentenced felon, a sex offender, and he is acting / talking with a degree of unpredictability that is quite uncommon in the highly scripted world of "high politics" among major powers, "though this be madness," yet there is a certain old-fashioned, almost 19th-century, global-imperialist "method" in it. I would be astonished if there had not been a coherent, extreme-right global geo-strategic think-tank that produces and feeds the material that enters his pronouncements.

GEOPOLITICAL LOGIC BEHIND CREEP1'S SPOKEN MADNESS OFF