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I'm a little out of my depth, but I think it's a little more complicated than that.

Trump never takes an interest in any kind of geopolitical issue unless someone's prompted him to. He just doesn't care. He cares about having trouble flushing the toilet, and he cares about the time when someone wanted to put up windmills near his golf course which he thought would interfere with the golf somehow. He just doesn't think about Greenland because it hasn't impacted him personally.

Someone made the case that it's probably Putin that is the person prompting him to be interested in Greenland and Panama, which sounds at least plausible to me. It sounds more likely than him deciding on his own to get out the globe, and look for stuff he might be able to start fucking with, and I can't think of any other explanation.

Greenland was critical during the time of the cold war, because it's the route to Russia. A lot of ballistic missile pathways go via the arctic. Get on Google Earth and scroll up, so you're looking down on the north pole, to be able to see the general nature of things.

I don't actually think Greenland is critical in the same sense that it used to be, although it's still important. I think a lot of America's dominance is made of alliances, deterrence, friendships with individually-powerful militaries and economies the world over, and so on. Chunks of land and individual bases are not critical to our power. NATO could lose Greenland and be fine. We can shoot ballistic missiles from anywhere, from submarines, it's not unimportant but that's just not the nature of the landscape we operate in for the most part, except for particular tactical engagements.

I think Putin's interest in Greenland, despite that, stems from:

• It's "next to him" in some sense. I think he does think in terms of chunks of land, taking territory, what's next to what, because that's all his military strategy is based around in decisions he makes day to day right now. I think Putin's decision making clearly shows that he isn't really aware of the value of alliances and partnerships as a critical tool of power, as compared with just military tactical solutions and the facts on the ground.
• That said, I think he does want to destabilize NATO in general by causing infighting, which this will definitely do.
• I think Putin's probably a product of the cold war and so thinks in terms of Greenland being vital to NATO, because at that time, it was a lot more so.

Some combination of those, I think.

Again, I don't really know, this is just unqualified speculation. But if I had to guess what's up with the whole Greenland bizarreness, that would be my guess.

It's about control of northern waterways. Climate change is going to open up new sea routes for both shipping and warfare.

There's theoretical oil, but best efforts have not produced any in 50 years of trying. And now they've given up. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/greenland-puts-an-end-unsuccessful-oil-adventure-2021-07-16/

I guess, it's more about the rare earths and the freeing up route thanks to global warming