Birdnow's Aviary

September 26, 2026

New Treaty Same as the Old Treaty?

Timothy Birdnow

This article in American Thinker is by a retired diplomat who says the new Greenland deal is no better than the old; we did not get the right to expand our bases, to build new ones, to take unilateral action without the express consent of the Danes and Greenlanders.

That was the whole point of negotiating a new treaty.

If this is true the Great Negotiator got taken. Or he needed to move this off his plate and so maintained the status quo.

I would love to hear how the Administration would justify this. I don't see Trump making a bad deal; he already had one. I suspect there is another reason for this.

In 2004 the old deal was updated and it gave veto power to the Danes for any actions we took in Greenland. THAT was the whole reason for a need for an update.

This agreement also encourages NATO to build bases there as well. We need NATO about as much as we need a cranial bore hole these days; they are going to drag us into war with Russia. And do we really believe NATO will do anything at all to help anyone but the Europeans? They've proved they aren't our friends and in fact are erstwhile allies.

So either there is something this author and I are not seeing or we made a bad deal. Trup will tout this as a success for political reasons (since Congress has none of their own) but it seems to me we just rearranged the deckchairs on the Titanic.

And the Titanic it is too with the Chicoms sniffing about the Arctic. Their policy has long been control of rare earth elements and Greenland has a lot of them. We need control of those elements, need to keep China out. China is not an Arctic Ocean state after all - they need to stick with the Pacific Rim.

We needed an updated treaty. We needed absolute authority over the defense of the island.

I haven't read the treaty so have to rely on others. I hope Trump outsmarted the Danes here and that there is something in this that makes it all worthwhile. We will have to wait and see.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:54 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Trump needs a victory even if its a shallow victory to keep people from seeing an economy thats showing signs of slowing down. A real victory for Trump is going on in Venezuela where the people have had enough and in the 10s of thousands taking to the street. Power outages that are lasting 16 hrs a day have got people off their butts and into the street. Reuters is the only news outlet covering this. I wonder why not. Another communist state on the verge of collapse looks bad to commie wannabes.

Posted by: Mike at September 26, 2026 03:58 PM (r7WVt)

2 I agree Mike. Of course the media won't cover a Trump victory.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at September 27, 2026 01:46 PM (oflqW)

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