Doesn't the US want Greenland because it's on the ballistic missile trajectory to the US from both Russia and China, so that's where they want to site Golden Dome/Star Wars? After that they don't have to give a fuck about Russian/Chinese aggression until Russia reaches the Atlantic and China makes it's way across the Pacific.
Trump says he got a deal for rare earths in Greenland, but they won't come easy
The US invasion of Greenland might be off the table for now, but the Trump administration won't have an easy time using the rare earth elements and critical minerals it claims it's getting access to as part of a deal with NATO. Trump said on Wednesday that he and NATO had worked out the "concept of a deal" to extend the US' …
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Friday 23rd January 2026 09:43 GMT LogicGate
There is a 1951 agreement that allows the US of A to install anything they want for ballistic detection and intercept wherever they want in Greenland.
These defences existed during the cold war, but have been removed over the last decades, including during Trump 1.
If this was about defence, all his oral flatulence would have needed to do was to adjust US defence policy.
Therefore, something else must be behind it:
-Solving the rare earth problem somewhere where environmental protection rules can be un-existed or ignored
-Taking public focus away from the economy
-Taking public focus away from the cost of living
-Taking public focus away from underage girls
-Taking public focus away from investigations into the insurrection
-Taking public focus away from ICE
-Taking public focus away from corruption
-Taking public focus away from Big Daddy Vlad and his rape of Ukraine
-Going after the real enemy of the USofA, not Russia, China or North Korea, but rather the nations that stepped up when article 5 was invoked after 9-11
Speaking of articles: How about Article 25?
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Friday 23rd January 2026 10:53 GMT Dan 55
Taking public focus away from ICE
Enough Democrats supported a bill for another round of funding for ICE to avoid a government shutdown at the same time that Newsom delivers a speech in Davos criticising European politicians for not standing up enough to the US president. Satire is dead and buried, likewise the Democrats if they don't grow a backbone.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 12:43 GMT I could be a dog really
Without having looked at the details fo this one, that's a classic issue of how to force through something no-one wants.
All they do is tack it onto the next "extend funding to keep the government running for another year" bill. Then if people won't vote for the bill, you can use publicity to blame them for government programs suspended, government employees laid off without pay, and all the other effects not passing the bill has. At some point, the negatives of not passing it become more painful than the pain of voting for something that no-one wants and everyone knows is hugely unpopular - and then the most unpopular s**h gets "voted for".
If you look, that happens every year - whoever is in power uses the moment to force through something hugely unpopular that even their own side won't vote for. It also happens to other bills if they are big and important enough (especially ones that have wide cross-party support and are popular with the electorate.)
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Friday 23rd January 2026 14:01 GMT heyrick
What I don't get is why is this permitted at all. If there is a fisheries bill, for example, it should be about fishes, quotas, blah blah.
It should not be "Fisheries bill addendum 6: every citizen is required to tithe 15% of their earnings to their local church". Because that has nothing to do with the bill and should therefore be deemed as invalid and irrelevant.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 13:56 GMT heyrick
You're forgetting another option. Keeping the airbase active when Denmark is no longer a friendly country.
Why would that happen? When this administration is dumb enough to try to attack Europe in some manner. Both Trump and Vance have been quite vocal about their dislike of Europe (moreso than their thoughts on Russia).
So while it's a dumb and unlikely action, this is a president who has already done a lot of dumb and unlikely things, like sending his own version of the Sturmabteilung to mess with an easily blamable minority, and murder anybody that gets too much in the way.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 11:45 GMT codejunky
@Thomas Steven 1
During Trumps first term he made clear that NATO needed to be serious about defence in a hostile world and not hide behind the US, and they laughed. Under Biden suddenly they panicked and started to do something when they couldnt pretend anymore. Now I think Trump is just motivating them to get on with it before waiting until the last minute. Even NATO head Rutt was praising Trump for this.
When looking at this it is wise to remember the fawning fools praising a truant little girl while Trump refused to bend to such obvious stupidity. Denmark, nor even Europe could defend Greenland and rely on the US. As we have seen with Ukraine, the wet paper bag of Europe insists the US must act yet cry and insist on having a say on the war/peace (even with Gaza ffs).
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Friday 23rd January 2026 12:27 GMT that one in the corner
Re: @Thomas Steven 1
> During Trump's first term he made clear that NATO needed to be serious about defence in a hostile world and not hide behind the US, and they laughed
(Note: not a direct quote from your comment, I've added the apostrophe for you)
They laughed (well, more chuckled nervously) because they were not quite sure that Trump was serious; now, we are all very well aware that Trump was serious and, yes, indeed Trump's US is the serious threat to NATO and is creating a more hostile world.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 13:52 GMT codejunky
Re: @Thomas Steven 1
@that one in the corner
"They laughed (well, more chuckled nervously) because they were not quite sure that Trump was serious; now, we are all very well aware that Trump was serious"
This should horrify people living in Europe (including here in the UK) how severely under-prepared and unaware European NATO was. A war on their doorstep (which we keep encouraging) and yet laughed at the serious threat we faced.
