The reason the United States might want Greenland is because the polar ice cap is melting and Russia has a large naval base just across the way. It is of no value to the Danes, who can neither settle it nor defend it, but it is of great value to the Americans. This puts the Danes in a good position to extract a very large sum of money for it, with mineral rights if they choose. They should just take the money.
Yes it is not impossible that by the end of this century the Arctic Ocean could host major shipping routes from Asia to Europe and North America, certainly in the summer. Obviously the US and Russia (+ Canada, UK, Norway to lesser extents) will have major influence over any such routes. It would probably be in the west's long term interests if Greenland was passed to the US.
Also I worked at DHL in the late 1990s and they added South-East England and Northern France as far as Paris to what you call Core Europe, then pictured it as "the blue banana".
It's an intriguing issue: Ireland has managed to rake in US multinational corporations and very much at the expense of individual EU states. A quite brilliant strategy but one, when it unravels (and it surely will), will have huge consequences for Ireland.
‘The West was bottled up and forced to live by its own means, in a vacuum’.
I have heard this phenomenon referred to as the "Cultural Polyphemus". In allusion to the ingenuity provoked in Odysseus and his crew by the Cyclops Polyphemus blocking up the easy exit of his cave in Book 9 of the Odyssey.
We see something of the same phenomenon, I suppose, in the coup pulled off by DeepSeek after the export embargo on AI tech from America.
Re: The West was bottled up and forced to live by its own means, in a vacuum’.
How does the Eastern Roman Empire (AKA, Byzantium, but not while it existed) fit into that statement? In the period immediately after the demographic collapse of the 6th century trade largely ceased across wide areas of Eurasia, but it did resume in the 8th century and Constantinople became a sort of bright civilizational light in Christendom. It definitely influenced Italy (where the Byzantines held lands until the high Middle Ages), which in turn influenced the rest of Christian Europe. Even Kievan Rus was eventually drawn into the cultural and economic network which grew across Europe.
I suspect DeepSeek will be flash in the pan, and will come to be seen, in part, as propagandist hype.
Greetings from Guangzhou from one of your UK expat PRC subscribers. I'm almost permanently on a VPN rooted through various SE Asian countries so I may not show up as being in the PRC. There may be more of us than you think!
The biggest benefit from annexing Greenland -- there are costs -- is insurance. You prevent a future government from being bribed or influenced by hostile powers, which would require a costly intervention to reverse.
The second biggest reason is because we can and it would be cool. That is not offered facetiously. It is a serious benefit in domestic politics. Many people will disapprove; the number of GOP voters in 2024 who will switch votes in 2028 based on that (or decide not to turn out) is close to zero. Conversely, you could actually get voters who might have lapsed back into apathy to turn out in 2028.
Finally, mineral rights. In part, this is related to (1) above: Washington would like the sovereign right to deny access to foreign powers, rather than being forced to bid against them in an open market. But the rights themselves are worthwhile.
I'm not sure that it's such a bad idea to expect Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinian refugees. The whole question of why Middle Eastern migrants don't seek asylum in stable Muslim countries rather than Europe deserves, I think, to be discussed a bit more. Liberals tend to get defensively angry whenever I tentatively bring it up.
Another great piece, Ed. But can I really be the only person who thinks "Interstellar" is absolutely, crashingly awful? I can remember *nothing* of Zimmer's score, despite being told it was very good on Radio 4. I'm not normally the kind of person who picks up on small bloopers but there's a scene where whatsisname finds the surviving bit of NASA or whatever and they're drinking from paper cups after the world has more or less ended. Hello! There are no supply chains, what's going on here? The world building was beyond terrible. And it just seemed self-indulgent, self-congratulatory trash. Star Wars was deeper, and had better music. Meanwhile, 2001 is arguably the best film ever made (perhaps especially if you're called Dave).
I wouldn't go that far. It's got a tremendous energy; things just keep happening. But it wouldn't have made the same impact without the score which covers all the flaws.
