Every day, Didier François deals with an international topic.
This is the most incredible diplomatic incident of recent years. Donald Trump announced on Wednesday the cancellation of his state visit scheduled for early September in Copenhagen. The Prime Minister of Denmark has refused to consider her proposal to buy Greenland.
It's absolutely amazing! This is the proposal to buy Greenland elsewhere, which everyone treated until now with a certain irony (even a little lightness) since no one believed seriously. But even more, the cancellation of this official trip for such a futile and perfectly assumed reason. In the presidential tweet that preceded the official announcement of the White House (as it is now the rule), Donald Trump blandly explains that he rejects his meeting with the Prime Minister to the extent that his refusal "to discuss the The purchase of Greenland "incited him to" save effort and money in the United States ". As if this hypothetical transaction, which had never been put on the negotiating table before, had suddenly become the one and only subject worthy of interest in the relations between two allied members of NATO. The Queen of Denmark reacted subtly and said she was "surprised". Clearly, she was no less than the US ambassador to Copenhagen who, just minutes before the White House chopper fell, announced on her own tweeter account "here everything is ready to receive the President of the United States ".
What could have driven Donald Trump to such stubbornness on this issue of Greenland?
Behind this quite cavalier way (and very counterproductive to approach the subject) hides when one even a major strategic stake. Because with global warming, the ice has melted around the polar ice cap, discovering huge deposits of raw materials and valuable resources. But above all, opening two new shipping routes that (according to meteorologists) would allow by 2035 to shorten by 40% the route between China and Europe, at least during the summer months. At this point, the United States controls the Northwest Passage running along Alaska and then Canada. While Russia in hand on the northeastern passage that runs along its Siberian territory before leading to Greenland. We must imagine the stakes ... Moscow is also conducting major military exercises in the region, the latter in two years, to support its claims to the extension of 1.2 million square kilometers of its area. economic exclusivity. China is obviously interested in this new playground of all the world powers and opened, since 2004, a research station on the Norwegian island of Ny-Alesund. France, with its old Arctic expedition traditions, is not far behind, as a Navy vessel made the first 104-day journey (6,000 kilometers) in this famous northeastern passage last year. Donald Trump's interest in Greenland (which he describes as "a strategically interesting transaction") is therefore quite rational which is much less so it is his purely real estate approach to the affair in defiance of all diplomatic uses.