389. Trump, Vance, and How the US Invades Greenland

24:23And the history, of course, is that like many, many other bits of the world, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, South Africa, Israel, Great Britain, itself, the question of who actually owns this, who's indigenous and who isn't, is a very, very difficult question. Greenland has been occupied by a series of people who basically disappeared and died out over time, a largely because it is the most brutal climate on earth. More than 80 % of it is covered in ice, and it's very difficult to live there. So there were some people who were there in prehospheric period, there was an amazing group of people called the Dorset culture that didn't have bows and arrows and did sea or hunting, and they seem to have died out at some period in the early parts of the Christian era.

25:10Dorset like the English County or Dorset with the W. No, Dorset like English County. Was there any relation to the English County? No, no relating to English. Just happened that these people were first discovered on a, on a bit of land, which the English called Dorset. So there's sort of archeological remains of a now vanished people whose DNA and genetics people can't really identify, but that they're not the only one. Right. They're not the people that people now were calling the estimate. Then in the 10th century into what appears to have been an empty land because these previous people have died out, Norwegian, Icelandic, the Seckbargman Vikings turn up, in particular guy called Leif Eriksson turns up and they make two little settlements.

25:47And it's from there that the Vikings discoverers at where America, of course they didn't discover America because they're Native Americans or in America, but they get there before Columbus and they get there from Greenland. And they sit in Greenland and they create a little Norse culture in Greenland and they end up with their own little bishop of Greenland and their merrily trading back and forth and living for a few hundred years of sort of Norwegian Icelandic life in Greenland. And then after them, so sort of 300 years after them, the Inua arrived, the people that some people refer to as the Eskommis.

26:18And then the Norse Vikings disappear and nobody quite knows when. The last time they were spotted was on a boat in about 1410, but there are some clothes that have been found from about 1430 and there's some pollen samples from about 1490 and then they seem to vanish. And there are three theories on when they vanish. One of them is the climate got too bad and they bugged off. The other is that English slavers turned up and we, the English basically massacred them and took them all into slave markets and York. And the third theory is that the Inua, the Eskimo killed them themselves and there are Inua legends that they came in and killed the Norse.

26:54Now nobody knew whether they disappeared or not and in fact people continued to believe that maybe they still lived on Greenland until actually the whole thing had been explored in the 19th century. So then there's a period where the Inua Eskimo sit there on their own and then in the early 18th century the Danes come back at that point, Norway and Denmark, the single kingdom, they set up a little missionary base and that begins to feel a bit like colonization. But of course they're making indigenous claims that they were there before and there are echoes here of people in the Middle East saying we were there before, this is not allowed, etc.

27:27And the Americans then start getting entrusted in buying it. There's a long track record of them trying to buy Greenland. Absolutely because the Americans have bought a lot of stuff. They bought Alaska, the whole of Alaska, they bought from the Russians are for nine million dollars. Yeah. They bought the US Virgin Islands from the Dutch in 1917. They were interested in buying the late 19th century, decided it wasn't really worth it. But then there was an extraordinary moment which is a bit reminiscent of Trump which is Denmark obviously was occupied by Germany. A very very small number of Germans ended up sitting in Greenland running a little weather station.

28:01The Americans then set up a base to resupply Europe and to get planes to stop over on the way. And at the end of the war the Danes said thank you very much for being here, farewell. And the Americans who are a little bit Trumpian even then had helped themselves some cryolite minds as part of the deal for turning up in Greenland during Second World War, made it very clear to the Danes that they had no intention of leaving. They were just going to sit there. And the Danes got a little bit embarrassed, couldn't understand what was going on, went off the United States. And the US government had managed to put together a hundred and fifty million dollars to buy Greenland.

28:34And the Danes said, and no thank you very much, we don't want your money. And could you please leave? This was all fudged because actually the Americans wouldn't leave, and it was fudged through NATO. So the the face -saving measure was to say, oh well we're all NATO members, doesn't matter if the US keeps base there. US at one point had 15 ,000 soldiers there. They are 12 bases. They also signed a secret deal with the Danish prime minister. The Danish people didn't know about about keeping nuclear bombers there and they managed to crash one of their bombers and drop a nuclear bomb into the sea and all this kind of stuff.

