It’s no longer acceptable to buy or even conquer territory and people.
If, all things considered, the people of Greenland wanted independence or to affiliate with a different country, the honorable thing would be to work it out. As it is, the people of Greenland want to receive lots of welfare money and to have somebody else defend them.
Fewer and fewer of them are interested in living off whales and seals. More and more of them are re-locating to the capital. The local government is trying to keep the capital from becoming an over-grown slum. It distributes only a few additional lots to natives per year and encourages people to locate in one of the “larger” towns instead of the capital.
As for Denmark, it provides the welfare money, but it really doesn’t provide defense. It spends only 1.3 percent of GDP on defense, less than the NATO obligation of 2.0 percent. So, the defense of Greenland is really provided by the U.S. (as though that’s a surprise to anyone). Denmark should belly up to the bar and spend 2.0 percent on military.
(I would recommend spending the additional on Coast Guard-like units for guarding Greenland, and recruiting locally.)
Greenland is supposed to contain HUGE natural resources. But, so far, nothing much has been developed. The way the subsidy is supposed to go, any royalties are first to lower the subsidy paid to the local government by Denmark and, beyond that, given mostly to the local government. The local people are hoping that one day they will enjoy a bonanza. Like members of an American Indian tribe waiting for the day oil is discovered on their reservation. Actually, there’s nothing wrong with that.
As for being self-sufficient or even a state of the U.S., with 52,000 people its comparable in population to Bermuda, which isn’t self-governing. Bahamas has like 200,000 people, and is self-governing. But, this is not really true. Bahamas is a member of the Caribbean Community, which pools resources for self-defense (and other purposes). And, let’s face it, they continue to rely on the U.S. and the U.K., e.g., Grenada and the Falkland Islands during the 1980s.
In Canada, small numbers of people in Yukon and the rest of its northern tier preclude those places from being (full) provinces of Canada. Nevertheless, they have the status of territory, and that seems to work out. Each territory has one member of parliament, even though the population of these territories is small compared to the average population in districts (called ridings) in Canada’s southern tier.
For that matter, Greenland and the Faroe Islands (north of Scotland) each elect members of the Danish parliament (this also involves over-representation). All this works out pretty well.
My own idea for representation of territories is to attach them to States willing to have them for voting in federal elections, and for apportionment of members of Congress. For example, the U.S. Virgin Islands could vote as part of Florida, Guam as part of Alaska, the Northern Marianas as part of Hawaii, and D.C. as part of Maryland (voiding the 23rd Amendment). This way all of us vote in our federal elections, including those of us who live in territories.
I’m looking at the replies on this thread and wonder how many people have looked at Greenland on a globe? It’s strategically located in the North Atlantic, is near very vital sea lanes to the Arctic and both China and Russia want to develop the Arctic area. I know men from World War II who were stationed there. I agree that Greenland is living off Denmark (this was a subplot on the series Borgen with Sidse Babette Knudsen), but it is a serious offer as they have no defense.