And before some moron claims this is some defence of Trump it is a criticism of Europe.
"indeed Trump's US is the serious threat to NATO and is creating a more hostile world."
Trump didnt provoke the Ukraine war that was Obama/EU. Trump didnt sit back when Hamas kidnapped and committed atrocities to Americans. Obama feared the Norks not Ruskies even when they were embarrassing him publicly with Syria. Biden escalated the war in Russia. And so on. But go on about the hostile world.
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Monday 26th January 2026 09:23 GMT codejunky
Re: @Thomas Steven 1
@that one in the corner
"Spot the word? MORE. That is M - O - R - E. Is creating a MORE hostile world. The man who believes he should have won a Nobel Peace Prize."
I spotted the word, I just dont think you understand what it means. Or you are in one hell of a fantasy land. So go on explain...
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Friday 23rd January 2026 12:42 GMT LogicGate
Re: @Thomas Steven 1
During Trumps first term he wanted to have a photo op with a huge european check and pictures of US weapons.
Trump has not made Europe invest in weapons, Russias attack on Ukraine has done so.
What Trump has done is to demonstrate that the US is an unreliable partner and that Pax Americana is over.
In a transitional phase, European countries will have to purchase some weapons from the US. This will not last, since Trump has made it abundantly clear that US weapons can only be used for US purposes, whoever has paid for them.
In the end, the lever that the US has had over European policy since WW2 is coming to an end.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 13:56 GMT codejunky
Re: @Thomas Steven 1
@LogicGate
"Trump has not made Europe invest in weapons, Russias attack on Ukraine has done so."
The Ukraine war started under Obama. It paused under Trumps first term. In Trumps first term he told Europe to get their act together. So your claim doesnt add up. Either way Europe should be more ready to defend itself anyway.
"What Trump has done is to demonstrate that the US is an unreliable partner and that Pax Americana is over."
That would explain the pee stains on western world leaders. The grovelling to the US and even while inflaming the war in Ukraine demand the US protect us all from the nasty Russian.
"In a transitional phase, European countries will have to purchase some weapons from the US. This will not last, since Trump has made it abundantly clear that US weapons can only be used for US purposes, whoever has paid for them."
Buying the best is probably worth more than buying from one place. The problem is the lack of buying and maintaining.
"In the end, the lever that the US has had over European policy since WW2 is coming to an end."
And what steps in its place? You could be right but it looks more like the US is leaving Europe behind.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 12:21 GMT that one in the corner
> Greenland because it's on the ballistic missile trajectory to the US from both Russia and China
At least that is better* than the old threats of the Cold War escalating and the US moving it into the "European Theater", with big bold arrow that went right across to Moscow, starting from Spain.
* "better" because it implies that the Whitehouse has finally bought a globe and been told about Great Circle routes, probably with the help of string and a Sharpie, instead of pointing at a flat map and thinking they had to go through the whole of Europe otherwise the materiel would have to go out the door, along the corridor and back in the other door to go around behind the map.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 14:00 GMT Anonymous Custard
Or maybe just blow his mind by telling him that at their closest points, Russian and American territories are about 4km apart (the Diomede Islands)?
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Friday 23rd January 2026 16:01 GMT vtcodger
A globe is certainly better than nothing
They don't need a globe. It's not as easy as you might think to accurately find a great circle with a string and a globe. They'd be better off with a gnomonic projection map and a ruler. BTW, great circles from current Chinese ICBM bases to most of the US pass over Canada (which the Trump administration seems to be working hard to alienate), not Greenland. And the remainder look to be accessible without crossing Greenland from launch sites in Manchuria. They'd probably be built there if the US persisted in trying to base its missile defense in Greenland.*
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:China_Nuclear_Ballistic_Missile_Ranges.png
*Personally, I suspect that if some nation state really wanted to deliver a nuclear device to a point near 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC, the most likely vehicle would be an elderly Ford Transit van. Or maybe a taxicab.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 22:45 GMT Dr. G. Freeman
Re: A globe is certainly better than nothing
Ford Transit... they're called Ford Econolines over in the colonies, well they were when I lived there- had a much shiner "nose" on the front, and confuse hire company drones when you ask for the use of one. "can I have a transit van ?", and they point to the bus stop.