29:02Fast forward, they dropped their base down to 200 people, very, very few people left. And now America is looking at doing something quite different from the acquisition of Alaska, which is the way they're quiet. Hawaii, this American state that they got in the 1890s, they basically forcibly acquired with a bunch of dodgy American businessmen who got involved in the internal politics of the Hawaiian court, toppled a Hawaiian queen and annexed it as the further state. Was the Hawaii story in the same book as the Greenland story? No, Hawaii story is a different story. But I'm sure you saw, if I know you saw it because you retreated it, but the rest is football put out one of the most pathetic April fools today that you've probably seen of the many April fools where they said that we were doing a swap that Gary Lenicka and Alan Shire and Michael Richards were going to do the rest is politics, we were going to do the rest is football.

29:50But I've got to say, Roy, you're making a very good pitch for a swap to the rest is history because this is this is absolutely fascinating and I do you I do a bit of this story, but not much. And while we're on the subject, by the way, you couldn't be there because you were on your way to the stage, but I went to see the rest is assassinations of the weekend with Dominic Sambrug from the rest of history and our friend, the Mooch, where I was very upset because I tried to ask a question a half time because Dominic Sambrug, who projects himself because he accurately predicted that Trump in the election as this sort of font of all knowledge, he got the name of Abraham Lincoln's secretary of state wrong.

30:29Can you believe that? Well, there we are. He called him steward instead of seawater. And I think that's because you that's because he knows that you're after his job. You want to do the rest is history. Anyway, finish with who are you. There will be less, let's bring a forward to 2025. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, really, 25 25. So the final thing I think is to say that we have to be serious about this right now because I think from Trump's point of view, this is an opportunity to acquire two million square kilometers of territory. This would be larger than any state in the United States. This is three times the size of Texas.

31:05This is a place which is, you know, the size of Indonesia, the size of Mexico. It's an enormous territory. With a population less than 60 ,000. I mean, there's not many parts of it that you can live in. Not many parts you can imagine, but you can absolutely imagine Trump loving the idea of going down in history as the president who added this huge chunk to the United States. Yeah, bigger America, yeah, bigger America. And the problem with it is that if he actually follows through, and I don't know how you put a percentage on what goes on in Trump's head, right? How you predict, is it a 30 % chance?

31:39Is it a 20 % chance that he decides to do it? Militerally, it would be very easy for him. Right. You know, he could basically move a few thousand troops and announce that they'd take in Greenland and nobody could do very much about it. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah. You say that. I mean, right, militarily in terms of who has real force and real power. But Denmark is a member of NATO, an article five, which has only ever been brought into bearing once, which is after 9 -11, when the article five basically means an attack on one member is an attack on all. That would include, I would argue, even if the attack came from a NATO member.

32:21So if America suddenly decided to try to annex militarily Greenland, which as you say is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, that poses very, very big questions for us, the UK, for Canada, for Turkey, for every, for Germany, for France. So I don't think it is that easy. That is a step of epic world war -making proportions. What was interesting? You said this about when we talked about the signal gate stuff last week, where all the people who were on that call, Walst's and Vance and Brubio and Hexeth, they know what Trump wants and they're trying to give it to him. Okay. So at the moment, they know that Trump wants Greenland to be part of the United States of America.

33:05But what Vance's presence in the place said to me is it was just part of that kind of show. I mean, are you seriously saying that where this ends up is, with the Americans taking over militarily, are they going to do that by, and by the way, they could easily build up the American military there now. Because as you say, they had thousands of troops there. They had a dozen bases. There's nothing that they couldn't get from the Danes on this right now through normal diplomatic negotiation. It's the fact that he has said, I want it to be part of America. That is what's driving this much more aggressive approach.

