Greenland – Impeachment News and Resources

President Donald Trump is gone. Far gone. And yes, the evidence is vast—from illegal tariffs that his own party hates; to r ecalcitrance on releasing the Epstein files, which his own party ran on; to blowing up the deficit, which his own party pretends to care about; to half-assed nation-building in Venezuela, which he himself ran against.

Indeed, at a time when Republicans desperately need their president to focus on affordability and the economy ahead of the midterm elections, he is instead demolishing the White House and obsessing over armrests at the Kennedy Center. You know, the issues top of mind to struggling Americans trying to make ends meet.

But nothing illustrates the depth of Trump’s unraveling more than his demented obsession with Greenland—claiming it needs to become American territory to “protect” it despite already hosting several U.S. military bases as part of the NATO alliance.

In an unhinged Truth Social post, Trump declared that “world peace is at stake” in his Greenland gambit. “China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it,” he wrote. “Only the United States of America, under PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, can play in this game, and very successfully, at that! Nobody will touch this sacred piece of Land, especially since the National Security of the United States, and the World at large, is at stake.”

Nobody has touched that “sacred piece of land,” whatever the hell he means by that, since Denmark claimed it in 1721. The notion that either Russia or China could invade Greenland is bonkers. China has its hands full trying to figure out how to invade Taiwan, just 100 miles off its coast, but somehow it can also support an invasion of Greenland from more than 5,000 miles away, surrounded by NATO nations?

And the idea that Russia could challenge Greenland is just as absurd, given its ongoing inability to seize meaningful territory in Ukraine—without 1,000 miles of ocean between them. Trump keeps claiming that Greenland has been “covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place,” which is just stupid.

But even if it were true … so what? Oh noes, a boat sailed by? That’s what keeps Trump up at night?

Not content to stop there, Trump followed up with this bit of geopolitical genius: “I love the people of China. I love the people of Russia,” Trump said. “But I don’t want them as a neighbor in Greenland, not going to happen.”

Who is going to tell Trump that Russia is already a neighbor of the United States?

Meanwhile, my theory from a year ago still stands. Trump wants Greenland because it looks outsized on a Mercator projection map:

Trump’s brain is mush. It’s gone. He’s gone. And Republicans are sitting there watching him wreck America’s alliances with barely a peep. Even those few speaking up are afraid to put any real muscle behind their words.

For generations, American power rested on credibility—on allies knowing the United States meant what it said, honored its commitments, and played a stabilizing role in the world. That credibility made America safer, richer, and more influential than any nation in history.

And this is the man Republicans are entrusting with that legacy. On Tuesday, Trump declared on Truth Social:

“No single person, or President, has done more for NATO than President Donald J. Trump. If I didn’t come along, there would be no NATO right now!!! It would have been in the ash heap of History. Sad, but TRUE!!!”

He is insane.

Trump is now burning our nation’s credibility to the ground. He is alienating allies, threatening territorial grabs, and normalizing authoritarian expansionism, all while signaling that American commitments last only as long as his attention span.

This is how the world stops trusting the United States. This is how instability spreads. This is how wars start—not because America is weak, but because it has become dangerously erratic.

And Republicans are letting him do it, even as Trump posts that NATO is the “real threat” to America.

How much of the world order does Trump have to burn down before Republicans decide it’s worth the political risk to act?

It takes a special kind of insanity to send armies into U.S. cities and Venezuela, then start musing about invading Greenland because you didn’t get a peace prize for it all. But it takes a special kind of cowardice to watch it happen and say nothing.

And yet that’s exactly what Republicans are doing—standing by, muttering concerns, issuing carefully worded statements, and otherwise keeping quiet like lemmings headed for a cliff, terrified that if they step out of line, Trump might—egads!—write a nasty tweet about them.

At this point, silence isn’t loyalty. It’s complicity. But it’s not too late to do something about it, whether it’s impeachment or the 25th Amendment. Otherwise, your legacy is at stake, and history is not going to be kind about it.

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While the bulk of U.S. news coverage in the Caribbean tends to focus on Puerto Rico, the U.S Virgin Islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas are rarely part of the discussion.

The USVI did garner some mainstream media coverage in 2017 when they were hit by Hurricane Irma and then Hurricane Maria, and there is coverage from time to time of Stacey Plaskett, the USVI’s nonvoting delegate to Congress. But it’s doubtful that mainlanders learn much, if anything, about this U.S. colony—aka territory— in school. I know I didn’t.

Do a Google search of the USVI, and the first result will no doubt detail beaches and resorts. How many readers can even name the USVI’s current governor?

