what's up with greenland
who's ruling it, who's native to it, what do they want?
" grønland ", or kalaallit nunaat (the land of the Kalaallit, an Inuit people) is an 'autonomous territory' that makes one of three parts of Denmark, the state. notice that, Denmark, the state. that's bc the other two parts are Denmark, the country proper (which is only this part in continental Europe) and an archipelago called the Faroe Islands, in the atlantic
so in that sense, Greenland isn't "owned" by Denmark, it isn't identical with Denmark- but it's Denmark, it's danish, it's a constituent part of the Danish Realm. in their constitution, this is called rigsfællesskabet, the unity of the realm
the Danish constitutional monarchy, basic law, foreign policy and defense are common to all parts, despite self-government and the distinct sociopolitical identity of the place and Greenlanders. and since Denmark is a member-state of the EU, Greenland is Europe. Greenlanders are European citizens; Denmark is in NATO as well
roughly 90% of Greenlanders are Inuit, an arctic native people who speak Kalaallisut, an Eskaleut language. The other 10% is mostly Danes and other nordics. Greenlandic people are very religious, a recent census shows more than 95% are Lutheran Christians, which is also the official danish religion. there's c. 57k inhabitants in Greenland, and the biggest city is the capital, Nuuk
right now, the legislature (called landstinget in Danish or "law-makers" in Greenlandic, the inatsisartut) has the following five groups: the Democrats, the IA (Inuit Ataqatigiit), the Siumut, the Atassut and the Naleraq. All except the last have made a government coalition.
the biggest groups is the Democrats. these were historically "unionist", advocating for closer ties with the mainland - nowadays they're okay with eventual independence, but through a bilateral and democratic process that could imply constitutional reform. they're a centrist liberal party, and the most voted party in the election last year. the second most voted are the IA, which are a green leftist party; Siumut, "Forward", is a socdem (center-left) party, and both are also pro-independence. Atassut, is a conservative unionist party.
small regions tend to make gov'ts of broad consensus and are amicable to big-tent parties. this is also true of Greenland. the reason the last party, Naleraq, is out of the gov't, is because it's a splinter off Siumut which advocates for abrupt independence, which is not popular (8/31 seats) - it's the only major party which has signalled anything but stark rejection of US rhetoric. and that's not because it's pro-US at all (remember, it's one of the most independentist), but rather bc it was strongly pro-NATO, at least at the time.
so it's the only one where populist interference could thrive. by large, opinion polls in Greenland show almost uniform rejection of US annexation, even as a state, with <6% of people approving of such a scenario. it's way less popular even than danish unionism.
so, basically, an "american greenland" would be all of these:
-an act of aggression against a sovereign state
-an act of war between NATO countries
-an impopular imposition on a mostly native, christian population, which could only be described as neocolonial
it's very possible Trump has no intentions of doing anything on this front, but rather in the caribbean- and saturated world attention, media, and social networks with distractions. and yet... what measures will Denmark and Europe take to prepare for this scenario?
