J.D Vance and his wife are in Greenland, visiting US troops already based there, and opening his first salvo against Denmark, as the colonial power, for which read, first salvo against the EU. At the same time, Trump has reiterated his earlier comments, at the State of the Union, that US imperialism "must have", Greenland, one way or another.
In my predictions for 2025, I noted that I had been watching the Guy Martin series, "Arctic Warrior", in which he had joined NATO forces in Norway, preparing for war with Russia, which was supposedly preparing to invade, so as to get control of sea routes, and valuable minerals. Nonsense, of course, because most of the sea routes are already Russian, given the huge coastline of Siberia, and for the same reason, most of the minerals, are also Russian, contained within the massive land mass of Siberia. The real purpose of the manoeuvres, is both propagandistic, as NATO steps up the drive to war, to rally populations behind the flag, and justify increased military spending, but, also, because any incursion is likely to be against Russia, in order to gain access to those routes and minerals, rather than by Russia, which already has them!
Well, the reality of that didn't take long to manifest itself, following Trump's arrival in the Whitehouse. First he crapped on Zelensky, forcing him into recognising that Ukraine is dependent on, and a vassal to US imperialism, for which it will pay by handing over half a trillion dollars in revenues from exploitation of its minerals, and most importantly, giving the US access to its rare earth minerals, required for the new technologies of batteries and so on. And, Trump's colonial grab for Canada and Greenland, is simply a continuation of that.
But, having said all that, where does that leave us? As I also, wrote a while ago, there is no more logic in Greenland being a part of Denmark than there was, or is, of the Falklands being a part of Britain. Its true that Denmark is disliked by Greenlanders, as their colonial master. But, just as with those parts of the Tsarist Empire, the answer to that, for the colonised people, never comes from seeking rescue in the arms of another colonial oppressor, simply on the basis of dealing with the immediate condition, and the hope of a lesser-evil.
In general, the answer to colonial oppression, does not reside in seeking the support of some other colonial or imperial power, nor even, in the petty-bourgeois, nationalist delusion of "national self-determination". It can only reside, in proletarian revolution, and the support for the oppressed nations to be rolled into the international proletarian revolution, as part of the process and logic of permanent revolution.
In the age of imperialism, it is quite rational for capital in North America to drive towards a single North American state, combining the US, Canada, Mexico, and Greenland, just as in Europe, the former nation states were driven to combine in the EU. Brexit was not just a catastrophe, but was inevitably a catastrophe, precisely because it sought to ignore that logic, and to turn the clock backwards to a previous time in human history and social development that of the nation state, which became a fetter on development, more than century ago.
The creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, essentially renamed during Trump's first Presidency, the Mexico-Canada-America agreement, illustrates the point, and, across the globe, regional, politico-economic blocs, which are the form of embryonic new multinational states, show that this is not some aberration or accident, but the normal course of development, which leads ultimately to a single world state, though capitalism/imperialism, with its own continued rivalries is never likely to bring that about, as in each case, one or more of the existing nation states within such formations seeks to dominate it, much as Prussia did in creating Germany, and periodically, these larger multinational states, also, come into conflict with each other, as, now, with NATO and Russia/China/BRICS+.
As Trotsky wrote, in The Programme of Peace, as Marxists, we recognise this development as historically progressive. It creates the material conditions required for socialism. It is why we do not advocate national self-determination, which seeks to hold back that development, and to constrain it within the fetters of the outmoded nation state. Nor do we support the idea of "bourgeois defencism", or "revolutionary defencism", which are simply covers to line up workers behind their own ruling class in wars between competing bourgeois states, i.e. social-patriotism. We do not want workers to fight each other in such wars, fought for the interest of their rulers, not for their interests, but want workers, whatever their nationality, to fight jointly for their common interests, against their common enemy, their own ruling classes.
But, the fact that we see the creation of larger multinational states, as progressive, and the inevitable path of evolution of capital that does not mean that we are indifferent to the way this is brought about. As Trotsky says in the above article,
"Capitalism has transferred into the field of international relations the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. The path of competition is the path of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of big capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the great powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome, of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps...
Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle."
In place of the militaristic, thievish expression of this progressive tendency and development, we seek to bring about the voluntary association of existing states, into ever larger units, and the only progressive basis for doing that is via the leading role of the international working-class. As Trotsky notes, we fight against the imperialist imposition of such development based upon force, but not on the basis of defending the nation state, which is, now, reactionary and a fetter on development, but via the logic of permanent revolution, the creation of voluntary associations, and defeat of imperialist aggressors, not by some other imperialist aggressor, but by the combined struggle of the international working-class itself.
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