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Let me just point something out about Greenland, because everybody is arguing about Trump and nobody is looking at the map.Draw a line from Moscow to New York. It goes over Greenland. Every missile, every bomber, every bit of Russian air traffic heading for North America crosses that airspace. That is why the Americans built Pituffik up there in the first place, and it is still the northernmost US military base on the planet.Now add the ice melting.Routes that were frozen solid for the whole of human history are opening up. The Northwest Passage. The Transpolar route. Shipping lanes that cut weeks off the journey between Asia and Europe, running straight past Greenland's coast.And underneath it, rare earths. The minerals that go into every phone, every electric car, every guided missile. China currently controls the overwhelming majority of the world's supply, and they have already tried buying their way into Greenland once.So you have got missile defence, the new shipping lanes and the minerals, all sitting on one island of 56,000 people.However.Here is the bit that actually matters, and it has nothing to do with who likes Trump.The existing arrangement dates from 1951 and it is an agreement with Denmark. Greenland is talking seriously about independence. If that happens, the paperwork is with a country that no longer owns the place, and the Americans are negotiating again from scratch with a brand new government that China will be queuing up to make friends with.An agreement that survives independence solves that. It ties the access to the ground instead of to Copenhagen.That is not a Trump thing. Any American president would want that nailed down, and any of them would be failing their own people if they did not.Argue about how he went about it all you like. That bit is fair game.But strategically? That island is one of the most important places on earth, and it is only getting more important every year the ice retreats.We used to understand things like that.#greenland #arctic #strategy #followthemap