Yes, flooding Egypt and Jordan with Palestinians would be a bad idea for Jordan and Israel. But then it would be a bad idea to flood Europe with them (see Emil Kirkegaard). And keeping them where they are, readying themselves for the next 7 October, is also a horrible solution. I feel so sorry for Israelis having to live next door to them.
'speculating on whether the tragic Washington air disaster was the result of DEI was incredibly crass (he may turn out to be correct, but it’s neither the time nor the place)'
I've been wondering what went through Trump's head when he said that. Perhaps something like, 'By the time the crash investigators decide what caused the crash most people will have moved on and forgotten about it. Also no crash investigator is going to point the finger at a specific individual who got his or her job due to affirmative action. All you can really do is produce a graph and show how crashes have increased since DEI became all the rage but even that will have a hundred confounding factors in it. So Trump probably thought, 'Strike while the iron's hot'. Of course I'm bound to give him a free pass because I'm rooting for him but also a part of me dislikes what I see as the phoney mourning of politicians over strangers. We all know it's phoney but we prefer phoney to heartlessly honest. I do too, but not as much as some.
feels incredibly insensitive and ill-judged, but not unexpected.
The air traffic control DEI reports from a while back did concern me, as I'm not fond of flying, but we will have to wait and see. If someone did make a blunder, they will have that weighing on them forever - I would *hate* to be an air traffic controller for just this reason.
I agree, but whatever the cause, the investigators - or the reporters who interpret the investigation's findings - aren't going to find DEI to blame, even if it sort of was. The window that blew out of that Alaskan Airlines plane. Was that due to DEI? How could you tell? Certainly people like Ed Dutton have predicted that such accidents will become more common as the average IQ goes down.
Yes, being responsible for some awful disaster doesn't bear thinking about. Sometimes I DO think about it and while walking stop dead in the street say 'No!' out loud and cover my mouth with my hand. Sometimes I shudder thinking about men who have left home intending to drop their toddlers off at play school, then forgotten and just driven to work, leaving the child in the back of the car on a baking hot day. I am forgetful enough to do just such a thing. There are a hundred different ways of absentmindedly ruining people's lives and in doing so ruin your own.
The reports now are indicating that the control tower was understaffed and it does appear that neither the airplane nor the helicopter crew were at fault-- the problem had to do with control tower. We need to know more, especially as to why the tower lacked staffing, before coming to any conclusions.
Like Trump, I too am obsessed with this issue, so while I find it very unlikely that the crash was directly caused by DEI, I don't find the idea at all ridiculous. Ridiculous is believing in ghosts, gods, astrology and such. The fact that people are hired on the basis of their race or sex rather than ability makes accidents far more likely to happen. I don't think that's controversial and there's nothing ridiculous about believing that. However, being able to trace a particular accident back to hiring practices is extremely unlikely, even if the authorites weren't loathe to do so.
They may have been Dukes of York, but their power base was in the south of England. London closed its gates to Margaret of Anjou (the effective leader of the Lancastrians as Henry VI was non compos mentis by then). When Edward IV showed up they welcomed him to his coronation. And Edward hastened to also establish ties with the rich and powerful Duke of Burgundy, who eventually married his sister. I suspect the north would have remained a backwater regardless.
The reason the United States might want Greenland is because the polar ice cap is melting and Russia has a large naval base just across the way. It is of no value to the Danes, who can neither settle it nor defend it, but it is of great value to the Americans. This puts the Danes in a good position to extract a very large sum of money for it, with mineral rights if they choose. They should just take the money.
A bit ironic that those who wish to purchase Greenland believe that man-made climate change is a hoax.
I doubt that extremely
Yes it is not impossible that by the end of this century the Arctic Ocean could host major shipping routes from Asia to Europe and North America, certainly in the summer. Obviously the US and Russia (+ Canada, UK, Norway to lesser extents) will have major influence over any such routes. It would probably be in the west's long term interests if Greenland was passed to the US.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0967070X2400310X
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/five-things-understand-about-ice-free-arctic
You were ahead of the game on Kemi-la needing to denounce Boris - see William Atkinson in today's Con Home (31 Jan)
Priti Patel has done Boris no favors of late either
disastrous interview wasn't it. Also just factually incorrect
Young Atkinson will go far
Comprehensive summary, some interesting stuff there - TY
Also I worked at DHL in the late 1990s and they added South-East England and Northern France as far as Paris to what you call Core Europe, then pictured it as "the blue banana".
