Vance Visits Greenland | Power Line

Vice President J.D. Vance is now visiting the North Atlantic island territory of Greenland. The New York Post reports,

Vice President JD Vance arrived Friday in Greenland — which President Trump hopes to annex — and was ready with some humor, telling US military personnel: “It’s cold as s— here! Nobody told me.”

Vance was visiting an American military base on the island.

With the rising strategic importance of the Arctic region, Pres. Trump has taken an interest in the territory currently belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark.

Although billed as “the world’s largest island,” for reasons of geometry, the Greenland is nowhere near as large as it appears on maps. John tells me the island is roughly 1/9th the size of South America. In real life, though, it’s still plenty big, covering more than 800,000 square miles, more than three times the size of Texas.

Strategically located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans and between North America and Europe, the island is home to only about 56,000 people.

In terms of population, Greenland is only slightly larger than the suburban city where I live, but they are spread over a land mass 54,000 times larger. (Not a typo).

You are familiar with recent controversies pitting the U.S. against Canada. You may not be aware of an ongoing half-century-long border dispute between Canada and Denmark. The dispute is centered on a worthless, frozen rock sitting between Greenland and Canada’s Ellesmere Island.

All of this sounds completely ridiculous, because it is. However, there is also a serious side, as revealed in the final paragraph of this 2022 CBC article,

Russia has planted flags staking claims to the Arctic region. A mini submarine dropped a titanium capsule containing a Russian flag onto the ocean floor beneath the North Pole in 2007 in an attempt to stake a claim to the region’s oil and minerals.

Even in our modern world, geography is still important. In the end, it always comes down to the oil.