With all the recent news about the orange occupant of the White House threatening to seize or forcibly buy Greenland from Denmark, it’s interesting to note that in the past, the U.S. “bought” what is now the USVI from Denmark—and that transaction has historical connections to Greenland.

According to this Arctic Institute article by Romain Chuffart and Rachael Lorna Johnstone, “History Repeats Itself: It Has To; No One Listens”:

This is the not the first time the U.S. looks to purchasing territory from the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1916, the US bought the erstwhile Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands). In the same treaty, the US renounced any claim to Greenland and recognised Danish sovereignty over the entire island.

Jan. 17 marks one of the historical anniversaries of the process. I covered the centennial of the purchase here, back in 2017, in “From the Danish West Indies to the U.S. Virgin Islands: Overlooked colony is celebrating centennial.”

Today is another such anniversary. On Jan. 17, 1917, the purchase treaty ratification was formally exchanged between the U.S. and Denmark, proclaimed by then-U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, and again on March 9 by the King of Denmark, Christian X.

There are several YouTube videos available that tell the story. My favorite is “The Colonisation of the Virgin Islands” a 15-minute historical journey by a content creator named Dexter who is from the Virgin Islands.

YouTube Video

The U.S. State Department Archive also tells the story. The entire piece is being posted here since we don’t know how long the archives will remain accessible and unsanitized:

Purchase of the United States Virgin Islands, 1917

Beginning in 1867, the United States made several attempts to expand its influence into the Caribbean by acquiring the Danish West Indies. However, due to a number of political difficulties in concluding and ratifying a treaty to govern this exchange, this collection of islands did not become a part of the United States until their formal transfer from Denmark on March 31, 1917. After the transfer, the United States Government changed the name of the islands to the Virgin Islands of the United States.

The Danish West Indies were controlled by several European powers before coming under Danish control in the late 1600s. The Danish West Indies were further enlarged by the 1733 purchase of the island of St. Croix from France, and an 1848 revolt led to the abolition of slavery in the colony. However, after the 1830s, the islands entered into a period of economic decline, and the Danish government found that the West Indies colony was becoming increasingly expensive to administrate.

In 1867, Secretary of State William Henry Seward attempted to acquire the Danish West Indies as part of his plan for peaceful territorial expansion. Seward successfully negotiated a treaty that was ratified by the Danish parliament and approved by a local, limited-suffrage plebiscite. The treaty also allowed islanders the choice to remain Danish subjects or become U.S. citizens. However, the U.S. Senate, angered over Seward's support of President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial, rejected the treaty.

John Hay, U.S. Secretary of State from 1898 to 1905, was also interested in acquiring the Danish West Indies, as part of his broader plans for American expansion and securing the route of the future Panama Canal. In 1900, the U.S. and Danish governments again entered into a treaty, which the Senate ratified in 1902. However, the upper house of the Danish parliament did not ratify this treaty, deadlocking in a tied vote. The 1902 treaty did not contain a plebiscite provision, nor did it accord U.S. citizenship to the islanders. The U.S. purchase of the Danish West Indies was thus delayed again.

In 1915, especially after the sinking of the Lusitania, the issue of the U.S. purchase of the Danish West Indies again became an important issue in U.S. foreign policy. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing feared that the German government might annex Denmark, in which case the Germans might also secure the Danish West Indies as a naval or submarine base from where they could launch additional attacks on shipping in the Caribbean and the Atlantic. Lansing thus approached Constantin Brun, the Danish Minister to the United States, about the possible purchase of the Danish West Indies in October of 1915, but Brun rejected the proposal. Many Danes resisted U.S. acquisition of these islands as they expected that the unfortunate civil rights record of the U.S. in the early twentieth century would have disastrous consequences for the predominantly black population of the Danish West Indies. The Danish government thus required that any treaty transferring ownership of the islands to the United States would make provisions for a local plebiscite, U.S. citizenship for the islanders, and free trade. Lansing rejected these provisions claiming that these issues fell under the jurisdiction of Congress and thus could not be extended by treaty. Lansing also objected to a treaty provision that Danish citizens be guaranteed the legal rights that they currently enjoyed on the islands. Concerned about recent events and Danish recalcitrance, Lansing implied that if Denmark was unwilling to sell, the United States might occupy the islands to prevent their seizure by Germany.

