Greenland? Really?

The ink of political fiction is blood. - "The Road to Unfreedom"

These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? —ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 1788

There are lots of questions about the myopic fixation the President has about Greenland. "We need it for our own defense," he says often. But we have had bases there since the Second World War. The 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement allowed the United States to keep its military bases in Greenland and to establish new bases or "defense areas" if deemed necessary by NATO.

So, that's not the real reason, any more than narcotics was the reason for abducting Maduro in Venezuela. In Venezuela it was oil, the irony being that in this week's meeting with oil executives, Trump got resoundingly rebuffed in his claims that they would invest billions to rebuild that country's oil infrastructure. From CNN...

Trump and his top aides emerged from a lengthy White House meeting without any major commitments from companies to invest billions of dollars in the nation, after running into deep skepticism over the administration’s plan for ensuring Venezuela’s long-term stability.

“It’s uninvestible,” ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told officials in a blunt evaluation of the obstacles to doing business in the nation. “There are a number of legal and commercial frameworks that would have to be established to even understand what kind of returns we would get on the investment.”

Several other executives at the meeting expressed similar reluctance, warning that the industry would first need to secure extensive security and financial guarantees before beginning a years' long effort to ramp up oil production.

Even oil investor Harold Hamm, a prominent wildcatter and major Trump donor, signaled he would need far more assurances before backing the administration’s reinvestment scheme.

By the way, the phrase financial guarantees is oligarch-speak for your tax money.

And this was the meeting where the President positively beamed while declaring not one windmill would be built under his watch, and then lied that China has none. Actually, they have more wind generation than any other country, 45% of the world's supply. Why these blatant lies and misinformation are ignored by his staff and his base will forever be one of the great mysteries of MAGA.

Maybe it's a Jedi mind trick,, and these aren't the windmills we're looking for...

Apparently, among the many wars the President has ended, we can include the war on reality.

So, of course, the issue of Greenland has nothing to do with security. We can build all the bases, ports, airfields or anything else we want. My late father-in-law was an air traffic controller at Thule AFB during the Cold War. It has been renamed, but is still there. So how in the world did we win the Cold War without owning Greenland? Pretty lucky, eh?

No, that's not the reason for his interest. This is...

The red dots show Greenland's so-called rare earth mineral reserves, necessary for everything from cell phones to jet fighters today. Greenland's reserves are estimated at approximately 1.5 million metric tons, according to the USGS. 

While smaller than China’s, Greenland’s reserves rival those of the United States (1.9 million metric tons) and outpace those of Canada (830,000 metric tons), South Africa (860,000 metric tons), and much of Europe. 

So, the US is now apparently a huge mining and drilling company with a big army.

And even though America's fastest rising young Nazi, White House aide Stephen Miller has wondered aloud, in front of God and everyone, how Denmark claims Greenland as it's own, the answer is simple. And it's proof that the White House apparently doesn't possess a Google machine. When Denmark and Norway separated in 1814, Greenland was transferred from the Norwegian to the Danish crown. You're welcome, Steve.

But there are a couple of other reasons for this takeover bid. One is personal.

You might have noticed the President's edifice complex, evidenced by his desire to slap his moniker on anything that isn't moving. He's not waiting like Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson or JFK for others to decide if his memory was worth preserving with a monument.

Well what better monument to one's greatness than some sort of modern Louisiana Purchase? I mean, I'm sure he thinks the Mercator Map Projection indicates Greenland's actual size.

But even that isn't the total picture. And here's where it gets even more sinister. The idea that Russia wanted Donald Trump as President is not a "hoax" as he would have you believe, but a demonstrable fact. Historian Timothy Snyder outlined this in his book "The Road to Unfreedom," from which I quote liberally, but it's important...

Dmitry Kiselev, the leading man of the Russian media, rejoiced that “a new star is rising—Trump.” The Eurasianists felt the same way: Alexander Dugin posted a video entitled “In Trump We Trust” and urged Americans to “vote for Trump!” Alexei Pushkov, the chair of the foreign relations committee of the Russian parliament, expressed the general hope that “Trump can lead the Western locomotive right off the rails.”

Russian media and online influencers worked under orders to promote his candidacy and dig up dirt on the opposition. And Putin paid for influence.

From a Russian point of view, Trump Tower is an inviting site for international crime. Russian gangsters began to launder money by buying and selling apartment units in Trump Tower in the 1990s. The most notorious Russian hit man, long sought by the FBI, resided in Trump Tower. Russians were arrested for running a gambling ring from the apartment beneath Trump’s own. In Trump World Tower, constructed between 1999 and 2001 on the east side of Manhattan near the United Nations, a third of the luxury units were bought by people or entities from the former Soviet Union. A man investigated by the Treasury Department for money laundering lived in Trump World Tower directly beneath Kellyanne Conway, who would become the press spokeswoman for the Trump campaign. Seven hundred units of Trump properties in South Florida were purchased by shell companies. Two men associated with those shell companies were convicted of running a gambling and laundering scheme from Trump Tower.

By the late 1990s, Trump was generally considered to be uncreditworthy and bankrupt.

He owed about four billion dollars to more than seventy banks, of which some $800 million was personally guaranteed. He never showed any inclination or capacity to pay back this debt. After his 2004 bankruptcy, no American bank would lend him money. The only bank that did so was Deutsche Bank, whose colorful history of scandal belied its staid name. Interestingly, Deutsche Bank also laundered about $10 billion for Russian clients between 2011 and 2015.

Also interestingly, Trump declined to pay back his debts to Deutsche Bank.

A Russian oligarch bought a house from Trump for $55 million more than Trump had paid for it. The buyer, Dmitry Rybolovlev, never showed any interest in the property and never lived there—but later, when Trump ran for president, Rybolovlev appeared in places where Trump was campaigning. Trump’s apparent business, real estate development, had become a Russian charade. Having realized that apartment complexes could be used to launder money, Russians used Trump’s name to build more buildings.

As Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Donald Trump made money by putting his name on building projects he had no investment in. As Snyder makes clear, he is in debt, literally and figuratively, to Vladimir Putin.

The Guardian reports...

"In October 2015, four months into his campaign, Trump signed a “letter of intent” to build a tower in Moscow. Pulling the strings on the abortive deal was Felix Sater, yet another Russian business associate of Trump, who once served time in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken cocktail glass.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater reportedly told Trump’s attorney in an email. “Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it … I will get all of Putin's team to buy in on this.”"

Even his preening performance at the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, was paid for with Russian money.

“Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow,” he asked on Twitter, and “if so, will he become my new best friend?” 

There have been a lot of folks quoting lines from 1984 lately. I found this one revelatory. In George Orwell’s famous book, the hero is told, “You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

Reports now indicate that the President has asked military commanders to draw up plans for a military takeover of Greenland. Those reports also indicate they are pushing back, thankfully, as this seems illegal, which Senator Mark Kelly could have explained.

They push back also because it will surely mean the end of the NATO Alliance. Begun in 1949, it has helped preserve the sometimes shaky world order for 76 years now. In addition to essentially ceding Ukraine to the tender mercies of Russia, what could be more desirable to Putin than the dissolution of NATO?

In July of 2018, around the time of a contentious NATO summit meeting, Trump told his national security officials he didn’t see the point of NATO and thought the alliance was a drain on the US, the New York Times reported.

How else to explain the inexplicable? All those who applauded the ouster of Maduro, however rotten he might be, have laid the groundwork for this. Trump now says that the only limit to his power is "his morality."

As his personal history demonstrates, that is essentially a blank check.