Daniel Immerwahr

People who live there, people who control it don't want that, but we want it.

I think that's not just a naked rhetoric.

I think actually George W. Bush didn't think in those ways.

Barack Obama didn't think in those ways.

Nixon didn't think in those ways.

The United States fought a war in Vietnam.

As far as I can tell, there was no talk about annexing Vietnam.

In the Iraq War, there was a lot of, you know, hemming and hawing about how the occupation should work.

But the Bush administration wanted to get out of Iraq, didn't want to stay in Iraq forever.

This is a different form of power.

This is kind of something that had been off the menu for a while and is now back on.

What's the history to all this in Greenland?

So Greenland had, you know, long been sort of its proximate to North America.

So, you know, there had been moments when from the 19th century and then right after World War II, when various U.S.

statesmen were eyeing Greenland, it got much more important in the age of aviation when it suddenly seemed to less when it seemed less to be.

You know, an out of the way iceberg and seems to be right on the route in any air war with with Russia.

But for the most part, U.S.

presidents have been able to feel comfortable with their lack of ownership of Greenland because they have something else.

They have a massive military base, formerly an air base, now a Space Force base in Greenland that has allowed them to do whatever they want with their planes.

And they've been basically have had the run of the space for their purposes.