The Great Greenland War

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Most of my writing to this point has focused on the analysis of wars that have either already happened (sometimes very long ago) or are currently happening. Here, I’ll risk a slight deviation by attempting three theoretical histories of a war that has not yet begun, but which looks increasingly possible. What happens if the United States makes an aggressive push to seize Greenland against the wishes of the Greenlanders, the Danes, and the European security community writ large? Perhaps these histories will strike the reader as nothing more than fiction, although hopefully enjoyable and interesting fiction at that. I think, however, that each case has an essentially coherent chain of cause and effect, and the wildly different outcomes that ensue should sober us. Nothing about geopolitics - and by extension history - is truly deterministic in ways that are obvious to us in real time. Like balls careening around a pool table, second order effects begin to multiply quickly. Our history is full of great wars which began in seemingly small places: the Lexington Common, Fort Sumter, an Archduke’s touring car in the back alleys of Sarajevo. Will Nuuk be next? Subscribe nowThe First Story: The Great ShatteringThe battle in Greenland ended before the world had come to grips with the fact that it had begun. The idea of live fire between the Americans and their former European allies - a notion which seemed ludicrous and unthinkable barely a year before - was considered so impossible that governments across Europe were still in a state of disbelief when the outcome of the fighting beca…