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Saturday 24th January 2026 22:13 GMT Peter Gathercole
Trans polar routes have been understood by the US for decades. That is why they used to have bases in Greenland in the '50s and '60s. They couldn't intercept the missiles back then, but the extra thousand or so miles could give extra warning for launching retaliation, and scurrying to bunkers. But they probably wouldn't move troops or equipment across the Greenland, and wouldn't stage them through Greenland because of the (current) lack of good air bases there.
The person who probably doesn't understand it is President Trump, bearing in mind how he misunderstands the Mercator projection and the real size of Greenland!
If the US was intending to move troops into Europe in a hurry now, they'd probably want to stage them through the UK by air, but if they had warning, move the bulk by ship across the Atlantic, landing either in France or maybe Spain, but Spain is a bit too far west. If the situation was not too dangerous, you might choose the Netherlands or Belgium, but bringing troop transports through the English Channel, or round the North Sea would be a killing zone if the conflict had started.
But going back to the Cold War era, the US had a standing army in West Germany of several hundred thousand soldiers, and other NATO countries had armies there as well, because before long range missiles, the threat was that the Soviet Union would try a mechanised blitzkrieg across the German plains and into France and the Low Countries after neutralizing western airbases. There wouldn't have been a need to fight across Europe, the conflict would start in Germany where there was already a standing army.
There still appear to be about 35,000 US military personnel in Germany on 40 bases. I don't know what Trump thinks about this.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 09:33 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Who encouraged Trump?
"How a billionaire with interests in Greenland encouraged Trump to acquire the territory
US president’s friend Ronald Lauder – who first proposed Arctic expansion – is now making deals in the island"
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Friday 23rd January 2026 12:33 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: A deal with NATO
That's OK. There's no deal with NATO.
What I imagine has happened is that Trump has met up with Mark Rutte and been told that if the US wants more basing on Greenland, they can already do it. And that they already have the treaties they need to get mining done. So he's said it's fine.
In about two weeks he'll play golf with someone that tells him about all the riches of Greenland that he needs to exploit. He'll then make threats and we'll go through the whole merry-go-round again. Unless he's busy doing something else at that time, at which point he'll do nothing until after his next round of golf with that person.
Finally, it is possible that he's decided to drop this whole Greenland charade because it's so unpopular with his own base. In which case he just needs to quickly declare a deal done / glorious victory and move on to something else - and we'll never hear of this again.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 12:45 GMT I ain't Spartacus
To be fair to Trump, even the so-called sensible politicians and journalists seem to have no idea about rare earths. So why should Trump do any better? As far as I understand it, there aren't (m)any rare earth mines. You mine other stuff and then process the rare earths out of your ores if they're at high enough concentrations to be worth it. Since that's environmentally damaging it's expensive. So we need to subsidise production somewhere to stop China playing silly buggers every few years. I would imagine it's going to be cheaper to subsidise a plant somewhere where most of the infrastructure already exists, even if the ore is lower in concentration of rare earths, than it would be to build mines and processing plants from scratch in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity and in the Arctic.
Trump's already done a rare earths deal with Ukraine, which presumably is to extract it from their existing coal mining sector. Most of which is in the Donbas, which is the area he wants to force Ukraine to cede to Russia. I can well believe Trump is that stupid, but he's also good at aping other politicians when they talk about serious stuff, in which case it's equally possible he's just after looking like he's doing important stuff, so the deal matters not the outcome.
I guess it's even possible he believes what he's saying. In an infinite universe, anything is possible.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 12:52 GMT I could be a dog really
Rare Earths are neither rare nor earth.
Tim Worstall (who used to do some really good articles here before they reimagined themselves and got rid of some fo the best writers) writes occasionally on this topic.
We really aren't reliant on China at all, except for ... having allowed them to subsidise their local production to make producers elsewhere shut up shop (or not open up in the first place). So it does need some intervention to ensure we have our own production chains. That probably means either tariffs on China's exports, or tax incentives - but with either of those, who in their right mind would make investment plans, to spend sh*tloads of money, over many years, when some orange oik might change his mind next week ?
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Friday 23rd January 2026 18:53 GMT Mike VandeVelde
Re: anything he doesn't want to hear is fake news
HE DOESN'T HEAR ANYTHING EXCEPT THE STOCK MARKET.
The stock market is his oracle. Reading the tea leaves, consulting the I Ching, listening to The Royal Clairvoyant, studying the astrological signs, all replaced by the almighty stock market.
He couldn't care less about what anybody anywhere says about anything. The stock market went down and that's the sole reason he changed tack. Then the stock market came back up. Result: HE'S A GENIUS! In his own mind.
