“We will do something with Greenland—either the nice way or the difficult way.”
You have to hand it to Donald Trump: he doesn’t beat about the bush. No pun intended. There is no ambiguity, no diplomatic lacework, no UN-friendly euphemism. The world and its uncle have been alerted well in advance about the next flashpoint. This time, there will be no late-night ‘abduction’. No tinpot to run away with the silver spoon. It will all be done in broad daylight, helpfully. Trump does not appreciate the idea of having China and Russia as neighbours. So he will simply annex Greenland—preferably without bullets. Mr Trump, after all, is anti-war.
Don’t forget how, with both Zelenskyy and Putin, he preferred the repertoire of emotional manipulation to ‘bombing for peace’, like his predecessors. Only scolding, cajoling, threatening to dump, showing red eyes, shaking hands. Gaza was more complicated. But anyone can see all he wants, really, is to wage peace, build a few Trump Towers, and walk into a Levantine beach sunset clutching a Nobel Prize and a Piña Colada. Beijing, Moscow did not sign on to the script. Nor Tehran. Their bad.
When Genghis Khan went on his conquests, flattening gumbads across Eurasia, there was no Monroe doctrine. He was not “creating strategic depth” or “securing trade corridors”—those phrases would come centuries later to justify similar behaviour, in better English. Like the chariot-riding Yamnaya four thousand years before him, the gentle Khan was just extending his DDA flat balcony across the Steppe to create some living room for his horses.
There were no Brookings think-tankers dissecting his invasions, no white papers papering over the extermination of those who stood in the way: men, women, children, blades of grass. Oil had not yet been discovered, but trade routes existed to be looted, then controlled, then weaponised.
Those centuries, which in our innocent hindsight we call medieval, did not speak the language of geopolitics. Revisionist historians indeed accuse Genghis and his progeny of having invented modern diplomacy, but even they agree that Pax Mongoliana, as a rules-based order, was entirely one-sided. No United Nations to bother with, not even a wimpish, dysfunctional one. No Geneva Convention to invoke or violate. No lip service to norms of civil or military conduct. It was brutally simple: might is right, so please get out of the way.
Some would say we are back to basics. The past is rehearsing itself for a comeback tour. Resource mobilisation—who gets what, from where, in which currency—is once again a kosher excuse for brute force. Land, sea routes, oil, the Arctic, rare earths, silver, uranium—all up for grabs. Through contracts? Maybe, as long as they are of the sort American pioneers signed with the First Nations.
Beijing must not try this. It cannot have its Belt and Road running up all the way up to Caracas! With a pit-stop in Tehran at that. Venezuelan oil, it can forget. Iranian? Up next. How about Taiwan? Xi must not go tilting at windmill exports. What does Xi think about this? We don’t know, he doesn’t speak much. But it’s the Gunfight at the Not OK Corral, and he may spring from the shadows like a shaolin monk with a rare-earth magnetic sword. Japan and India would do well to relearn their ninjutsus and payattus. It’s a free-for-all out there.
If Greenland is sentimental about sovereignty, culture or identity, it can take a walk in the snow. Denmark may wax nostalgic about the boat that carried Danes to icy Greenland 500 years ago, but as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni put it with clinical candour: “We have to be merciless.” Anyway, as a wise old prospector said, recalling the tone of early and late conquistadors, right up to the Right Honourable Arthur Balfour on Palestine: “There are only some Eskimos there.”
A variation of that could be used for Bengal, except for the inconvenient fact that there are too many Bengalis. A ‘process’ is setting that right. If identity politics looms as a problem, identity cards can be a cure. Mamata Banerjee may be out on a long march to defend Bengal’s right to recalcitrance—not even letting poor Enforcement Directorate to run off with the Purloined Letter. Bengali maachh does come with a lot of thorns!
But forget all that noise, it’s basically a miniature version of the global war over resources that’s playing out there. What magic would a ‘double-engine P C Sorcar’ pull off if installed in Writers’ Building? Suvendu Adhikari, Delhi’s local Dada in Kolkata, once outlined his vision to this writer. Eyes rolled over in mishti delight as he went over a full Bijoli Grill menu of “development”—sea routes, ports, airports, coal, iron ore, china clay, silica sand, what not! Bengal is political rare earth. They want exclusive rights. Only the hilsa can migrate freely.
Read all columns by Santwana Bhattacharya
SANTWANA BHATTACHARYA
Editor
santwana@newindianexpress.com