Preferring peaceful transfer to occupation, the Danish government agreed to Lansing's demands, and Brun and Lansing signed a treaty in New York on August 4, 1916. The treaty was approved by the Danish Lower House on August 14, and subsequently passed by the Danish Upper House. The treaty was approved by a Danish plebiscite (though not a Virgin Islands plebiscite) on December 14. Subsequent re-approvals of the transfer were passed by both Danish houses, and then ratified by King Christian X of Denmark. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on September 6, and it was signed by Woodrow Wilson on January 16, 1917. Formal transfer of the islands occurred on March 31, 1917, along with a U.S. payment to Denmark of $25,000,000 in gold coin.

United States colonial policy distinguished between citizens and "nationals," or inhabitants of colonies to whom the rights of U.S. citizenship were not conferred. However, U.S. officials initially displayed inconsistency on that status until Acting Secretary of State Frank L. Polk wrote on March 9, 1920 that Virgin Islanders had "American nationality" but not the "political status of citizens." The U.S. Virgin Islands were administered by the U.S. Navy from 1917 to 1931. Full U.S. citizenship to all residents born in the U.S. Virgin Islands was extended in 1932 by an act of Congress, and a 1936 act accorded a greater measure of self-government, although the islands would not have an elected governor until 1970.

Becky Little wrote “The U.S. Bought 3 Virgin Islands from Denmark. The Deal Took 50 Years” for History:

During World War I, Denmark finally sold Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix to the U.S. for $25 million in gold coin.

Every March 31, the U.S. Virgin Islands of Saint Thomas, Saint John and Saint Croix observe “Transfer Day” to commemorate the sale of the islands from Denmark to the United States. Of the U.S.’s five permanently inhabited territories, the U.S. Virgin Islands is the only one the country ever purchased from another imperial power. The two powers negotiated over the three islands for more than 50 years before finally transferring power in 1917.

Though the U.S. and Denmark each had their own complex motivations in this exchange, “they turned upon the question of imperialism—declining in the case of Denmark and increasing on the part of the United States,” wrote the late historian Isaac Dookhan in a 1975 issue of Caribbean Studies. Ultimately, the U.S. would successfully pressure Denmark to sell the islands by threatening a military attack on the neutral nation during World War I.

The International Journal of Naval History has a piece by historian Hans Christian Bjer titled “The Purchase of the Virgin Islands in 1917: Mahan and the American Strategy in the Caribbean Sea”:

Readers of American and Danish history have considered the American purchase of the former Danish West Indies, The Virgin Islands, in 1916-17, as an isolated political event with a short previous history. Danish historians usually explain the sale to the US as mostly due to financial reasons. Denmark acquired, as colonies, the islands, St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John in 1671, 1718 and 1733 respectively. From the late nineteenth century, Denmark considered maintaining the colonies a losing proposition. The disadvantages of possessing the islands were, before the 1860s, discussed occasionally in Danish political circles without any declared solution.

In 2017 Danish media marked the centenary of the sale. In this connection it was remarkable that two facts about the sale didn’t seem to be generally known. Firstly, that the process of the sale actually was going on for fifty years before the sale in 1917. Secondly, that the US naval strategy concerning the Caribbean Sea played a substantial role in the American interest in the islands. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention on both sides of the Atlantic to these facts.

[...]

In January 1865, Seward contacted the Danish Minister to the US, General W. R. Raasløff, who wrote to the Danish government about an American acquisition of the Danish islands. The Danish government was at first surprised by the enquiry, but eventually became willing to discuss it. The Danes stipulated the clear precondition that the two great European powers, Great Britain and France, would accept the sale [1. General Raasløff’s influential role in the 1860s on the question of the Danish West Indies is treated in Erik Overgaard Petersen, The Attempted Sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States of America, 1865-70 (Frankfurt : 1997).].

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Danes were dissatisfied with their West Indies colonies. The three islands had become an economic burden instead of a profitable possession. As early as 1846, politicians discussed the possibility of selling the islands. The emancipation of the slaves on the islands in 1848 made the possibility of a sale even more appealing.

What’s interesting is the fact that as part of the treaty, the U.S. signed a declaration recognizing Denmark's full sovereignty over Greenland, renouncing any prior American claims.

Nordics Info detailed this in “USA's declaration on Danish sovereignty of Greenland, 1916”:

On 4th August 1916, the American government issued a declaration to the Danish government that it would not raise objections if Denmark extended its interests in Greenland to include the entire island. This was perhaps surprising given the 1832 Monroe Doctrine intended to limit European colonialism. The declaration paved the way for recognition of Danish sovereignty by other nations.

[...]

The Danish West Indies transferred to the USA on 31st March 1917 and were from then on called the United States Virgin Islands. On 21st May 1921, Denmark formally declared that all of Greenland was subject to Danish rule.

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Category: Greenland

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Caribbean Matters: Before Greenland, there was the US Virgin Islands