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Friday 23rd January 2026 10:43 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Hallucination in the case of Trump could be excess consumption of a certain burger with cheese. His skin tone is not far off that of the cheese, and it is well known about the effect of cheese and dreams.
Perhaps RFJ jnr can recommend a good bowel cleanse followed by going cold turkey on the cheese burgers to bring him to normality
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Friday 23rd January 2026 13:57 GMT Bebu sa Ware
What do Trump and AI have in common?
Pose an environmental threat to the entire planet ?
"You can't just grab 'em by the mine shafts" — 'cos they are frigid ?
The icon is for when I have finished a postmortem on DJT. I hear you say "you can't perform an autopsy on a living politician ?" You think ?
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Friday 23rd January 2026 11:41 GMT that one in the corner
Rare earth buffet party pack
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has confirmed that Trump didn't make any geography mistakes during his speech, implying that his target really is Iceland. Expect the presidential order to be signed soon, followed by a serious discussion* about the technical challenge of open-strip mining the prawn vol-au-vents.
* Hey, the money has been allocated, grab it!
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Friday 23rd January 2026 11:49 GMT codejunky
Ha
"With all those critical rare earths under its ice sheets and frozen tundra, it stands to reason there's a good explanation for why they haven't been exploited yet"
But based on the 'we are all doomed' cult belief wont this be melting away soon so we can access it for the glory of a net zero subsistence? Or is it so so far away as not to matter? Or is it convenience of argument for the situation?
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Friday 23rd January 2026 12:55 GMT frankvw
The fine art of diplomacy
Mark Rutte and the Danes have played Donnie like a big old fiddle.
First they sell him a "deal" that he already had since 1951, and then they throw in mineral rights that they know he can only exploit by getting the US mining industry involved, knowing full well that the mining industry won't be interested, just like the oil industry passed on resuming oil extraction in Venezuela.
And Donnie thinks he's a great deal maker... Ha!
This is brilliant.
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Saturday 24th January 2026 19:43 GMT MachDiamond
Plenty on US soil
Rare-Earth metals aren't particularly rare. What's getting rarer in the US is mining. The permissions, permits and fees are making it highly uneconomical and the next step in the chain, processing the ore, is just as burdened with regulations. There must be another angle to the story. Mr Trump has an imperialistic streak or is being paid by mining concerns that wouldn't mind a "US Territory" where they can mine and process with all of the US BS stripped out.
I notice a lot of issues that politicians are trying to solve, for a very broad interpretation of "solve", where the biggest problem is their being in the way. There's no need to hand out gobs of taxpayer money to companies that don't need it, but a streamlining/elimination of bureaucracy that costs next to nothing.
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Sunday 25th January 2026 14:42 GMT midcapwarrior
Re: Plenty on US soil
One of the reasons mining is rarer is that the mine owners now have to remediate the mines. Mine waste is highly toxic and has to go somewhere. China doesn't enforce environmental regulations so it's not a concern. If you want to see a worse case of what happens with the leftovers take a visit to the Berkeley pit in Montana. Visited it when I worked for the US DOE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit . The Berkeley Pit is a former open pit copper mine in the western United States, located in Butte, Montana. It is one mile (1.6 km) long by one-half mile (800 m) wide, with an approximate maximum depth of 1,780 feet (540 m). It is filled to a depth of about 900 feet (270 m) with water that is acidic (4.1 - 4.5 pH level), about the acidity of beer or tomatoes.[1] As a result, the pit's water is laden with heavy metals and dissolved metals that leach from the rock in a natural process known as acid rock drainage. The pit's water content includes (but is not limited to) dissolved copper, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.
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Sunday 25th January 2026 20:48 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Plenty on US soil
"China doesn't enforce environmental regulations so it's not a concern. "
In terms of Rare Earths, it's the Thorium that becomes an issue. It's (almost) always found with the heavier Lanthenides and the market for it is rather limited. Since it's mildly radioactive, it's classed as a "radioactive hazardous waste" which is a term no mining company wants to see in print. China has been buying, or at least taking possession of the left over Thorium to stockpile in anticipation of LFTR development which they've just recently gone hot with their first test unit. The US could do the same thing. There's a giant swath of cratered land in Nevada that glows in the dark a bit where it could be stored. I see that as solving a big problem in mining Rare Earths.
Remediation of mines is something that needs to be planned for so something like the Berkeley Pit isn't left in a state where it becomes a problem. Copper, Arsenic, Cadmium, Zinc and Sulfur are all useful elements to various degrees. Not great in isolated forms or as certain compounds, but still useful. I see a good graduate level project to find ways to economically recover some of the chemicals. The copper is certainly valuable if it can be separated safely in enough quantity.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
