[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Why is inequality so great there? And what's Greenland got that Trump wants?

Greenland’s 800,000 square miles make it the world’s largest island and stationary aircraft carrier. It would be as valuable as Alaska during the next few years, before bombers with a 10,000-mile range are in general use. It would be invaluable, in either conventional or push-button war, as an advance radar outpost. It would be a forward position for future rocket-launching sites. In peace or war it is the weather factory for northwest Europe, whose storms must be recorded as near the source as possible.

https://time.com/5653894/trump-greenland-history/

It wouldn’t even be the first time the U.S. has tried to bag Greenland. Back in 1946, officials offered Denmark $100 million in gold bars for the world’s largest island, a Danish autonomous territory. U.S. officials at the time thought it was a “military necessity.”

That 1946 offer was supposed to be a secret. (It was only widely revealed in 1991, when declassified documents were discovered by a Danish newspaper.) But in 1947, TIME caught a whiff of similar plans.