PREVIEW： Realpolitik #30 ｜ Greenland Is American Now
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Summary
In this episode of RealPolitik, Firas Mamedad tries to understand why the United States is worried about China's growing influence in the oceans, and why it needs to prepare for the possibility of war with them. To do so, he looks at the U.S. maritime strategy, the geography of the American empire, and the reasons why they need to be prepared for conflict with China.
Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mouadad,
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and today we're going to be talking about Greenland, and we're going to try to understand
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why Trump wants it and what is actually going on. To do that, we have to think a little bit
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about maritime strategy and the possibility of a war with China. And then when you start to get
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these things, you'll sort of see how different bits and pieces of the Trump strategy are falling
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into place, from the pressure on South Africa to the bailout of Argentina, the capture of Venezuela,
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and obviously Greenland. If you want to think about the United States today, what's going on now is,
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as you all know, a massive competition with China. And the United States is on one side of the Pacific
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Ocean, and China is on the opposite side of the world, and yet they are in the middle of a deadly
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competition for world dominance. Previously, the most industrialized power would be the one that
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is most likely to win. And right now, that's China. But if you add the United States and her allies,
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Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, they can balance against China industrially. And so the United
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States has to fight the Chinese as part of a coalition. The problem is that this coalition
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is deeply divided, chaotic. And so the Americans are in this position where they have to assert their
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own dominance over their empire, while also working to check the Chinese threat. So in a way, they're
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engaged in a two-front conflict. One side of it is against China directly. The other side is against
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the United States' reticent allies that don't necessarily want to commit in the same way, but which
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the United States needs for it to have the right level of industrial capacity to be able to compete with
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the Chinese. So that's the framing of it. Then you have to look at American geopolitics and the
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geopolitics of the United States. Now, the regions of the United States are the Pacific Coast, the Rocky
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Mountains, the Great Plains, and the East Coast, broken down simply. And it's really this Great Plains area
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concentrated around the Mississippi River Basin, which goes all the way from New Orleans, Louisiana,
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in the south, and then extends all the way to the Dakotas, all the way to Colorado, throughout pretty
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much most of the U.S. This is the United States' breadbasket. This is where the grain is grown.
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This is where the cattle is grown. This is where a lot of the fighting men come from. This is the
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heartland. And this must be kept secure at all costs. And in order to do that, the region that must be
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dominated is the Gulf of Mexico, or the Gulf of America now, and the sister sea, so to speak, the
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Caribbean. This is where the United States' main ports are located, along the coasts of Texas and
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Louisiana. And it's a straight line to Venezuela. And if you think of Venezuela as a natural resource
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powerhouse, well, what's happening here? What's happening is that you've got the vast expanse of
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the Atlantic, which is difficult to police, but which the United States is trying to police.
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And then you've got these strings of islands, which are going to fall under U.S. influence,
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one way or another, step by step. And you've got this connection to Latin America by sea,
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which allows for the import of oil and other resources from places like Venezuela, from places
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like Colombia, from Guyana, in order to feed the American industrial machine. So that's one layer
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of defense. And it's intended to keep the empire, the heartlands of the empire, supplied with natural
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resources, energy, etc. And in order to allow this empire to provide industry and manufacturing that
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are going to be needed in any future confrontation. And since this is the easiest bit to defend for the
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United States, this is the priority, Venezuela. Then you go and take a wider look at things, and you've got
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the North and South Atlantic. Now, on the South Atlantic, you've got one entry point through the coast
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of Argentina and Chile that lets you go through the Drake Passage that goes between Antarctica and the
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very tip of South America. So here, you need the Argentinians, the Chileans, and the Falkland Islands on
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board, so that you can police this maritime passage and stop the Chinese from sending their navy through
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this route. And the real threat here isn't so much the full Chinese navy. The real threat is the threat
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of submarines. Because the Chinese navy, although it has a lot of ships, it's underdeveloped, and it's not
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yet a full blue water navy, and its main role is defensive. But with attack submarines, you can go all
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the way up to the East Coast and start lobbying nuclear missiles at American cities, and then that's a
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disaster. So if you want to understand why they gave a bailout to Argentina, $20 billion, which the
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Argentinians have repaid, why they're trying to turn Chile right-wing, why they're interested in this piece of
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real estate? Well, it's all about the Drake Passage. And this is the short way for the Chinese to get
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into the Atlantic. And the idea is to keep these nations on side and to make sure that they don't
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rebel against the United States and act in China's interests, even though China is their main commercial
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partner for a lot of the natural resources that they export. So the Americans have a complex job here.
