Three hours in Greenland and plenty of bluster

"We need to wake up from a failed, 40-year consensus that said we could ignore the encroachment of powerful countries on their periphery and their ambitions," said US Vice-President JD Vance during his brief visit to the US military base at Pituffik in northern Greenland.

- Gwynne Dyer

It was brief because the Greenland authorities wouldn't let Mr. Vance go anywhere else.

(He then revealed that the real threat was the wily and evil Chinese: "We can't just bury our head in the sand — or in Greenland, bury our head in the snow — and pretend that the Chinese are not interested in this very large land-mass."

Back in the US, Donald Trump backed Mr Vance up: "We need Greenland. Very important for international security; we have to have Greenland. There are Chinese and Russian ships all over the place."

It's total nonsense, but we're not quite back to the 19th century yet, and imperialists still need some plausible lies to justify their colonial acquisitions.

They're not very plausible, though. The nearest Russian naval base to Greenland is Murmansk in northern Russia (2,500km), and no Chinese base is nearer than China itself (6,000km).

There have been a few approaches by Chinese firms to acquire mining concessions or port facilities, but only one has been granted: a Chinese-Australian consortium producing uranium and rare earths in southern Greenland. There are rare resources in Greenland.