33:43Yeah. So how do we put a chance on it? I don't know, but I would say it's a non -trivial chance because I think he loves this idea of going down in history as the guy that requires this. I think that, as I say, militarily in the short term, you know, pure military, Denmark is not going to be able to go to war with the United States, partly because the whole of NATO is completely dependent on America for almost all the kit we use, all the interrupt, probability we use, all the satellites we use, we simply don't have the sovereign capacity to fight them even if we wanted to. And of course, there's precedent for this.

34:17I mean, during the Second World War, Denmark did not fight against Germany. When Germany occupied and they decided they didn't have a hope, they couldn't do it. There will be a debate. I mean, there'll be different. If it happens, let's say, you know, it's the 30 % chance of it happening. Militarially, there's the option of just accepting it as a Feder Company. There's the option of symbolically fighting, which means some of your soldiers die for the principle of it to make a symbolic statement. And that can be very, very powerful. Many people in Ukraine really regret the fact that in 2014 in Crimea, the Ukrainian soldiers surrendered.

34:53They surrendered because they thought it was completely hopeless. They were totally surrounded. But some people now think that if they'd actually fought and died, that would have brought international attention to it and made it much easier later down the line to fight. But as you say, the point is not the short term military stuff. It's the political stuff. So as you said, it would completely destroy NATO. Overnight, NATO would be finished. It also completely destroys international law because the two principles of international law are firstly Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland, which has been tested in international courts in the 1930s.

35:27Absolutely tested international judges. This is Danish territory. And the second thing is the right to self -determination, which is the people of Greenland who do not want to be part of the United States. And you can see Putin really enjoying this. He's just made a speech more man's saying, look, great. You know, you can have Greenland. I'll have Ukraine. He's just saying this quite openly. Trump was asked if he, because Trump did one of his sort of weekend interviews coming back from playing golf. And he said, I think there's a good possibility we can do without military force. Okay. That was a very deliberate way of putting into the ether, the idea that maybe it would be done with military force.

36:01This is world peace, this is international security. I don't take anything off the table. He was then asked, well, if that were the case, you did use military force. What message does that send to Putin about Ukraine? And his three word answer was, I don't care. So I think the chances are less than 30%, but I think you're right that it is a not untrivial point to talk about that. Final point for me, Rory, about the other thing that advanced it, of course, was basically, this is what it does about the whole of Europe, to project a case of Europe as a complete basket case. So essentially saying to those poor American soldiers are to sit and listen to him for an hour, why would anybody want to be Danish rather than, rather than America?

36:41Several reasons for that. One is that Denmark is regularly in the top one, two or three of the happiest countries in the world. America is 24th. On the freedom house rankings, Denmark is well ahead of America. Their healthcare system is better. They live longer lives. I would argue that they, frankly, feel pretty happy to be Danish. Now, the point about greening, however, this is the other thing that they're exploiting. But I think this is going to boom around against them. And this is the reason why the Danish Prime Minister is going there this week. Is that there's been this growing movement towards independence.

37:15But I suspect that the idea of the Greenlanders, even the most absolute really passionate believers in the Greenlandic independence, will be saying to themselves, OK, Denmark may not be a huge military power, but it is part of the European Union. Do we really want, as a country of 55 ,000 with that much of a military, with that much of a diplomatic service? Do we really want to be on our own? And as a songman in America says, we want to have you. So I think that, I think the independence debate will be parked for a while until this gets resolved one way or the other. Yeah. And if you are from the Inuit community, and there's a beautiful book by Cloutier, Sheila Watcloutier called The Right to Be Cold, which is a wonderful account of the Inuit community across Alaska, Canada, Greenland, into Siberia.

38:05You're going to ask yourself, are indigenous people better off in the United States? And would you like to be one of the Lakota community in South Dakota? Do you feel the Inuit are well treated in Alaska? And I think the answer is if you're looking for people who take Indigenous communities and write Syracy, who take the environment of Greenland Syracy, it's the most precious extraordinary environmental landscape on earth. This beautiful book by Guy called Barry Lopez called Arctic Dreams, which just sort of brings delight. This astonishing ecology, this sense of a world where the sun doesn't move through the sky and at some points the sun doesn't set at other points.

