Over the last year, I have been relatively careful not to opine to a great extent on Trump because I know that some of you are not crazy about him. To say the least! In regard to whether or not he was the best the American voters had to choose from in 2024, I still very much think he was. The last thing Canada needs is an economic basket case, nine times our size, right next door.
But in regard to how he is dealing with us Canadians, you and I are on the same page. And it’s strange, because the guy is bright, and on the big picture, I think he has a better understanding of the world than anybody else anywhere. But the way he deals with the world, including us, is often simply stupid. The 51st state thing, for example, even if he had lain awake nights thinking about it, could he have come up with anything that would make all of Canada hate him more than that did? Not likely.
But how about how he’s dealing with Greenland?
Well, because his view on Greenland is similar to his view on Canada, we think he stinks on Greenland, too. But if we think that, we’re wrong.
Why?
Here’s why.
It’s about distance.
Let me tell you about distance.
When she was fifteen (you know who she is!) and in Grade 10, and I was seventeen, and in Grade 12, we ended up in the same Grade 10 French class. I had failed it not once, but twice, so I was with the kids two years behind me. And not only were she and I in the same class, but we were in the same row. Except that she was at the very front, with the smart kids, and I was at the very back, with the fool arounds.
We didn’t have much to do with each other except for those magical times when the teacher would give us a quiz and then say, ‘Okay, pass your papers ahead, and we’ll grade them.’ You can see what happened, can’t you! She had to bring her quiz paper back to me to mark. So we got a bit acquainted, and sixty-two years later, we’re still having breakfast together. How far had we been apart in that class, yes, about twenty-four feet.
But the next year, after I was out of high school and off to college, it was different. Twenty-four feet had turned into four hundred and fifty miles. And in either miles or kilometres, that’s a long way. It took three days to get a letter.
That’s distance.
And as sophisticated as today’s military is, distance is still a factor in military defence on this planet. Which is why we Canadians should be on the same side of the Greenland issue as Trump. But we’re not, because while he sees the big picture correctly, as soon as he opens his mouth to talk about it, he screws it up. First of all, he should’t have talked about it publicly at all until he had made a deal with Greenland and Denmark.
It’s called the triumph of technique over purpose. It happens a lot, even right here in B.C. I could tell you several stories, but I don’t have room, so take my word for it. But it’s taking a good idea and messing it up by how that good idea is implemented.
Why should we be in favour of the US owning Greenland?
First of all, we’re a small country, nowhere near the size that we would have to be to defend ourselves in a nuclear war. And how long is the list of other countries that are large enough and might care enough to defend us? It’s a list of exactly one country. Just the US.
How long has it been since you heard anyone say ‘We don’t need the US, because we have Sweden on our side.’ Or Brazil? Or Italy? Yes, exactly never. No other country is capable of defending Canada, nor would they probably care to spend a dollar to do so.
So that takes us to the location.
And to really talk about location in the context of world nuclear powers, we need to go back to high school and grab something that we don’t use or have in our houses anymore: a globe. And we have to have a globe, a flat map in an atlas doesn’t do it. But grab a globe somewhere, then an old shoelace or a discarded violin string or, sure, just a piece of thread, and put one end on Moscow, Russia, and the other end on Washington, D.C. and see what island the string goes over. Of course, it’s Greenland.
And Greenland has both the location and the distance for it to be not only important, but crucial. And if the US had it, it would be able to defend itself and us, much better than it can today, because it would then have Alaska on the north-west corner of North America and Greenland on the north-east corner.
So instead of lipping off and making the whole world mad at him, Trump should have quietly gone about buying Greenland, just as the US did with Louisiana and Alaska years ago, at a different time and with different presidents. And with wallets that wouldn’t be able to hold all that American money, the Danes and Greenlanders would have been first in line, saying what a good deal it was for democracy. Yes, then it would have been a ‘democracy’ issue. Not a US ‘imperialism’ issue.
But, of course, nobody is saying that today because Trump has been successful in making everybody mad at what is a very good idea. And it was his idea.
Can it still happen?
It should, and we Canadians should be willing to shore up our defence spending to help the US defend North America since we too live here. While we and the US may fight about trade, we should be getting along on defence. And if we did, most of the trade issues would quietly disappear.
