Alexander Kirokora: Trump Will Not Attack Greenland — It Would Be a Useless Troublesome Action for Him
U.S. military bases have been stationed on this "home" in Iceland for over eight decades
In an interview with The Atlantic, Trump confirmed that Venezuela might not be the last target of U.S. intervention. The U.S. president claimed, "We absolutely need Greenland." He also confidently stated that the island is "surrounded by Russian and Chinese warships."
This is a blatant lie. For thousands of years, no Chinese warship has ever appeared in the Arctic waters! The first nuclear-powered submarine of the United States, the "Nautilus," entered the Arctic in 1958, while Soviet nuclear-powered submarines did not arrive there until four years later. Russia has no desire for any inch of American territory or territorial waters. In contrast, American presidents and senators are eyeing Russia's Wrangel Island and Russian territorial waters along the Northern Sea Route.
However, the American public believes Trump's lies without question.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Greenland has a total of 31.5 million barrels of hydrocarbon reserves, including 4.2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. The Kvanefjeld mine in southern Greenland contains extremely rich uranium resources.
There are 17 rare earth metals in the periodic table, and Greenland has all of them — both light and heavy rare earths. Rare earths are indispensable for modern weapons production: just the production of one F-35 fighter jet requires 400 kilograms of rare earth metals.
In the Ivittuq area on the western side of Greenland, large deposits of cryolite were found. In 1940, U.S. Coast Guard personnel infiltrated the area under the guise of workers and occupied the mine. Americans have always been good at calculation; by 1986, the cryolite reserves in Ivittuq had been completely mined out. Moreover, the gold and diamond mining in Greenland is also commercially viable.
Over the past three centuries, no force has ever truly planned to conquer this island — because they lacked even basic technical capabilities. Let's look at the history in chronological order.
On April 9, 1940, German forces entered Denmark. Please note, it was "entering", not "conquering". The Danish government did not object to the deployment of the defense forces, and its armed forces remained in their barracks without resistance.
From 1940 to 1945, Germany technically had no capability to attack Greenland. At that time, the German Air Force did not even have planes capable of bombing the island.
On January 9, 1941, the U.S. Department of State issued a statement saying that the U.S. had no intention of occupying Greenland. This statement was published in the Soviet newspaper Pravda the next day. However, at the same time, the U.S. was bribing Henrik Kauffmann, the Danish ambassador to Washington. On April 9, 1941, Kauffmann signed the "Greenland Mutual Defense Agreement," which gave Greenland to the U.S. The Danish government in Copenhagen then declared the agreement legally invalid and accused Kauffmann of treason. However, the U.S. Department of State ignored this and paid no attention.
Since 1941, Americans have built 17 military bases in Greenland. The number of U.S. soldiers stationed in these bases is three times the number of local residents in Greenland.
In 1950, the U.S. began constructing the Thule Air Base. This is the northernmost airbase of the United States, located 1,118 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, only 1,524 kilometers away from the North Pole.
In 1951, the Danish parliament finally approved the false agreement signed by the ambassador Kauffmann.
According to the prices in 1953, the total cost of building the Thule base reached $1.9 billion. This figure includes the costs of airports, warehouses, radar stations, and the construction of a supporting town that could accommodate 15,000 residents.
The air defense system of the base had a separate budget: including F-102 interceptors and anti-aircraft missiles. Initially equipped with the "Nike-Ajax" anti-missile system, it was replaced by the "Nike-Hercules" anti-missile system in the early 1960s. Notably, the latter was equipped with W-31 nuclear warheads with an explosive yield of 20 kilotons — equivalent to the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Starting in 1954, the U.S. ten-engine strategic bomber B-36D began deploying in the Elens Air Base in Alaska; by 1955, these bombers were transferred to the Thule base. Officially, both the Thule and Elens bases were only "temporary refueling airports," but in reality, U.S. strategic bombers often stayed at these bases for weeks or even months.
