[exe34]

> it feels like an all-round bad decision.

Eh, he bought the White House for $40bn. I say that's a very good purchase, given how he can now leverage it to get better deals for his business. E.g. Greenland for resources to make batteries.

[aprilthird2021]

Many other foreign lobbies and interest groups buy influence in the White House (in all administrations) for substantially less

[bloopernova]

I had read* that his interest in Ukraine and putin was to gain a share of Ukrainian mineral wealth. If that rumour was true, then yeah I could see him advocating for an invasion of Greenland. Although, didn't the Greenland SNAFU start with trump?

* And don't have a link to whatever it was, so take with a cyber truck full of salt!

[exe34]

They're not going to invade Greenland, they can already control it. they'll start an economic war with Europe over it first.

[kmeisthax]

If my fuzzy memories are anywhere close to correct, Trump wanted to buy it in 2017, Denmark said no, and he went on to slapping stupid[0] tariffs on Canadian and European exports before putting tariffs on China.

Trump's 2025 playbook seems entirely identical. The thing is, America has wanted Greenland for at least a century[1]. I would not be surprised if there's some long-timer in the Executive Branch that just happens to have a chip on their shoulder about how much America should have a Greenland. There's a lot of reasons why America would be safer and wealthier with the island, but Denmark isn't going to sell it. Hell, Greenland itself doesn't even want to be Danish, much less American[2].

[0] They're stupid because any hope of America remaining economically prosperous without China to sell us cheap shit (or Saudi Arabia to sell us cheap oil) relies on having a large free-trade area. Y'know, the sort of thing TPP was supposed to give us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_the_United_State...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenlandic_independence

[bloopernova]

Thank you for the reminder and links, much appreciated!