I think some maps have it going up to Manchester, but I think Core Europe probably just extends to the London-Oxford-Cambridge triangle.
That being said, Denmark is remote from that, a similar size to the north of England - and they're much richer than Britain now.
Dublin was richer than York in the 18 century, and probably is now. But wasn't during the 19th
You wonder when Trump is going to have his angry attention drawn to US corporate involvement there.
It's an intriguing issue: Ireland has managed to rake in US multinational corporations and very much at the expense of individual EU states. A quite brilliant strategy but one, when it unravels (and it surely will), will have huge consequences for Ireland.
‘The West was bottled up and forced to live by its own means, in a vacuum’.
I have heard this phenomenon referred to as the "Cultural Polyphemus". In allusion to the ingenuity provoked in Odysseus and his crew by the Cyclops Polyphemus blocking up the easy exit of his cave in Book 9 of the Odyssey.
We see something of the same phenomenon, I suppose, in the coup pulled off by DeepSeek after the export embargo on AI tech from America.
Necessiy is the mother of invention.
Re: The West was bottled up and forced to live by its own means, in a vacuum’.
How does the Eastern Roman Empire (AKA, Byzantium, but not while it existed) fit into that statement? In the period immediately after the demographic collapse of the 6th century trade largely ceased across wide areas of Eurasia, but it did resume in the 8th century and Constantinople became a sort of bright civilizational light in Christendom. It definitely influenced Italy (where the Byzantines held lands until the high Middle Ages), which in turn influenced the rest of Christian Europe. Even Kievan Rus was eventually drawn into the cultural and economic network which grew across Europe.
I suspect DeepSeek will be flash in the pan, and will come to be seen, in part, as propagandist hype.
Greetings from Guangzhou from one of your UK expat PRC subscribers. I'm almost permanently on a VPN rooted through various SE Asian countries so I may not show up as being in the PRC. There may be more of us than you think!
The biggest benefit from annexing Greenland -- there are costs -- is insurance. You prevent a future government from being bribed or influenced by hostile powers, which would require a costly intervention to reverse.
The second biggest reason is because we can and it would be cool. That is not offered facetiously. It is a serious benefit in domestic politics. Many people will disapprove; the number of GOP voters in 2024 who will switch votes in 2028 based on that (or decide not to turn out) is close to zero. Conversely, you could actually get voters who might have lapsed back into apathy to turn out in 2028.
Finally, mineral rights. In part, this is related to (1) above: Washington would like the sovereign right to deny access to foreign powers, rather than being forced to bid against them in an open market. But the rights themselves are worthwhile.
More here:
https://www.noelmaurer.com/p/the-price-of-greenland
https://www.noelmaurer.com/p/buying-greenland-a-practical-guide
I would, of course, be delighted to hear where you think I am mistaken!
‘Certainly, the 20th century liberal democratic model is no more attractive than the 20th century Baathist model.’
How can anyone write such nonsense!!!!
I'm not sure that it's such a bad idea to expect Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinian refugees. The whole question of why Middle Eastern migrants don't seek asylum in stable Muslim countries rather than Europe deserves, I think, to be discussed a bit more. Liberals tend to get defensively angry whenever I tentatively bring it up.
Sexual frustration may be good for civilization but it does cause neurosis. Freud was not wrong.
Another great piece, Ed. But can I really be the only person who thinks "Interstellar" is absolutely, crashingly awful? I can remember *nothing* of Zimmer's score, despite being told it was very good on Radio 4. I'm not normally the kind of person who picks up on small bloopers but there's a scene where whatsisname finds the surviving bit of NASA or whatever and they're drinking from paper cups after the world has more or less ended. Hello! There are no supply chains, what's going on here? The world building was beyond terrible. And it just seemed self-indulgent, self-congratulatory trash. Star Wars was deeper, and had better music. Meanwhile, 2001 is arguably the best film ever made (perhaps especially if you're called Dave).
