The Greenland Purchase

Allegedly, President Trump has inquired about buying Greenland from Denmark.  Most people mock this idea, but in fact I don't see anything wrong with it in principle.  After all, a large portion of the current United States's land area was acquired via four different sales:  the Louisiana Purchase, the Adams-Onis treaty (for Florida), the Gadsden Purchase, and Alaska.  Admittedly, the last of these was over 150 years ago, but otherwise they were similar to Greenland in being large (except Gadsden), sparsely populated areas that offered strategic advantages.  Since Denmark granted Greenland a significant degree of self-rule in 1979 and again in 2008, and since the population of Greenland are largely Inuits rather than ethnic Danes, the national allegiance of Greenland would not seem to matter much to its inhabitants.  The security of the island would surely be better protected by the United States.  From a Danish standpoint, apart from national pride, it is difficult to see what they get out of the possession; in fact, they spend considerable money on an annual subsidy to Greenland.

Whether the purchase of Greenland would be at all feasible is another matter.  It might well be a question of pride for the Danes, the Greenlanders, or both.  Then again, Trump has not (as far as I know) made any sort of international demarche on this question, only asking his advisors about it, so he cannot even be accused of hurting anyone's feelings.  (That privilege would go to the advisor who leaked the information.)  Surely any policy maker should be free to consider all options in private, including ones that he subsequently rejects as inappropriate.  I also can't say for sure if the purchase of Greenland would ultimately be a good idea for the United States; presumably the purchase price would have to be considered, and we have no information on what that is.  But it seems an imminently reasonable idea on the face of it.

While researching this post, I came across an interesting article from 2012 raising the very question of why no country sells land any more.  I'm curious if it might have prompted someone to think of land that the United States might want to buy, and, therefore, indirectly led to Trump's raising the question.

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