Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada… Donald Trump’s growing “shopping list” expresses the military and economic interests of US imperialism.
Washington and Wall Street are prepared to run over democratic rights and entire populations. As Trump’s inauguration approaches, governments around the world are holding their breaths, desperately preparing for what might occur. Rather than fighting his plans, NATO and other Western governments are generally doing their best to adapt to Trump.
Less than two weeks before his inauguration, Trump announced that he would not rule out using military force to gain control of Greenland and the Panama Canal. He also threatened Denmark with high tariffs. Against Canada, he said “economic force” as opposed to military force, would be enough to make it into the US’s “51st state.”.
On the same day as the Greenland announcement, his son, Donald Trump Jr., made a four-hour PR visit to the island, where he invited supporters to a dinner at a luxury restaurant.
In Greenland, there has long been a strong pressure from its population for independence from the Danish kingdom, which 300 years ago colonized the island. Discrimination and unequal conditions are well documented and only a few years ago it was revealed that women in Greenland were subjected to forced sterilization. In his speech on New Year’s Eve, the island’s Prime Minister Múte Egede emphasized the demand for self-government.
The focus for Trump’s interest in both Greenland and Panama is the conflict with Chinese imperialism. The melting of Arctic icecap by capitalism’s accelerated climate and ecological destruction is sharpening a new imperialist scramble for control over sea corridors and resources. Beijing’s increased interest in the Arctic, often in collaboration with Putin’s Russia which has the biggest land border with the region, as well as the fact that Chinese companies operate ports in the Panama Canal, are used as arguments that securing control over these territories is about US “national security.”
Trump wants to achieve military and economic control. Direct military action is a threat used to achieve these goals. Another possibility to secure further control would be for the Trump administration to ally itself with a push for Greenland independence, supporting a nominally independent government in exchange for military and resource dominance. In response to Trump’s threats, the Danish government has struck an extremely conciliatory tone with the Danish Prime Minister rushing to declare his government’s commitment to “to ensure legitimate American interests” in the Arctic. EU leaders have also already signaled that they are prepared to strengthen the US role in Greenland. This primarily applies militarily, both in airspace and sea transport.
The US already has a military base, Pituffik Space Force Base, in Greenland. Greenland also has large natural resources, oil and especially rare earth metals, where global production is currently dominated by China. Shares in mining companies rose sharply after Trump’s speech.
Liberal commentators, such as Peter Wolodarski in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, emphasize that the Nordic countries and the EU must now stand together against Trump’s speech. However, the EU, NATO or Denmark should not govern Greenland. That is for the Greenlanders, with the support of labor and anti-war movements in the Nordic countries, Europe and North America. Both sides in the imperialist bloc conflict between US imperialism and Chinese imperialism are brutal superpowers that act for their own power and profits.
Whether natural resources are to be exploited should be decided democratically and any profits should accrue to the people. In Denmark, the left-wing party Enhedslisten quite rightly supports the demand for independence for Greenland, to be decided and shaped by the Greenlanders.
Similarly, the left and the labour movement globally must act against Trump’s traditional US imperialist policy, to see Latin America, and now also Canada, as “the US’s backyard.” This is about fighting against all imperialism, for a strong, independent, fighting international labour movement.