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Not only do they need right-wing governments that are aligned with them, they also need to develop
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basing rights in this area in order to police the Drake Passage. They need to have their own
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submarines, aircraft, etc., to be deployed in that region. And they need to slowly replace China
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China as the main commercial partner of these countries in order to secure lasting influence,
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because, briefly, money talks. Now the other entrance to the Atlantic Ocean is here, off the coast of Africa,
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between the Cape of Good Hope and Antarctica. And this is a huge piece of territory, five,
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six thousand kilometers. Difficult to navigate. But most ships try to stay away from this side
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because of the weather, because of the nature of the waters, etc., and have to stick closer to here.
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And so you see the United States putting pressure on South Africa, which is de facto a failed state
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at this stage. And maybe, I would guess, their hope is to achieve Cape independence. Because if there is
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a white-dominated state that separates itself from South Africa and becomes independent, its natural ally is
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obviously going to be the United States. And then the Americans will be able to deploy forces in this
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region and secure the other big gaping entryway into the Atlantic Ocean. So these are the two southern
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entrances. And you see the United States pursuing a strategy there aimed at gaining influence over those
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countries. And with that kind of political influence and economic influence, the Americans always follow
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it up with military influence. And if you get these countries on side, you've begun to secure the southern
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entrance of the Atlantic Ocean, difficult as that is to achieve.
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Then you've got Gibraltar and the entrance into the Mediterranean. Now, the thing is that to get
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into the Mediterranean, if you're Russia, you need to go through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits.
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And these are policed by Turkey, which Trump is adopting a very favorable attitude to,
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but that will come with a clash with the Israelis. The thing is that for submarines to go through that
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these straits, they immediately get detected. They can't do so secretly. And it's the same with the Suez Canal.
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The waters are too shallow for a submarine to go through without it being detected. Everybody's going
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to know that a submarine is going to be sent. And the Strait of Gibraltar form a perfect choke point from
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which you can hinder either the Chinese or the Russians, the Chinese sending ships through the Suez,
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the Russians through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. And you can therefore police the Mediterranean effectively.
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Then there's the entrance via the Danish Straits, which is precisely where Copenhagen sits.
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any kind of naval assets into the North Sea and then the Atlantic,
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they would have to do so either from Kaliningrad or from St. Petersburg,
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at least assuming that they don't take the Baltic states, which are on the menu,
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as I will explain in a little while. But that means that Denmark, Sweden, Norway
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are going to be very important here in terms of keeping the Russians trapped in the Baltic Sea
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and preventing them from reaching the North Sea and then the wider Atlantic Ocean. So you see that this
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sort of strategy, you know, is beginning to make sense. And that's really where Greenland comes in.
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Greenland is one of the more challenging areas because from the Arctic, the Russians can send any
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number of their submarines. And as we see here, they actually managed to have their submarines pop out
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through the ice that is in the Arctic. Three submarines popping out within a thousand feet of each other.
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And these are submarines that can carry intercontinental ballistic missiles. So they can fire nukes at the
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United States from the very far north from the Arctic Ocean if they wanted to. And that distance basically
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is half the distance that it would be from mainland Russia to get into the United States.
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So you see that there is this threat from the Arctic. And the way to keep them away from American cities is
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to have this string of islands, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the British Isles, and preferably Norway,
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all on side, cooperating together to check what kind of maritime traffic is going through and to detect
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submarines before they can sneak through. And with Greenland, you can also base a huge amount of
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defensive missiles, interceptor missiles that would try to shoot down Russian or Chinese missiles as they
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are going above the earth in order to hit the United States. So if you're going to fire a missile,
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with some of the new missiles that the Russians have developed, particularly the nuclear-powered one that
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could just go around the earth, this isn't feasible. But with the more conventional ballistic missiles,
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you can position stuff in Greenland, in Alaska, in Canada, that is intended to intercept any missile
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that actually tries to penetrate into the United States. And you would use these assets as deployment
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points in a bid to hit these missiles in the middle of their trajectory before they become a threat to
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the United States. So the idea here for the Americans is that what they're trying to do
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is to make sure that they can deploy as many of their naval assets as possible to the Pacific theater
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while the Atlantic theater is properly policed. That's what's driving American military thinking.
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And it's not just them being crazy or Trump wanting natural resources or things of that nature.
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This is a transformation that's happening within the United States. The American Republic,
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by any objective assessment, is dying. You look at the extent of corruption in Congress.