38:45The sun doesn't rise. These strange collection of mammals and insects and birds that e -counts in existence. You'd probably rather have Denmark if you're concerned about Indigenous communities, Indigenous rights and the environment than you would have Mr. Drill Baby Drill. Final little plug, which I can't resist, which is, you very sweetly praise me for sort of weird statements about medieval history, which leads me to say that my book The March is on a one -pound deal on Kindle for this month, which is looking at the history of come rear and the border. You're lucky yourself, you're lucky yourself, Dad.

39:20What you should have done is to have said to me before recorded, by the way, I've got this deal with Kindle. Can you, can you, Alistair, please plug my book? And I would happily have done that, but honestly, Rory, even I wouldn't have been that brazen. Well, I screwed it all up. Okay, let's take a quick break.

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40:51Welcome back to The Restless Politics with me, the incredible plugger of my dodgy book, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell, who's never been known to plug a book, any of my 21 books ever in my entire life, ever on this show or indeed anywhere else. Before we go on to Australia and the corner of the election, little plug on your behalf, I'm doing this because you asked me to, for the interview we've got on leading at the moment with Moises naeem. Moises naeem, the guy who actually inspired me to write one of my books about what can I do with his three P's, Populism, Polarization, Post -Truth.

41:25But my God, I was suing this morning and my friend Jim said, God, I listened to your guy, Moises, I could have listened to him all day. Now, Australia, we've finally got an election date, it is May the 3rd. And I think this is going to be a very, very interesting election. I think a year or so ago, I was on record on here as saying that I had a horrible feeling that this very bullet -headed, right -wing, rough former cop, Bruser, Peter Dutton was going to win. I'm not sure anymore. I think it's going to be very, very, very tight. You've got Albinese, the Prime Minister for Labour, Dutton, the Libra, which is their conservative party.

42:09And there has been a movement back towards Labour in the polls. It's not overwhelming. And to avoid the thing is, I hadn't realised until we've got this very good, somebody that I introduced you to in human Australia, James Copsie from who's an analyst at KPMG, who's becoming a wonderful media monitor for us both of Australian media on the election. I hadn't realised until the PC Semula suite that it's very, very, very rare that Australian Prime Ministers don't get two terms. The last time was a guy called Scullion in the late 20s, early 30s, was the last time that we had a single term Australian Prime Minister.

42:46So you have a huge incumbent step advantage. Yeah. I guess also it's because of this through the three year term people think, well, what's three years long enough to do the things you need to do? What have you? So, go on, you're famously a great predictor of election outcomes. What's your prediction of this? Yeah, famously, famously, famously, as Dominic Donwick -Sambrake would point out. Well, I think the interesting thing is that we probably would have thought that many liberal democracies were going right wing if you'd asked us a few months ago. So you could have told a story where it seemed pretty certain that Pierre -Pollyair would win Canada, that Albanese would lose an Australian or a Dutchman would win, that Le Pen could win in France.

43:33And actually what we've seen in the last two months is the counter -Trump effect and the sense in which particularly Kani and Canada has really managed to leverage people's horror Trump to give a new energy to a sort of more left -wing patriotic approach. And you can see that Albanese is trying to do the same again in Australia. And it's very, very forward timing for Dutton because Dutton has tried to do what he thought with the sort of sensible Trump things. So this is the right -wing candidate, talking about stopping work from home, talked about getting rid of 41 ,000 extra civil servants, talked about getting a minister of government efficiency sort of doge thing.

44:16Yeah, moge, moge. There's been quite a lot of talk about getting away from the green stuff, getting away from renewables towards gas, which sounds a bit drill baby drill. And of course, Albanese can use all that against him because of people's horror Trump in a way that wasn't possible a few months ago. And Australian public opinion is not happy with Trump anymore than Canadian or European opinion. In fact, US reputation, some of this has been shared by many of the people that we've interviewed on this show. But Ian Bremer, for example, has done a lot on this, astonishing the collapse of the popularity of the United States across the world in just the last three months, just how much negativity is being generated.

