A GRÖNLANDIC PICTURE CYNICAL as a fiction as fiction

Two weeks before Donald Trump became the 47th President of the United States, his son Don Jr. Greenland visited free food and Maga caps and posed for photos. “Incredible people,” he said of the random Grön lasers he met on the street. The journey seemed to be no more than a stunt, similar to Trump’s first-term conversation about the purchase of the territory, which has stood for centuries of the sovereignty of Denmark, a NATO partner and a long-standing ally of the United States. Within a few hours after Don Jr. departed, the elected president held a press conference on which he said that he had not ruled out the use of economic or military violence in order to obtain control of Greenland.

When I presented this scenario as an opening for a new season BorrowMy TV drama series about Danish politics, which was originally broadcast in Denmark from 2010 to 2022 (and was available in the United States in the United States in 2020), I would probably be laughed from the author’s room. Denmark, a small country with around 6 million inhabitants on a peninsula north of Germany, is a calm, civilized constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system that tends to lead to undisputed coalition governments. Our Prime Minister, since 2019, Mette Frederiksen, is the leader of the Social Democrats of Denmark and the current government in coalition with the moderate and the liberal party.

The hero of Borrow Also was a woman: my prime minister was called Birgitte Nyborg and she was played by Sidse Babett Knudsen – an actor who is perhaps a confidante to the American viewers as Theresa Cullen on HBOs Westworld. Borrow is in the heart of the government in Copenhagen, and the tension on the show often comes when people are forced to choose between political power and their personal beliefs and ideals. Nyborg looks like many obstacles at work and at home, but she tries to rule Denmark in an amicable but courageous way against the opportunities.

This may be a little more possible in a parliamentary system such as Denmark, which requires the development of coalition construction for a government, but it was also something that seemed more possible in the earlier, more optimistic era than I wrote: as a political drama, Borrow Was outrageous. If you want a suitable comparison to a US show, think of Aaron Sorkin’s The west wing.

The main characters in Borrow Believe in the values ​​of respectful dialogue, democracy and international law. Back in the government, Trump seems to be to create a new political reality in which objective truth can no longer exist and can be replaced by pure fiction. Everything is reduced to the lingo of a real estate contract, and there seems to be no limits to the kind of accusations and threats that they can spin around-a self in view of a loyal ally and NATO partner.

The last season of Borrowwhich was broadcast in Denmark and the USA in 2022, actually centered in Greenland. The area, which is considered the largest island in the world, has had the pollution for almost five decades. Thanks to the long -term and careful negotiations, the 57,000 inhabitants of the island are now on the way to independence. For the time being, Denmark is responsible for his military security and foreign policy in consultation with the Greenland government.

How much of this Nuance Trump is unclear. When he bought the idea of ​​buying Greenland for the first time in 2019, he described the matter as a “real estate contract”. At that time, Frederiksen, who was already funding as Prime Minister, dismissed his proposal as absurd; Trump took off and called her statement “evil”. They later patched things: Trump praised Freders as “wonderful woman”, and both sides left things as they were.

Read: The intellectual rationalization for creating Greenland

President Trump has now returned to the fight with revenge. Five days before his inauguration, a 45-minute call took place between Trump and Frederiksen. The exchange sounded brutally: Trump confirmed his demand to take over Greenland; Our Prime Minister repeated that it is not for sale and is an autonomous territory under the Danish kingdom. She also recalled the president that Denmark naturally recognizes the strategic importance of Greenland for the United States – and has granted access to Greenland for more than 80 years.

If I were to write this scene BorrowMy prime minister would try to control her temperament, while her chief of staff and her helpers listen and try to talk to breastfeeding gestures and notes. But I could have difficulty imagining a president who is so uninterested in the facts, let alone history.

Greenland was colonized in 1721 by the Danish priest Hans Eggede. Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland was contested by Norway in the 1930s shortly before an international Court of Justice, Norway lost the case and raised his claims. When Denmark was occupied by the Nazis in 1940, Henrik Kauffmann, the visionary Danish ambassador in the USA, signed an agreement with Washington on behalf of Denmark’s König, which enabled the United States to deliver Greenland and to establish bases there. The result was the air base in Kangeraufuaq, where US bombers were able to recharge their batteries on the way to Europe.

In 1949 Denmark became a founding member of NATO, and the kingdom has since been a loyal ally of the United States. In 1952, the United States built the huge Thule air base in Northern Greenland, which was accommodated over more than 10,000 employees. The local inuit population in the region had to leave the area, one of many colonial injustices. During the Cold War, Copenhagen kept a pragmatic silence when the nuclear-armed US air weapon B-52 violated an official policy against nuclear weapons on Danish soil. In 1968 a B-52 in Thule crashed and four atomic bombs rolled out of the rubble. Not even this international embarrassment could let Denmark fluctuate in his partnership with the United States. For eight decades, the two countries have been associated with a mutual recognition of territories, rights and obligations.

In part thanks to the stability provided by this agreement, the Arctic was a peaceful region. Denmark was able to maintain the security of Greenland with a small number of shipping ships and aircraft and – as you may remember when you have seen the last season of Borrow– The Sirius Dog Sled Patrol. This border protection, a military tradition from decades, consists of a dozen sledges, each with a dog team directed by a soldier for special forces who patrol the coast of the north and the northeast of Greenland.

Read: Trump triggers a crisis in Denmark and Europe – and Europe

Trump’s re -election has disturbed the mutual understanding between Copenhagen and Washington. In the days before Trump’s second inauguration, Danish media reported that diplomats worked behind the scenes to keep Greenland out of the speech of the new president. This lobbying was apparently successful. (Panama was not so lucky. When Trump spoke of America’s “Manifest Destiny”, he put on the channel of this country. “We take it back,” he said.)

The restless ceasefire about Greenland did not last long. Within a few days, Trump spoke to reporters on board the Air Force One about control over the island. “I think we’ll have it,” he said. “And I think people want to be with us.” As a writer, I have to admire the economy of Trump’s phrasing: in less than 20 words, he can annoy decades of delicate, emotionally disabled colonial relationships between Denmark and Greenland.

Greenland currently leads its own domestic matters via his parliament and an executive authority known as Naalakkersuisut, but is strongly subsidized by the Danish state. Greenland politicians of independence invite the US President to advance his claims and believe that this will support their cause. You can be disappointed: Trump did not accept her call to independence. Frederiksen can from a recently carried out survey that 85 percent of their compatriots do not want Greenland to be involved in the United States.

What will be the next step of the president? We are not in the world of Borrow. The drama that we see today seems to be less animated by idealism than through division, cynicism and loud ignorance. Trump is a businessman who sees Greenland as a potential transaction. (When Trump was asked about Gaza last month, he replied that it had “a phenomenal place” and “the best weather” as if he had Palm Beach in mind, not a war zone of the Middle East. To be left to the generals.

The last act of the Greenland property has not yet developed. Trump is in his last term and can think about his inheritance. Perhaps he would like to be remembered as the president who took the Panama Canal back and, through the acquisition of Greenland, expanded the US territory by a quarter. The Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz once said: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.” I hope Grönlanders will not feel the same. But as a writer of political fiction, I may have to start thinking about strangers, darker actions if I want to keep pace with Trump’s new world order.