How much would you sell your country for?

Donald Trump isn’t just trolling for the takeover of Greenland, he writes Michael Pascoe. Will it be money, guns… or both?

If Donald Trump offered you $1,000 to become an American citizen, would you do it?

Many people, millions of people, would be happy to pay that much and more for US citizenship, let alone get paid, but in light of where the US is at, maybe not you.

How about $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000? That’s a lot of zeros. He can buy you an above average house. OK, it would be in Adelaide, but it would still be above average for that city.

Maybe your citizenship is not for sale. I don’t like to think about it, but for a price I’d bet most Aussies would sell it. It’s like the probably apocryphal story of George Bernard Shaw and his society lady:

Shaw: “Will you sleep with me for a million pounds?”

Woman: “Of course.”

Shaw: “Will you sleep with me for a pound?”

Woman: “What do you think I am?”

Shaw: “Ma’am, we have already determined what you are. Now we are just negotiating the price.”

If the price is right

The moral issue of haggling over price is likely to become an issue for the Greenlanders sooner or later.

There are only about 60,000 of them. If the price of a house is a general benchmark for a large, impressive and mind-altering sum of money, 5 million crowns for every man, woman and child makes it.

That works out to around $500,000 each, a total cost to the US of $30 billion, just as much as we paid for a single nuclear-powered submarine that we didn’t get as part of AUKUS.

Buying Greenland for $30 billion would definitely be theft. Trump will make the real estate deal of the century, something he will undoubtedly enjoy more than the Nobel Peace Prize. We can only imagine how much commission he would somehow collect.

Let’s be generous and make 10 million crowns for every Greenlander, $60 billion in all for the US Treasury, $89 billion in our own money, the price of two imaginary submarines. And throw some Trump crypto to the Danish royal family as a tip. “Our” Queen Mary might get a signed Trump Bible.

But for Denmark

Of course, it’s not that simple or quick. There’s Denmark to deal with. Buying 6 million Danes would be more expensive, but Trump’s secretary of state wants to ‘buy’ Greenland rather than invade it Marco Rubio said is the master plan.

To buy cheap, Trump’s agents need the Greenlanders to move toward full independence from Denmark, something that is already on Greenland’s domestic political agenda.

In normal American imperial times, this involved generous sponsorship of local politicians and perhaps the odd unfortunate accident to cause any leader difficulty. Once the Greenlanders were liberated from Denmark, price negotiation could begin.

Oh wait, they are already doing the old American imperialism as well as the new old Superpower tyranny. From those leftists Economist: ( )

“The CIA and the National Security Agency have also reportedly stepped up surveillance of Greenland’s independence movement and have been tasked with identifying natives sympathetic to America. The Danish government summoned American diplomats three times last year over reports that it was spying on Greenland and running a covert influence campaign. Denmark’s military-intelligence service expressed concerns about America in its annual threat assessment last December.”

But these are not normal American imperial times.

Trump is in a hurry.

As things get worse for him at home, his tendency to focus abroad also increases. It’s much easier now.

He could look to history for inspiration. The Spanish-American war, America’s last major colonial land grab, began with a mysterious explosion aboard an American ship in Havana harbor; This explosion was blamed on Spain for war enthusiasm fueled by the American press. Cue Fox News.

(Beginning with the war of 1898, America captured the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Wake Island. It also annexed Hawaii when it was in the mood.)

Is it false flag time?

It is not beyond the imagination of the Trump gang to experience a security crisis at the existing missile security base in Greenland and take action to “secure” it.

Yes, that would be the end of NATO, which doesn’t worry Trump. A win-win.

The threat of such action could precipitate price negotiation. If the Greenlanders felt that they could instantly be made much richer or simply annexed, how many zeros was that offer again?

This is a bleak scenario, a depressing throwback to the international lawlessness of the 19th century.he The century in which Might was right, not just de facto but clearly.

Money or weapons?

Imagine what it would be like if Australia were in Greenland’s position if we were smaller and closer to the United States. Here’s the money or the gun.

Life would largely continue like this. American corporations, especially those who donate to the Trump gang, will control our resources and run our most profitable businesses. Major media companies will follow the right-wing line. Chinese companies are not welcome. It would be unreasonable to criticize the government. There would be American military bases.

As I said, life will continue as it is now, America already has bases. That’s why it won’t happen, and thankfully we are outside the hemisphere that Trump declared belongs to America. We know our place.

Looks like Greenland will have to decide instead. The last word belongs to Financial Times columnist Edward Luce:

If you think Trump is just trolling in Greenland, book yourself a vacation in Caracas.

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