45:02Do you think, I mean, am I overdoing that? Is how much, how important is Trump in this campaign? Or do you think it's actually mostly domestic? I don't think it's the exact, it's not the same as Canada. Trump has defined that campaign because of the extent to which he's attacked him. He's attacked Canada. And Mark Arnie has used that extraordinary well both to become the leader of the Liberal Party in the Prime Minister and now in the campaign. And although I think that I see the Canadian campaign settling down to some extent into a much, although tariffs may change this, that Trump will do his tariffs.

45:36But I see it settling down. But what's been interesting about it's definitely a factor in the Australian election. I should say, by the way, Roy, having been told by Mexicans that we have to call her Shane Baum, I would like somebody definitively to tell me, I think I've influenced you in saying Albanese because I've always called him Albanese. But I think it's Albanese, Albanese or Albanese. So I'd like it a few of Australian friends. Just tell us how do we, how do we, because if this guy is going to be the privateist of for another three years, we need to get his name. Absolutely. Right. He's never going to come on the show if we can't even pronounce his name.

46:11Exactly. Basie's quite, he's quite a lot of people's, let's just call him Albo because that's what everybody, everybody calls him there. But he, what I think is interesting about this is that you mentioned this minister of government efficiency. And they're now calling Dutton sort of Trump light. And this is about, is making him more worried about focusing on that part of his campaign because you can so easily identify it. Well, that's what, you know, who's Yereela and Musk going to be? Who's going to come and throw people out of work? Who's going to ruin communities and so forth? I think that what's been interesting about in the runner, if you remember, he was going to call the election earlier and he didn't because they have this mini cyclone that delayed it for a while.

46:53And that meant they had to have a budget, which they've been trying to avoid. But actually, they turned that quite to their advantage because they took a lot of people by surprise by using the budget to announce an income tax cut next year. And Dutton, I'm not sure quite why he did this, but he came straight out and opposed it. And instead said he would cut petrol, excise duty. And so that's the first thing he's been friends. When you say is this domestic, that has become a very, very important part of the debate, which tax cut would you rather have? Who do you think it would be better off with?

47:27But I think more even than the Canadian nation, I think this battle of the personalities is going to become a big thing. Because the thing about Dutton, he can't help how he looks. He looks like a real bruise. He really does look quite. You know, he wouldn't want to mess with him. And he's been a police officer. And he also gives the sense of a bit like Polly Averies now regretting, I think, talking Canada down so much. I saw a word cloud that was associated with Dutton. And one of the big words in it, it wasn't the central word, but one of the big words was bleak. And it was like, so he's got to give us a very negative sense of Australia and of Australians.

48:07And I think that is what Trump does. Because Trump fuels this sense of we're actually better than America. We're strong with America. We're better people than America. And the UGov poll that came out, they did a big MRP poll. And it actually had for the first time in a while, labor within touching distance of a majority. I still think it's going to be very, very, very close, probably some form of coalition, maybe with your friends, the teals. And I think it's, no, I'm sure Australian viewers will love the fact that you painted your wall teal in advance of the Australian election. It's a lovely color behind you doing it.

48:40Um, just, finally, I guess, while Australia matters. I mean, I think Australia matters because it is this very robust liberal democracy. It's a liberal democracy, which has got this very interesting balance in its economy between very important mineral base, minerals that are really crucial for the future of the world, along with its services. It's got this great democratic electoral system, which has largely avoided the kind of extremes of populism that we've had. But it also is in a very interesting position in relation to the United States and Europe. On the one hand, Alba's government's quite liberal internationalists.

