There’s a Gerard Butler movie called Greenland, which – via a series of cataclysmic events handled incredibly Butlerishly – ends with Gerard cocooned in a remote secure bunker in Greenland. As the week has worn on, this has increasingly become the mood of today’s supposedly super-fun tourist trip to Greenland by the second lady of the United States, Usha Vance, and her husband, the vice-president, JD Vance. Who, come to think of it, does actually look like the Cabbage Patch Gerard Butler.
Anyway: Greenland. Like I say, the trip has evolved this week both in style and substance. Originally, it was announced that the second lady was going to take one of her sons, immerse herself in various local events – she’s apparently simply fascinated by Greenland’s culture – and attend the famous Avannaata Qimussersua dog sled race. No more. Now, it’s her husband instead of her son, and the Vances are only going to a military facility. This is a little bit like announcing you’re travelling to Kyoto to see the blossoms, then “recalibrating” your trip so that all you’ll actually be taking in is a tour of the storage facility where they keep the most boring documents from the signing of the 1997 climate protocol. Extremely important, no doubt – and extremely, extremely boring. Or as the White House has chosen to characterise this shift in emphasis: “The Second Lady is proud to visit the Pituffik Space Base with her husband to learn more about Arctic security and the great work of the Space Base.” It is unclear at time of writing if Pituffik has spa facilities. Presumably it’s got something of a year-round après-ski vibe.
Meanwhile, the Vance kid now has to stay at home and go to school, instead of skipping it to enjoy a taxpayer-funded trip to a country his dad and friends are openly trying to annex. Still, the good news is that Mike Waltz should still be going. Yes! The second lady was in fact always slated to go on her little tourist jaunt accompanied by the national security adviser to the US president – and there’s nothing weird about that. Personally, I never minibreak without one. And it goes without saying that the travelling party will be joined in spirit by whichever journalists/Russian assets/assorted randos that Mike has added to the groupchat “Greenland Annexation Brunch With The Girls”.
Alas, it seems that the sheer obnoxiousness of the Vances’ trailed visit was the thing that fatally repulsed the locals, leaving US organisers with no choice but to commute the trip down to just one secure base visit. It’s reported that advance-party administration officials went door to door in Greenland trying to find a local family who would be pleased to welcome Usha and her large adult son Mike Waltz into their humble dwelling – presumably in order that they could say something like: “Wow, what a beautiful humble home you have. Be a real shame if anything happened to it …”
Strangely, no such family was forthcoming. It’s almost as if people in Greenland have the internet, and are able to read or watch the constant and intensifying statements on their country’s potential annexation by the covetous US president, Donald Trump. “It’s an island … that we need,” observed Trump with chilling mildness earlier this week. “And we’re going to have to have it.” Further matter-of-fact justifications have been repeatedly forthcoming. “We need greater national security purposes [sic],” ran another. “I’ve been told that for a long time, long before I even ran [for president]. People really don’t even know that Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security.” Spoken with all the kindly rationale of the school bully explaining you should give up your lunch money because he needs it.
Meanwhile, a series of proxies are emerging to push America’s case – or, in the case of Vladimir Putin, to not argue with it in a way that is tantamount to cheerleading. “In short, America’s plans in relation to Greenland are serious,” the Russian president observed this week. “These plans have deep historical roots. And it’s clear that the US will continue to systematically pursue its geo-strategic, military-political and economic interests in the Аrctic.” On Friday morning, Stephen Moore – a former Trump economic adviser-turned-Heritage Foundation wingnut – explained cheerfully to the BBC that the Greenlanders were “the people who would benefit the most from this … let’s call it a sale, or acquisition.” Let’s not, but go on. “They could, overnight, turn into millionaires.” This somehow reminds me of that old statistic suggesting that instead of going to an expensive war to protect them, the British government could instead have just made every Falkland Islander a millionaire to soften the unwanted blow of having been taken over by Argentina. After all, what else do people want in life, except for money?
“There could be trillions of dollars’ worth of minerals and oil and gas and other types of … precious minerals that could be of value to the United States,” speculated Moore, adding, almost by way of an afterthought about the Greenlanders, that there’s “essentially a treasure chest right below their feet”. Mm. The trouble with the nakedly rapacious hawks of Trumpworld putting it that way, of course, is that it’s only a very short hop to seeing the Greenland people as the obstacle. If only they, and their feet, could just be dug through, then the treasure chest could be rightfully – or wrongfully – claimed.
-
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