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You look at the capture of Congress by lobbyists, including your favorite Brazilian lobbyists and
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assorted others. You look at the influence that foreign countries can acquire over the United States
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by buying senators. You had the Egyptians buying an American senator a couple of years ago, and I think
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he went to jail for it. You look at this corruption, and what you see is an internal conflict within the
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United States that tells you that the Republic is dying because virtue among the American people
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is dying. And as you see this collapse in virtue and this extension of corruption, you see the kind
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of infighting that you're seeing in the United States, and you see more and more pressure on Trump,
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including from us, to essentially become a lot more authoritarian in matters of domestic policy.
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And this will come with him being more authoritarian in foreign policy.
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So the idea here is to be able to have enough control over the Arctic so that the Americans are in a
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dominant position there to police any traffic that can go from the Arctic Ocean into the Northern Atlantic,
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and to be able to position adequate defensive systems against the threat of missiles from Russia and China.
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But then when you think of the world this way, when you look at the map in this direction,
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you see that actually Russia is a close neighbor of the United States. And you see that Russian territories
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and Canadian territories are kind of a buffer between the US and China. And this is going to be more and
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more of the case as the Arctic becomes more navigable. And this gives you an insight into what's going on in Ukraine.
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For Trump to be able to maximize his influence against the Chinese, what he actually needs is to
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separate the Russians from them, so that the Russians don't simply allow Chinese missiles to fly over their
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airspace whenever the Chinese want that to happen, but rather so that the Russians can be a bit of a
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partner in checking China. And if you look at Russian interests, well, Russia's neighbors include Japan
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and South Korea, and it has a pretty strong relationship with Vietnam and with India.
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China. So when you look at the world in this way, you see that there is a natural Indian-Iranian-Russian
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coalition that can work on checking China and containing it. And you see that there is another
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natural Vietnamese-Japanese-Russian coalition that is intended to check China from the other direction.
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And if you look back at how the Americans managed to defeat the Soviet Union,
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they didn't just do it on their own. They did that through NATO, and they did that through
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the containment strategy that was advocated by George Keenan in the 1940s, which saw the Americans
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building up an alliance with CENTO, the Central Asian Treaty Organization, which brought together,
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I believe, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, in a bid to have a military alliance that would check
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Russia's southern border. They did that with NATO, which kept Russia contained on its western border.
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And they did that famously through the Nixon pivot to China, where under the auspices of Henry Kissinger
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and Richard Nixon, the Americans reconciled with the Chinese in order to have China partnering with them
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to contain Russia. And so the idea here is the following. If you have China and Russia working together,
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they can develop the Arctic, they can develop all kinds of drilling for resources, they can develop energy,
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they can navally cooperate with each other in order to deny the Arctic to the United States.
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Alternatively, the Americans and the Russians can do that together.
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And if they did, the main victim at the end of the day would be Europe, because they would be dominated
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by these two behemoths, each of them having interests in Europe. And what would happen would be a new carve-up
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of Europe between Russian and American influence, exactly as had happened after the Second World War.
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After the Second World War, you had everything from East Germany through Czechoslovakia, which at the time was
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the Czech Republic and Slovakia in one country, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and then Yugoslavia,
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acting as a bit of a neutral buffer. You had these countries fully under the Russian influence.
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And this was when the Russians felt safest and most powerful because they had a toehold on the,
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or a very firm hold actually, on the Carpathian mountains here that go from Slovakia to Romania
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all the way up to the Baltics, meaning that they could funnel any invasion force that went through Northern Europe
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into the narrowest gap here between Poland and Slovakia and have a much shorter front line.
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And now you look at this possibility that the Americans would try to gain leverage over Russia
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by controlling Greenland and by threatening to heavily militarize Greenland, both offensively and defensively,
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and they would use that as a card in order to pressure the Russians into making concessions,
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and in order to force the Russians into a partnership that is partly commercial with American industry
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developing Russian natural resources, partly military, with the possibility of the two countries
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working together to contain China in partnership with countries that the Russians have
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either kind of partnerships with, like India and Iran, or long-standing relations like Vietnam,
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or former enemies like Japan, who are equally terrified of the rise of China.
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So you can see this massive reconfiguration of the geopolitical map
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that happens with the Americans asserting their dominance over the North Atlantic,
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giving Russia territories in Europe an exchange,
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and therefore being able to use Russia as a partner against the Chinese.
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So this is the big change in geopolitics that the Americans are trying to achieve.
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