49:18So, you know, if you look at the differences between him and Dutton, Dutton seems to be more likely to want to invite Netanyahu to Australia and Alba more likely to implement the international criminal court arrest warrant, Alba more renewable energy, Dutton more drill baby drill, Dutton pushing for higher defense spending 2 .5%. On Ukraine, Dutton is pretty isolationist, whereas Albinazie is quite pro -Ukraine. So, Dutton has been critical of Trump's position on Ukraine. Right. Although I think his instincts, instincts, you don't think his instincts more isolation is more sense that Australia is a bit overstretched.

49:58It's got other priorities elsewhere, it needs to constrict more on the Pacific. I have heard him talk about Ukraine in not that distant from the Labour government. And of course, the other thing that's important to Australia, you've got Orcas, Australia, UK, US, big deal, and you've also got the Australia's part of the court. And the court is America, Australia, Japan, and India. Now, India often concentrates on the kind of non -military side of stuff in relation to that. But that's a very, very important relationship. So, I think that Trump, in terms of overall foreign policy, I don't think either of them will want to be too distant from the United States, but I think in terms of the politics and the style of politics, Labour will want to try to pin the Trump negatives on Dutton.

50:43Yeah, the two choices I think that could face Australia in the sort of 510 year future, one is that if they go down the route, which Albinasi wants of becoming more about green hydrogen, green mineral production, that allows them to integrate more into the European markets and think more about, you know, Europe's now looking at these carbon border adjustment mechanisms where you'll begin charging people on how much carbon they admit. If on the other hand, you go down the Dutton route and you start doing more gas, you're integrating more into a kind of North and Asian American model of how you produce stuff.

51:20The second thing I think is that if we relate back to the beginning of our show, were America to do something particularly aggressive and crazy in the world and, you know, Greenland could be one example of that? Australia would then have a real challenge, a real challenge around keeping public support for all kinds of keeping public support for this very, very close, defense relationship they've got with the United States. A lot of which is of course, predicated on China because China is now sitting around yet another ship. We talk about a ship a couple of weeks ago. So we've got another ship going around that's being accused of being a spy ship and Albinasi is trying to say no, don't worry, we've got it under control and intelligence people have got it under control.

51:57Anyway, let's watch Australia. Are you making a prediction on this, though? I think Albo will be Prime Minister again. I could be wrong. I think it will be a very, very close election. I think the momentum is slightly with him and I think the place is where Dutton has to win. He's looking less strong than he was. And I'm going to say, Roy, the teals, you and I both met some of the teals when we were Australia and the teals are lovely lies people and what have you, what are the, what are the things that the set the election debate racing as was this guy who was caught on film who was the husband of a TLMP who was going around ripping down the posters of his wife's opponents and being filmed doing it and then that wanted to admit that he was the wife of the MP.

52:50It sort of felt very until like behaviour, I have to say. It is, I mean, well, this is the husband of Monique Ryan who I think we both met, I certainly met who is this amazing. She was director of neurology at the Melbourne Royal Children's Hospital. Many of these teals are incredibly impressive professionals in their own right. But yes, that's the kind of thing you don't want to have me. Yeah, I think maybe you do actually, Roy. It's like where the presenters are football, it's when they have these fist fights in football matches and the commentator, Gary Linnik will say, well, that's the last thing you want to see in a football field.

53:23Nonsense, but like we like Australian politics should be like, Osier rules football. No prisoners taken, no holes, bad, really go for it. It's one of the reasons I love Australia. Now listen, we were going to talk about this poll that I'd mentioned that from the John Smith Centre, but we get so many questions about young people and their attitudes to politics. So let's do that in Q &A. We've gone on for a long time. We've gone for a long time. We've gone for a long time. We've told about France, we told about Denmark and Greenland and the US and now Australia. So we'll have a maybe a bit more domestic stuff in Q &A.

53:58Absolutely, Alistair. And yes, the next episode, our question time episode, we've got some great questions and we're going to do deep dives on Myanmar and the fall out of the earthquake. We're going to look at the big question of where India goes in the world in a world where US, China and Russia are emerging as powers. How does India, one of the largest economies in the world position itself? And yes, we'll follow up on your point about young people and their views about democracy. See you then. See you then. Bye bye.