By Roger Armbrust
August 29, 2019
 |
| Aerial view of U.S. Thule Air Base in Greenland |
Do you laugh when you hear that Donald Trump wants to buy
Greenland?
Don’t.
Remember this: Trump thinks like a dictator, and acts like a
dictator. He prefers getting along with dictators like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un while fighting
with Canada’s and the European-Union countries’ leaders. And appears proud
of it.
So why would a dictator want Greenland?
Three main reasons: (1) taking Washington’s Endless War
Doctrine into Space; (2) creating a New Siberia for imprisoning immigrants,
journalists, and political enemies; and (3) attempting to control the rising
conflict over the Arctic and its resources.
Taking Endless War
into Space
First, Greenland already houses Washington’s northern-most
military base: Thule Air Base. As
the website Airforce Technology tells
us: “Today, the base
is used for monitoring space for defense purposes.”
Space
defense purposes. Got it?
Now connect that to
the recent announcement that Washington will initiate today (Aug. 29) its new
Space Command…a combatant operation. That’s COMBATANT. As in now moving the
neocon Endless War aggression into space.
As The Hill reported:
Vice President Pence and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gen. Joseph Dunford announced at Tuesday’s National Space Council meeting in
Virginia that U.S. Space Command will officially be up and running Aug. 29.
Space Command, which will be responsible for planning and
executing space operations, will have 87 units at launch next week, Dunford
said.
Their capabilities will include missile warning, satellite
operations, space control and space support, Dunford said.
Dunford described
Space as “this
critical warfighting domain. The direction is clear, we understand it and we’re
moving out.”
 |
| The Unthinkable is now looming. |
Now
connect this with Trump’s recent exiting America from its nuclear weapons treaties, accelerating the Cold War and, with today’s technologies, increasing
the threat of global devastation.
Add
to that the U.S. upping the ante by beginning this month to test medium-range
cruise missiles, which Russia called “escalating military tensions”.
Dunford said
nothing, as you would expect, about Space Command being equipped with nuclear
missiles in space. But Pence has not negated its possibility. He refused to
eliminate the idea of nuclear weapons in space in October 2018. According to a
report in Investor’s Business Daily:
Pence
acknowledged that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits nuclear weapons
from being stationed in earth's orbit. But he didn't give a clear
"no" when he was asked at a Washington Post-sponsored forum if
that should always be the case.
Instead
he responded: "I think that what we need to do is make sure that we provide
for the common defense of the people of the United States of America," he
replied. "And that's the president's determination here."
What do you think
about this? And what do you think the Russians and Chinese will think? And how
would you respond if you were them? Trump is proving he’s prepared to wipe out
all nuclear-weapons treaties. How do you expect the Chinese and Russians to
respond to that?
In
2012, seeing Barack Obama begin implementing Washington’s trillion-dollar
rebirthing of its nuclear weapons program, and China’s and Russia’s responses
to that, I wrote a column headlined “NukeBuild: This Will Not End Well”.
The
new Space Command and its potential nuclear threat to China, Russia, and the
world is the continuum of this.
And
Thule Air Base in Greenland, no doubt, will be integral to the Space Command
plan.
That includes involvement with non-nuclear space weapons. Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms
Control Association in Washington, said today by email that the current concern
involves kinetic or laser weapons in space that can destroy both space and
ground objects – a worry for both Russia and China. Also, Washington is wary of
ground weapons, like accurate intermediate-range ballistic missiles, that
with kinetic force can destroy space objects.
But if Trump imagines nuclear bombs dropped into the middle
of hurricanes, as several news outlets reported (he later denied saying it, as
he often does), then one can bet he foresees dropping nukes from space to
earth.
A New Siberia
Also,
following Trump’s election, I wrote a November 2016 column headlined “Prepare to Fight Fascism: 2017 and Beyond”. Unfortunately, my predictions have proved
true, including Trump’s attacks on the U.S. Constitution, the press, Congress,
and anyone else who he sees as a threat to his dictatorship.
And
he has continued to implement what I called his Cohn Core Principles, the way
he has operated for decades: (1) Never admit to anything negative; (2) lie and
use propaganda to turn every negative to a positive; (3) whenever sued
(threatened), countersue. He learned these hawkish tactics from Roy Cohn, his
attorney for years. They’re the perfect actions for a dictator.
 |
| Siberian inmates, 1945 |
What
does this have to do with Greenland? A dictator can make it the New Siberia,
but for America: a desolate,
forbidding landscape far from civilization, where a dictator can build prisons,
labor camps, and incarcerate immigrants, journalists, and political enemies.
As described by
Wikipedia:
Worldwide,
Siberia is well known primarily for its long, harsh winters, with a January
average of −25 °C (−13 °F), as well as its extensive history of
use by Russian and Soviet governments as a place for prisons, labor
camps, and internal
exile.
The
location made the camps extremely remote, important for dictators to make
suppression invisible. And the grueling weather conditions added to the
suffering.
Now consider
Greenland and Thule Air Base. As Wikipedia tells of the geography:
Thule's arctic
environment includes icebergs in North Star Bay, two islands (Saunders Island and Wolstenholme
Island), a polar ice
sheet, and Wolstenholme Fjord – the only place on Earth where four
active glaciers join together.
Now recall that
Trump’s long desire for immigrants has been to imprison them on military bases.
As The Daily Beast explained in June
2018:
The Trump administration’s
plan for immigrant families on the southern border involves holding them
together on military bases for a prolonged, uncertain period of time.
He’s also made clear
his assault on the Constitution and the press as the “enemy of the people”,
when actually the press is the enemy of government lying and corruption. That’s
why the Constitution guarantees press freedom. But we all know dictators love
to imprison editors and journalists to hide the truth from the public.
So Thule Air Base’s
remote location and vast harsh surroundings would be perfect for a dictator’s
political prisons.
Controlling the Arctic
On Dec. 25, 2013, I
published the column “The Coming Conflict Over Santa’s Home”. The headline is
light, but the topic is serious. I predicted then that Arctic inhabitants “are about to be
joined by major nations’ military forces, in what could lead to conflict over
possession of the North Pole’s oil, gas, and fresh-water reserves.”
The Arctic is deep in natural resources, including not only oil,
gas, and fresh water, but also fish and, in the subarctic, forestlands -- all
considered economic boons to the major nations. A number of those countries
claim property rights to sections of the area.
Those sovereignties include Canada, Russia, the United States (Alaska), Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. They are limited to a 200-nautical-mile economic zone around their border coasts which lie within the Arctic region.
My 2013 column will
give you a quick overview of the situation, which continues to develop as
climate change causes the Arctic to lose ice and become more open to pillage.
Since dictators seem
to always lust for dominating the entire world, no doubt ruling the Arctic is
high on Trump’s list.
Where does that
leave Trump with Greenland? He offered to buy the world’s largest island, but
Denmark, the owner, refused to sell. That led to a brief row between the two
countries.
But now, after
decades of closure, Trump is re-opening Greenland’s U.S. consulate. Says the
PBS Newshour:
The State
Department says in a letter to Congress that reestablishing a consulate in
Greenland is part of a broader plan to increase the U.S. presence in the Arctic.
So, look for Greenland to play more in Trump’s plans as we
move to and through 2020.
