Trump, Greenland, and The Fourth World
Among the territories singled out for US annexation by President Trump is Greenland, an autonomous territory originally claimed by the Dannish which has over time gained more and more self-government. Neither Denmark, nor Greenland are prepared to go along with such annexation plans. Greenlanders are currently aspiring to their own independence and should Denmark release control it will likely do so pursuant to this goal. So, as things stand Trump's demands have little to stand on.
Trump's demands are consonant with the trend of a declining hegemonic power toward imperial overreach. When Britain was the world's declining hegemon it's version of imperial overreach was the Boer Wars. Until now US imperial overreach was constituted by US interventionism in the middle east designed to secure oil resources and intimidate other states into fallowing US edicts. While the US was obviously successful in embedding itself in financial interests around the world, a reality that delays the aspirations of competitors like China and Russia today, the failure of these adventures to get other states to take orders from the US has reduced US imperial overreach to unconditional support for Israel as well as idiotic bluster from the president that nobody takes seriously.
The point of acquiring Greenland is access to its mineral resources and control of it as a strategically placed territory at the top of the world. Opposition to extraction of rare earth minerals is mainstream in Greenland politics, however Greenland as a perspective independent economy has an interest in making extraction deals with other nations on its own terms. This is especially because Greenland is currently dependent on Denmark for financing its critical social safety net. The story behind US imperial overreach and Greenland's independence aspirations is Greenland as an example of the colonial subjugation of indigenous people.
The construction of western politics went hand and hand from the 1400s to the 2020s with the construction of settler colonies and settler states that used slavery and murder to marginalize and, in some cases, render extinct the world's indigenous cultures. These people who have become almost universally subject to settler polities which openly reject their autonomous existence have been called "Fourth World" nations as opposed to the nations of the first, third, and second worlds. In the case of Greenland Dannish colonial rule has as recently as the late 20th century separated children of the indigenous Inuit population from their families in order to assimilate them forcibly into white culture. The US military base in Greenland that has stood since the Cold War was only able to be constructed when local Innuits were forcibly displaced by Dannish authorities.
The kerfuffle over Greenland is a perfect window into the inequalities inherent in the capitalist world-system and the terminal decline of US power. It is also a testament to the nature of the Post-Colonial world as an order which retains colonial inequalities of power and resource distribution. The unavoidable conclusion, as Post-Colonial Theory maintains, is that the struggle for decolonization continues generations after the destruction of most formal colonial empires. Anarchist Communism calls for the radical leveling of the distribution of power and resources that dismantles capitalist property relations and the centralized state structures that enforce them. Anarchist Communism thus mirrors the indigenous practice of regularly dismantling states and economic inequality on the judgement that they hurt indigenous society.
Sources
Indigenous Peoples and Imperialism, Churchill
Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, J.C. Young
Last of The Hegemons: US Decline and Global Governance, Chase-Dunn, Kwon, Lawrence, Inoue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8t3mrvQcMw
