I will not lose sleep over the sibling rivalries of Europe and its North American first cousin. Rather, my concern is how Greenland and the sixty five remaining colonies in the world can become independent. We need a new world order.
Western Europe, which for the first time in eighty years has sent troops in a growing dispute with the United States (US) is falsely claiming that it sent its military to the disputed Greenland on noble grounds. On 27 January, French President Emmanuel Macron claimed the Europeans are engaged in the face-off to assert their sovereignty, fight against foreign interference and global warming, contribute to Arctic security, and for the economic and social development of Greenland.
These are all false grounds. First, how can Western Europe claim to be defending its sovereignty in Greenland, when the territory is in North America, a different continent? How can it claim it is fighting against foreign intervention when the Europeans, including the Danish who make claims to Greenland, are all foreigners? What intervention can be more foreign than France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands and United Kingdom sending troops across the Atlantic Ocean to Greenland? Europe did not explain how its sending soldiers to Greenland translates to fighting global warming. Is global warming fought with bullets? When Macron said the primary interest of Western Europe includes the socio-economic development of Greenland, he did not explain how this is being expressed with the continued colonisation of the territory.
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The truth is that there is no difference between the colonial interests of Europe, which includes making Greenland a military base, and those of the US under President Donald Trump. Another truth is that both sides are primarily interested in the exploitation of Greenland, including the control of that territory’s 110 billion barrels of oil, one of the world’s largest reserves. How can the European do-gooders claim they want the development of Greenland but would not allow it to be free? If in reality Europeans want Greenland to develop, all they need to do is de-colonise it and allow the people the fundamental right to self-determination and independence, in accordance with the 14 December, 1960 United Nations General Assembly “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.”
Trump, while sulking that he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, told the Norwegian leader in a text that he must be given Greenland because, “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.” In reality, the greatest source of insecurity in the world today is the US, which exhibits a sense of entitlement to take whatever it wants and, with the possible exceptions of Russia, North Korea and China, bully the rest of humanity.
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The primary issue in Greenland is about a country stolen by Denmark, and the determination of the US to steal it from the Europeans. For this, both sides, which have been allies since the end of the Second World War eighty one years ago, are ready to endanger world peace.
It is actually an historical shame that Denmark had been involved in selling stolen lands. For instance, in 1916, it sold the occupied lands called Danish West Indies to the US, which renamed them the United States Virgin Islands. Until today, the US continues its colonisation of those lands.
The emerging scenario is not new. For centuries these allies went around the world seizing other peoples’ lands and redrawing the geographical map of the universe. They literarily stole the world blind. Their unrestrained grab of other peoples’ lands, which in the case of Africa was christened ‘The Scramble For Africa,’ was so much, and the actors, so greedy, that war was inevitable. But they had common sense. So, they held an international conference in Berlin between 1884 and 1885, where they agreed that wherever one of them had established its presence, the others should look elsewhere to other territories. They called such theft ‘colonialism.’
Colonialism is no different from the theft of humans, which Europeans called slave trade. That trade, in which over fifteen million human beings were trafficked across the oceans, went on for over four hundred years.
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In the case of Greenland, after the Danes had sailed from Europe to seize it, the Americans, in 1867 and again in 1910, offered to buy it. In fact, the US, while being aware that the lands did not belong to Denmark, offered to buy Greenland and Iceland for $5.5 million. That was the same way, after defeating colonial Spain, it asked the latter to sell Cuba and Puerto Rico to it. Spain had rightly refused to do so; how could it sell countries or lands it did not own? That was the absurdity of the US request, and it remains so today in the case of Greenland.
It is actually an historical shame that Denmark had been involved in selling stolen lands. For instance, in 1916, it sold the occupied lands called Danish West Indies to the US, which renamed them the United States Virgin Islands. Until today, the US continues its colonisation of those lands.
Even Greenland is not free from the pranks of Denmark and the US. The latter occupied Greenland during the Second World War, ostensibly to prevent Nazi Germany from occupying it. And till today, eight decades after that war, the US has refused to leave. The only thing it has done is to reduce its three military bases of Sonddderstrom, Marsarsuaq and Thule to a main functional one in Thule. Also, Denmark, rather than allow Greenland independence, annexed it in 1953.
How can bullies who go round the world invading weaker countries, overthrowing governments, carrying out mass killings and breaking up families, claim they are fighting for peace? What peace did they keep when they invaded and destabilised countries like Iraq and Libya?
As Western Europe, in a quixotic manner, began sending troops to Greenland from 14 January, President Trump teased it as parading cowards: “We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that. And they did – they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”
Going by the casualty figures in that inglorious war, with 2,456 of the total number of 3,500 allied troops that died being Americans, Trump might have a point. But the United Kingdom that lost 457 troops in that war, was livid.
Prince Harry, who fought in Afghanistan, responded: “Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect, as we all remain united and loyal to the defence of diplomacy and peace.”
In the first place, neither Europe nor the US had any business invading Afghanistan, so the lives lost, especially of the poor Afghans, were a mere waste. The sacrifices that Harry referred to were needless and in vain. When the English Prince claimed the Afghan invasion was in “defence of diplomacy and peace,” he was being delusional. How can bullies who go round the world invading weaker countries, overthrowing governments, carrying out mass killings and breaking up families, claim they are fighting for peace? What peace did they keep when they invaded and destabilised countries like Iraq and Libya?
I will not lose sleep over the sibling rivalries of Europe and its North American first cousin. Rather, my concern is how Greenland and the sixty five remaining colonies in the world can become independent. We need a new world order.
Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist and author.
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