Lebensraum (BEAUTIFUL. BIG)

I watched a film ‘Against The Ice’ last night on Netflix, which recounted the largely true story of two Danish explorers who were in Greenland in the footsteps of an ill-fated group who were mapping the island in the early 1900s. The film recounts that the earlier Danish cartographers were seeking to demonstrate that Greenland was a whole island and not two bits separated latitudinally, as an American explorer had suggested—with the consequence that the U.S. had a right to claim the northern section as its own. The film, made in 2022 did not however precede Trump’s latest designs on the island as a kind of Danish patriotic response to current American expansionism. A quick look on Wikipedia shows that there has been a long history of U.S. claims to Greenland. Perhaps this is where Trump got his idea from and shows that he is not such an ahistorical figure after all. I have a suspicion he is going to get his way, but it won’t be by an outright purchase of the territory. It will be by an expansion of the existing U.S. military presence and the promise of U.S. corporate exploitation of Greenland’s vast mineral resources. Greenland’s independence movement (or sections of it) may look kindly on U.S. economic opportunities, not least as more of its land becomes accessible because of climate change, and sea routes open up.
 
The desire for control of the Arctic region was perhaps less consequential before climate change started to change the maps. Putin had one of his submarines plant a metal Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole several years ago (I believe there is an argument that the Russian continental shelf extends that far). Perhaps it’s not so much in Ukraine where real future tensions will lie but in the far north. Surely as a prelude to this Trump could start renaming a few other seas. Is he really content to be separated from Russia by something called the Bering Strait—named after a Danish born Russian? The Bering Strait connects the Bering Sea (BAD) with the Chukchi Sea (VERY BAD). Surely that has to change! Let’s call it the American Strait (BEAUTIFUL). Bearing in mind that the mainland of the U.S. is a mere 53 miles from the mainland of Russia (their island territories are even closer, a mere 2.4 miles apart) then the prospects for a bit of name-calling one-upmanship are obvious and Trump would be more glorious than ever. All this may help resolve the question as to whether Trump really is a fascist. When is he going to fully latch on to the concept of Lebensraum?