This was my Manila Times column for Tuesday, Feb. 17. History is full of these odd connections, and it was probably interesting to at least a few people here in the Philippines, a country that has at times an overweening desire to be globally significant. There is a second part to the Greenland story (at least there is on my planning list), but since that has little direct relevance to the Philippines, I may end up publishing it as a blog-only article rather than in my column; there are other things going on here that probably deserve the priority in attention.
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SINCE the very first day of his second term, US President Bobo the Simpleminded has aggressively demanded that Denmark hand over its semi-autonomous territory of Greenland to the US. His threatening rhetoric, at times bordering on hysteria, has driven a wedge between the US and the rest of its NATO allies, who have solidly lined up behind Denmark and Greenland in rejecting Trump’s attempted takeover of the island. The independence-minded Greenlanders sometimes have a contentious relationship with Denmark, but except for two people among the population of about 56,000, they are vehemently opposed to becoming American colonial subjects.
Trump’s Greenland campaign has been pushed out of the headlines in recent weeks, as increasingly disgusting revelations from the trickle of “Epstein Files” being gleaned from the US Department of Justice have taken the spotlight. Although it is becoming increasingly clear that the American Congress and people have decided they are okay with being governed by an organized gang of child rapists and sex traffickers, the disclosures have rolled the heads of a number of politicians and high-profile business leaders in Europe and the Middle East, providing an unexpected distraction to the Greenland issue. This has allowed the Trump administration to ramp up its already obnoxious bullying of Denmark and the European community, although whether or not this will result in any significant change in Greenland’s status remains to be seen.
What may come as a surprise to most people is that Trump’s current effort to seize Greenland for the US is not the first time the question of the territory’s falling into US hands has come up. It has happened at least twice before, and in one of those episodes, the Philippines figured quite prominently in the proposed deal.
In 1910, Denmark hatched a complicated, three-party plan, and discreetly made a proposal to the US government. It would cede Greenland to the US in exchange for part of the territory of the Philippines, now a US colony following the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars. Denmark would then offer this territory to the German Empire in exchange for the Schleswig-Holstein region, which it had lost to Prussia in the Second Schleswig War in 1864. Germany at the time had only a few colonial possessions in Asia and the Pacific and was anxious to expand its imperial reach to compete with the English, French, and Dutch, so the proposal may have been considered a good deal from Kaiser Wilhelm’s point of view.
However, things never got that far, because the Americans, then under the Taft administration, immediately rejected Denmark’s proposal. The US at the time was new to the whole “imperial power” thing, and was struggling to consolidate its new territories in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, as well as pay the bills from two successive wars. And in the case of the Philippines, that war was still underway in a sense, as the Moro Rebellion in Mindanao would drag on for another three years. America at the time also had a strong isolationist sentiment, despite now having large overseas colonies, and the Taft administration was reluctant to be drawn into the intricate swamp of European imperial geopolitics.
Thus, if it were not for what was in hindsight a wise decision on the part of the Taft administration, part of the Philippines might have become a German colony. If that had happened, it would have subsequently probably become either a British or French possession within a few years, as all of the German outposts in Asia (the treaty port of Qingdao, China; the small German New Guinea colony; and protectorates in the Marshall, Caroline, and Mariana Islands, as well as Western Samoa) were seized by the Allies in 1914 after the outbreak of World War 1.
The second time the topic of Greenland becoming a US territory was raised was in 1946 after the end of World War 2, when the Truman administration offered to buy the island from Denmark for $100 million. Denmark declined the bid, but that discussion resulted in treaty negotiations that eventually led, in 1951, to the US being granted essentially unlimited military access to Greenland. The Philippines also figured in this, in a tangential way, because the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (signed on August 30 of that year) was patterned after the “Agreement Concerning the Defense of Greenland,” which was signed on April 27; the two treaties were essentially being negotiated at the same time.
Finally, the ongoing squabble over Greenland could be said to have had an even more recent impact on the Philippines. Whether that will turn out to be a blessing, a curse, or inconsequential, only time will tell. One of the main drivers of the Trump administration’s coveting of Greenland is the substantial mineral wealth on the island, particular in the so-called strategic minerals needed for tech products and advanced weaponry. There are, of course, other even weirder and scarier reasons for US ambitions in Greenland, but the minerals are the most important. The US would desperately like to separate its industries from needing to rely on China for these materials (which is honestly not a bad idea, in my opinion), and is actively seeking other sources. Greenland would come close to satisfying that objective on its own, but since the Trump administration is being firmly rebuffed in its efforts to grab the resources for itself, it has had to go to Plan B, which is to establish supply arrangements with other countries. The recently signed Memorandum of Understanding between the Philippines and the US on strategic minerals is part of that effort.
If Greenland had already fallen into American hands, that agreement would likely not have happened. That raises another troubling point: If the US does gain possession of Greenland, or significant access to the island’s mineral reserves sometime in the near future, the recent agreement uncritical minds here have been hailing as an astounding gift to Philippine economic growth and industrial development will quickly be forgotten.