I love space as the new frontier, and I love maudlin sentimentality especially when it involves fathers.
I would have just ended it when he gets sucked into a black hole, unhappy ending but neater
Star Wars is a bit unfair. among the stupidest films of the century!
I wouldn't go that far. It's got a tremendous energy; things just keep happening. But it wouldn't have made the same impact without the score which covers all the flaws.
Thank goodness the Germans and Turks hadn't also read Thutmose III’s account.
true!
Yes, flooding Egypt and Jordan with Palestinians would be a bad idea for Jordan and Israel. But then it would be a bad idea to flood Europe with them (see Emil Kirkegaard). And keeping them where they are, readying themselves for the next 7 October, is also a horrible solution. I feel so sorry for Israelis having to live next door to them.
'speculating on whether the tragic Washington air disaster was the result of DEI was incredibly crass (he may turn out to be correct, but it’s neither the time nor the place)'
I've been wondering what went through Trump's head when he said that. Perhaps something like, 'By the time the crash investigators decide what caused the crash most people will have moved on and forgotten about it. Also no crash investigator is going to point the finger at a specific individual who got his or her job due to affirmative action. All you can really do is produce a graph and show how crashes have increased since DEI became all the rage but even that will have a hundred confounding factors in it. So Trump probably thought, 'Strike while the iron's hot'. Of course I'm bound to give him a free pass because I'm rooting for him but also a part of me dislikes what I see as the phoney mourning of politicians over strangers. We all know it's phoney but we prefer phoney to heartlessly honest. I do too, but not as much as some.
feels incredibly insensitive and ill-judged, but not unexpected.
The air traffic control DEI reports from a while back did concern me, as I'm not fond of flying, but we will have to wait and see. If someone did make a blunder, they will have that weighing on them forever - I would *hate* to be an air traffic controller for just this reason.
I agree, but whatever the cause, the investigators - or the reporters who interpret the investigation's findings - aren't going to find DEI to blame, even if it sort of was. The window that blew out of that Alaskan Airlines plane. Was that due to DEI? How could you tell? Certainly people like Ed Dutton have predicted that such accidents will become more common as the average IQ goes down.
Yes, being responsible for some awful disaster doesn't bear thinking about. Sometimes I DO think about it and while walking stop dead in the street say 'No!' out loud and cover my mouth with my hand. Sometimes I shudder thinking about men who have left home intending to drop their toddlers off at play school, then forgotten and just driven to work, leaving the child in the back of the car on a baking hot day. I am forgetful enough to do just such a thing. There are a hundred different ways of absentmindedly ruining people's lives and in doing so ruin your own.
The reports now are indicating that the control tower was understaffed and it does appear that neither the airplane nor the helicopter crew were at fault-- the problem had to do with control tower. We need to know more, especially as to why the tower lacked staffing, before coming to any conclusions.
The idea that the crash was caused by DEI is ridiculous. Only someone obsessed with this issue could put it down to this.
Like Trump, I too am obsessed with this issue, so while I find it very unlikely that the crash was directly caused by DEI, I don't find the idea at all ridiculous. Ridiculous is believing in ghosts, gods, astrology and such. The fact that people are hired on the basis of their race or sex rather than ability makes accidents far more likely to happen. I don't think that's controversial and there's nothing ridiculous about believing that. However, being able to trace a particular accident back to hiring practices is extremely unlikely, even if the authorites weren't loathe to do so.
"When it comes to it, I prefer the abusive atmosphere of a football terrace circa 1985 to the calculated cruelty of an elite girls’ school."
Splendid comparison.
I wonder how the North of England would have developed had the Yorkist Dynasty somehow stayed on the throne.
They may have been Dukes of York, but their power base was in the south of England. London closed its gates to Margaret of Anjou (the effective leader of the Lancastrians as Henry VI was non compos mentis by then). When Edward IV showed up they welcomed him to his coronation. And Edward hastened to also establish ties with the rich and powerful Duke of Burgundy, who eventually married his sister. I suspect the north would have remained a backwater regardless.