Why Trump Wants Greenland

0:00Kenneth R. Rosen:Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com. Hi there, it's Alastair. This week we're releasing the second episode in our mini-series on the battle for the Arctic. It is a vital, often overlooked, political issue that is so significant to so many of the big names in global politics. So in this episode, we're looking at why does Donald Trump really want Greenland? We're looking at China's role in the region and also some of the incredible stories of how Russia is spying, using whales to help it.

0:37Kenneth R. Rosen:If that sounds good to you, here is a clip from that episode. To hear the full thing, get all the benefits of a TripPlus membership, sign up at therestispolitics.com. Let's just turn now to Trump and Greenland. And it is incredible how, I mean, it's true he mentioned it in his first term and he talked about it, but he said it's not a top priority. I'd like it one day. Maybe that can happen. But then I came across this, partly because I was looking into the Epstein files, came across this story about a guy called Ronald Lauder. Now, the most famous Lauder that I know is Harry Lauder, who's a former Scottish musician.

1:15Kenneth R. Rosen:but Estee Lauder Cosmetics this is um this is her son a billionaire a Trump supporter and it turns out he's the guy who put into Trump's mind the idea that maybe part of making America great again is to make America bigger and Greenland is really really really big and he then went and put in started to invest in Greenland as others have done as I read somewhere you've had Sam Altman you've had Bill Gates you've had Jeff Bezos kind of sniffing around some of the investments that there might be in Greenland. But what's your take on why your president, I know you're not a supporter of his, but what's your take on why he went from that first term, yeah, kind of interesting, might look at it one day, to it seeming to be literally almost as big an obsession as the Arctic is with you?

2:05Alastair Campbell:Well, according to two independent reports, Lauder, who went to the Warren School of business with Trump back in the day, is the one who whispered in his ear that Greenland could be valuable for X number of things. I think we can undermine the notion that Trump is a lame duck president. He's got three years left. He might lose the House and the Senate in the midterm elections. So he's going full bore on a lot of different things. He's also taking credit for a lot of the agreements that the Biden administration struck, whether it be the deep water port in Nome that's being constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers or the ice pack between Finland, Canada and the U.S.

2:44Alastair Campbell:to build icebreakers. So I think that it's become more important for Trump because he's on his way out. But I think that there's a desire in his administration to claim successes that were already had. For instance, when Trump was in Davos, he met with Mark Rude, the Secretary General of NATO, and they struck this quote-unquote framework that nobody knows the details about. But ostensibly, it's just an acknowledgement of the 1951 agreement between the Kingdom of Denmark and the U.S. And so, as long as the U.S. populace remains uneducated about Greenland, Trump can claim victory on that, the same way he did with Chinese tariffs, first making them astronomically high and then lowering them to the rate that they were initially and claiming a win.

3:32Alastair Campbell:So I think that there's a desire to just chalk up more and more victories that are on their face false.

3:37Kenneth R. Rosen:I just want to, you know, drill down a little bit on this Trump stuff, because Trump being Trump, I think it was when he did an interview for the book, The Divider, with Peter Baker and his wife, Susan Glasser. And he talked about, you know, well, I love looking at maps and I saw a map and I thought, hey, Greenland. And he wants to say it was all his idea and everybody has to say it was his idea but this guy it seems to me this guy lauder really was sort of pushing him and of course lauder's he's a big business guy he's an art collector he's a maga donor as i say he was in the epstein files because uh epstein's and lauder's staff were arranging lunches for for each other and and this was after we all knew about epstein having been you know jailed and all this all that stuff but the other thing is he's this he's the father-in-law of none other than Kevin Walsh, who is about to become, if Trump has his way, the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

4:34Kenneth R. Rosen:So it's all kind of, you do get a sense that business is a big part of what this Greenland push is about. And that presumably is to do with mineral exploration.

4:43Alastair Campbell:I get extremely frustrated by that line of thinking, in part because what you're saying, in essence is that these octogenarians are somehow having the foresight of mind and care for their heirs to want to explore and build out infrastructure and commerce in places that are not going to turn a profit for 50 years. That's how icebound Greenland is. And there's no logical precedent to say that the U.S. considers the future beyond four years with the change of presidents, maybe eight years. You know, the longevity of thinking that is necessary for benefiting from the Arctic is immense. China does it well, as we know.

5:38Alastair Campbell:Russia is doing it in a different way, but better. The U.S. simply doesn't have the capacity to say, we are thinking 50 years down the road. We don't have that luxury. So to say we're going to develop Greenland for benefit of cryolite, for rubies, for all the minerals that you spoke about in the last episode is bonkers. The quick return on investment that these guys, the Estee Lauder heir, Trump international heirs, that's not going to happen here.

6:11Kenneth R. Rosen:So do you think it is much more about just adding territory? Like Alaska was added by buying it. And if you get Greenland, he leaves office saying, I didn't just make America great in his own head. I made it bigger as well. Is that what this is about?

6:25Alastair Campbell:I think so. But I also think if we look at the new national security strategy, it does take a hemispheric approach and sort of torpedoes the transatlantic partnership, right? And there is something to be said for maybe this is a smart way forward for American national security to say, we're going to consolidate and look at the Western hemisphere and this part of the world in which we have close proximity to and not worry about what's happening in Europe and the rest of the world and Eurasia. Maybe there is some benefit to that. And I think that that's a different idea. It's certainly not one we've discussed in the past, but there is some validity to the argument.

7:01Alastair Campbell:Whether or not Trump wants to increase the American geography, maybe, I don't know you know he is a you know a tempestuous guy who has an ego bigger than um greenland so we'll

7:15Kenneth R. Rosen:see what um you the people that you know who live in greenland or not just greenland but the whole the whole area but particularly greenland because it's been so much the focus of the international debate and i was in davos for trump's speech and you know it was clearly it was huge part of what was going on there everyone was talking about greenland and i'm i kept thinking like my dad's from the Hebrides, right? Kind of little islands. And, you know, I kept thinking, what would it be like if the Hebrides suddenly became the place that the whole world is talking about? People would find it quite difficult.

7:48Kenneth R. Rosen:So what was it like for the people, you know, in Greenland suddenly to be this center of global attention and have J.D. Vance's wife say she's coming to the sled race and then, no, you're not. OK, J.D.'s coming in. I mean, it's been a bit weird, isn't it?

8:03Alastair Campbell:Yeah. And, you know, as an American, as an American journalist poking around Um, most of the residents that I spoke to recognize that I was coming with this understanding that, you know, Trump had ratcheted up discussions and former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo had ratcheted up these discussions about one in Greenland. But I remember I got waylaid in, um, the, was it Northeastern part of the country because there was, um, ice clouds. So the helicopter that I was supposed to take to a small little village was not going to take off. And I was waylaid at the airport there. And so I ended up helping one of the workers there who's an Inuit airport worker paint the floor of a hangar.

8:43Alastair Campbell:And that was just how we spent our afternoon, just with roller brushes, painting the floor. And we got to talking and he pretty much echoed everything that I heard elsewhere in the country, which was, you know, I love Denmark, the kingdom of Denmark, if I may. I love going there. I think it's a great country. and I appreciate all their support for us, but I think it's crazy that we'd want to be independent because as much as I value independence, as much as I value self-determination as an Inuit person and as a people of Greenland, I also like the block rent that they give us every year to sustain our economy and also free flights to and from Copenhagen.

9:20Alastair Campbell:So there's this divide internally of saying, well, we want independence, but we want to keep things the way they are.

9:27Kenneth R. Rosen:To hear the full episode, just sign up at therestispolitics.com.