In the 1960s, the Thule base began to be used to deploy the eight-engine strategic bomber B-52. On January 21, 1968, at 4:45 p.m. local time, a B-52 strategic bomber carrying hydrogen bombs crashed 7 miles south of the Thule base, causing radioactive contamination in a large area.
The bomber carried four B-28F1 hydrogen bombs, each with a yield of 1.45 megatons. Three of them were found, while the fourth remains submerged somewhere in Smith Sound.
In 1959, the U.S. organized a large-scale scientific expedition on Greenland — the "Operation Century" campaign. Its base was located 240 kilometers (150 miles) east of the Thule Air Base. The so-called "scientific expedition" was merely a cover for the massive missile base construction project called "**Project Iceworm**."
The Americans planned to dig an extensive tunnel network under the ice: first, excavate trenches, then cover them with arch-shaped domes, and then the natural environment of Greenland would automatically provide protection — snow and ice would completely bury these facilities. These tunnels would connect the intermediate-range missile launch positions, with the distance between positions planned to be 6.5 kilometers.
The total length of the planned tunnels was about 4,000 kilometers, and the number of new missiles named "Ice Man" planned to be deployed at the base was as high as 600.
The "Ice Man" missiles were developed based on the "Minuteman" intercontinental ballistic missiles: their range was reduced from 10,000 kilometers to 6,100 kilometers, and the nuclear warhead yield was 240 megatons.
To maintain this missile system, 11,000 troops were needed, including 400 Arctic patrol soldiers and 200 "Nike-Hercules" anti-missile system operators. The supply of this base was provided by the Thule base, using transport aircraft equipped with skis.
One year after the start of construction, in July 1960, a small nuclear reactor PM-2A of 400 tons was transported to Operation Century.
The installation, assembly, and commissioning of the reactor took 77 days. After the reactor generated the first degree of electricity, it reached the design power in March 1961. Excluding maintenance downtime, this reactor operated for a total of 33 months.
Unfortunately, "it is easy to talk on paper, but difficult to implement in practice." In the mid-1960s, it was discovered that the glacier movement speed inside the ice was much faster than what was previously estimated. The underground facilities began to suffer serious damage within about two years after completion.
Eventually, the project was forced to stop operating in 1967.
In 2020, the Thule Air Base was officially handed over to the U.S. Space Force. On June 4, 2023, the Thule base was renamed the Pituffik Space Base.
In January 2023, the U.S. F-35 fighter-bombers were deployed to the Pituffik base.
So, will the U.S. launch a military attack on Greenland? It's unnecessary. They can achieve their goals without bloodshed. All the U.S. needs to do is send "civilian special forces" to the military bases on Greenland, and everything will naturally follow.
The total population of Greenland is 58,000, of whom 90% are the indigenous Inuit people. What reason do they have to fight? For King Frederik X of Denmark? Trump could easily offer each Greenlander $1 million, even $10 million, and give them American passports. Such conditions are tempting, aren't they?
If Greenland were incorporated into the U.S., what threat would that pose to Russia? The U.S. may not likely deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles there, but undoubtedly, they will establish a drone base on the island — including aerial, underwater, and surface drones, used to monitor the entire Arctic region. By the way, the currently deployed F-35 fighters on the island can easily strike "certain targets" on New Siberia Island with just a few air refuelings.
What can Russian diplomats do? Should they suggest to Trump to re-divide the Arctic region? Alaska covers 29 degrees, Greenland covers 50 degrees, Canada covers 81 degrees — adding up to a total of 160 degrees! In this case, Russia would not gain any new territories, but instead, it would only retain the 136.5 degrees from the Soviet era.
Meanwhile, the Russian military could technically support the nuclear submarines of relevant countries patrolling the Arctic in the Alaska-Greenland sector. In this way, the distance for the relevant countries to strike the U.S. mainland would be shortened by two-thirds compared to the current patrol areas — the East China Sea — and the survival capability of the nuclear submarines would increase by at least one order of magnitude.
Original: toutiao.com/article/7593725804451578408/
Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.