opinions
Arne O. Holm comment:
Clowns at War in The Middle East and The Arctic
Comment: Clowns will have to forgive me. I have deep respect for them. But the title became irresistible after a summer in which a dysfunctional American administration has wreaked havoc both in the Middle East and in Greenland.
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This is a comment written by a member of the editorial staff. All views expressed are the writer's own.
Earlier this summer, the conservative American newspaper The Wall Street Journal argued that Trump had earned the Peace Prize he has so long wanted.
The reasoning, with the newspaper’s well-known ironic edge, was that Trump had stopped his own war against Iran no fewer than eight times. A war, it should be added, with neither purpose nor meaning.
Should get the Peace Prize
And since the war is still in full swing, the American president will in all likelihood have time to end it a couple more times before he finds someone to blame for a final defeat.
With the same ironic lens, I would add on my own account that for every day the war against Iran continues, Donald Trump strengthens his Peace Prize candidacy. The United States is, according to unconfirmed reports, in the process of emptying its stocks of advanced weapons.
This applies first and foremost to various parts of the missile systems attacking Iran. But stocks of defensive weapons, intended to stop Iranian attacks with drones and missiles, are also running low.
Trump has called off the war at least eight times.
Less bloody, but still in the imperialist spirit of the Trump administration, the attempts to conquer Greenland continue. The demand that the United States should take over Greenland is repeated constantly. Now the failed war against Iran has also become part of the justification for the attacks directed at an allied Arctic state.
Greenland as salvation
At least if we are to believe Donald Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Jeff Landry. Speaking to Fox News, a reactionary American TV channel, Landry said in May this year that American oil production in Greenland could push the oil price down. As is well known, it has risen markedly after the US attack on Iran.
It turned out that American companies with strong ties to Trump were already planning exactly that. Containers with production equipment had been sent to Greenland. The oil drilling was to take place on the very remote peninsula of Jameson Land, on Greenland’s east coast.
The amount of oil said to be there, according to the American company Greenland Energy, was enormous and on a par with the continental shelf off Norway. We know little about that. Oil has been drilled for on and around Greenland many times, without success.
Not giving up
In a letter to shareholders on 6 August, Greenland Energy Company announced that they would drill the first well during the winter.
Just a few days later, on 11 August, however, the company said in a press release that this would not happen after all. Not all the formalities were in place.
Such as permission from the authorities in Greenland.
For in Greenland too, not least in Greenland, thorough assessments are required before industrial activity can begin in one of the world’s most vulnerable areas. The message from the authorities was so forceful that the American investors had no choice but at least to postpone their plans.
The aim is now to start production at some point during 2027, even though Greenlandic authorities are highly skeptical as to whether a responsible handling of the matter can be carried out in such a short time.
The US war against Iran is therefore also highly relevant to political developments in the Arctic.
But I didn’t see it coming that American oil companies with strong ties to Donald Trump thought they could rescue the president from the Iran crisis by helping themselves to Greenland.
