Eve, here. It seems you’re not the only one who finds Andrew Koribko’s work frustrating. So I trust you will treat his latest work as an exercise in critical thinking. He often compiles good information, but often undermines it with short-sighted assertions. The obvious problem below is that the United States intends to use the exploitation of Greenland to pay for President Trump’s $1.5 trillion expansion of the military budget.
As explained in the context of America’s wars against oil-producing countries, the United States failed to extract oil wealth from Iraq, which had the second largest proven reserves at the time. It looks like they will fail again against Venezuela.
In response to former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman’s report, some readers pointed to rules requiring proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil to be deposited in U.S. banks, arguing that the United States did not actually derive any meaningful resource or financial benefit from its conquest of Iraq. Consistent with Freeman’s statement that China now controls Iraq’s energy development, China has made direct investments in Iraq in return for oil deliveries and paid fines in what amounted to barter. There may be other mechanisms to circumvent US attempts to control payments, but the mechanism set out by S&P is sufficient to make Freeman’s case.
Analysts say China is undeterred by the uncertain security environment and widespread corruption by swooping into Iraq to meet the country’s energy needs.
PetroChina took over operations of Iraq’s main West Qurna 1 oil field, which has a production capacity of 540,000 barrels per day, after ExxonMobil left Iraq.
CNPC, Iraq’s largest Chinese investor, holds stakes in the Rumaila, Halfaya, Adab and West Qurna fields, as well as CNOOC, Union, Zenfa and other minor companies.
In Iraq’s latest upstream licensing round in May, Chinese companies won all but three of the oil and gas blocks on offer.
Iraq and China signed a controversial oil deal for reconstruction and investment in 2019. The 20-year agreement includes supplying the Chinese company with 100,000 barrels of oil per day in exchange for infrastructure investments, with proceeds from oil exports to be used to finance development projects. Critics said the terms of the deal risked fueling corruption and waste and left Iraq in debt to China.
And that’s before considering that the spoils are likely to end up in Trump’s cronies rather than public funds. From Greenland and the new settler colonialism: the geopolitics of the network state:
Simply put, the technology arm of capital, so brazenly allied with state power, wants the American national security state to dispose of other peoples and even nation-states on its behalf. Network state oligarchs will then be able to establish semi-sovereign “corporate cities” and extract and exploit whatever they like from wherever they are based. 1 Back in 2018, Greenland was for them the ideal home of utopia, a place where they imagined unrest in order to profit from carving out existing governed places and turning them into frontiers.
Snow Crash is becoming more and more like an instruction manual.
Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst specializing in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the new Cold War. He holds a doctorate from MGIMO, which is affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Originally published on his website
Building more facilities there to complement the Pitufik Cosmodrome would facilitate the US “Golden Dome” missile defense program to gain strategic advantage over Russia, while also extracting more critical minerals from it, reducing dependence on fragile Chinese supply chains.
President Trump recently reaffirmed his attempt to annex Greenland on the pretext of preventing China and Russia from invading the autonomous territory of Denmark, a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). However, many believe that his main motive was to control important mineral reserves, estimated to be the second largest in the world. The Daily Mail then reported that the United States itself, rather than China or Russia, which Denmark considers a threat, was actually planning an invasion of the world’s largest island.
Amidst this news, Bloomberg reported that “Britain and Germany are in talks with NATO forces in Greenland to quell US threat.” This was ostensibly aimed at deterring the United States, but as it was previously estimated that France would not fight either, it is highly unlikely that the two countries would fight over Greenland. Greenland is basically something President Trump can get if he really wants it. Because neither NATO nor the local population can stop it, and the latter has no real way to prevent it from extracting resources or building more military bases.
That’s where the U.S. is moving forward, as adding more facilities to complement the Pitufik Cosmodrome will help advance the U.S.’s “Golden Dome” missile defense program to gain a strategic advantage over Russia, and reduce dependence on fragile Chinese supply chains by mining more critical minerals. Additionally, the annexation of Greenland would help create “Fortress America,” a “Trump Doctrine” plan enshrined in the National Security Strategy to restore U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere.
Achieving this grand strategic goal could ultimately subsidize President Trump’s proposal to increase the defense budget by 50% to $1.5 trillion next year (and beyond), allowing the United States to more forcefully contain China and ensuring that it survives and even thrives in the (as of now distant) scenario of being expelled or withdrawn from the Eastern Hemisphere. Greenland is the crown jewel of “Fortress America” for the aforementioned reasons, so its annexation is essential to the United States.
That said, it is also possible that some of President Trump’s advisers may persuade him not to pursue it, as it could irrevocably destroy relations with the EU and NATO. The United States envisions, first, significant benefits as a result of last summer’s lopsided trade deal, and second, it envisions taking the lead in containing Russia in Europe after the end of the Ukraine conflict. The US is likely to win the trade war with the EU, but a prolonged trade war could reduce benefits and increase opportunities for China.
As for NATO, without a serious commitment to contain Russia after the end of the Ukraine conflict, the United States may be reluctant to redeploy large numbers of troops from Europe to the Asia-Pacific to more forcefully contain China, thereby undermining one of the tenets of the Trump Doctrine. However, given the importance of the US market to the EU and the paralyzing fear of Russia among most NATO members, any damage that a potential US annexation of Greenland would cause to the relationship should be quickly repaired.
For these reasons, the United States is likely to annex Greenland, even though it already enjoys complete economic and military freedom of action that China and Russia can never hope for, which would remove any remaining doubts about its hegemonic intentions toward its allies. President Trump has never daunted by concerns about hurting the feelings of his opponents or making society dislike the United States, and the more his opponents talk about such consequences, the more he may want to do it just to piss them off.
