​Neo-colonial shadows: on Trump, Greenland and his Davos talk

U.S. President Donald Trump’s neo-colonial posturing at the World Economic Forum in Davos could mark the opening salvo of what may be termed great-power climate wars — an irony, given that it is being waged by a climate-change denier. As global warming is rapidly melting Arctic polar ice, it has sharpened interest in the Northern Sea Route (NSR), which promises to cut shipping time between East Asia, western Europe and North America. The route also carries geopolitical implications: it enables tighter trade and market integration between China and the Western Hemisphere — an outcome Mr. Trump has often sought to obstruct. At Davos, his renewed suggestion that the U.S. could “purchase” Greenland has rattled allies and revived colonial anxieties. The remark came even as Sara Olsvig, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, has said that “there’s no such thing as a better coloniser”, reflecting on over three centuries of Danish rule.

Greenland’s strategic value is undeniable. China has conducted trial commercial voyages through the NSR, promoting it as a shorter, and potentially lower-emission, shipping route, even though its existence is a product of climate breakdown. Chinese firms have also shown sustained interest in Greenland’s significant mineral wealth, particularly rare earths. For Mr. Trump, who has weaponised trade and was forced to moderate tariffs against China due to Beijing’s dominance over rare earth supply chains, such activity is easily framed as strategic encroachment into America’s sphere of influence. Yet, extraction in Greenland would be neither easy nor uncontested. Much of the mineral wealth is buried deep under permanent ice, and local resistance is likely. Greenlanders have fought long struggles for political and economic sovereignty, achieving enhanced self-rule only in 2009. Recent opinion polls suggest that an overwhelming majority of Greenland’s population opposes any form of American rule. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump claimed on the sidelines of Davos that Washington had reached a “framework” with the European Union, addressing U.S. security and resource interests. Media reports of proposals allowing indefinite American basing rights and access to subsoil resources reinforce the perception that this push is driven less by security than by extraction and control. Davos, long projected as a forum for global cooperation, appeared this year as a staging ground for resurgent resource nationalism. In doing so, it may have sown the seeds of a new world order, undermining the very rules-based system that post-war America once built. Ironically, by alienating allies, Mr. Trump may be nudging them towards Beijing — a China that has now arrived as a full-spectrum great power.