Thursday, May 21, 2026

“Under The Monroe Doctrine In A Way That Is Beneficial”

The United States is inaugurating a new and significantly larger consulate in Greenland today.

Until now, the United States has operated from a small house at the harbor in Nuuk, but on Thursday the new consulate — a three-story, 3,000-square-meter building in the center of the capital — officially opens.

Since 2020, the United States has used a house on the harbor loaned by the Arctic Command, but it is now moving into larger premises at a time of heightened tensions between Greenland and Denmark on one side and the United States on the other.

A demonstration against the opening has therefore been announced for Thursday, and Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen will not attend the official opening ceremony.

Protesters plan to bring banners and stand with their backs turned toward the consulate for two minutes as a sign of discontent with the United States.

When the American consulate reopened in Nuuk in 2020, several members of Naalakkersuisut — the Greenlandic government — took part in the event.

—Sermitsiaq
Now the special envoy has flown back to the United States, where he will report back to his boss, U.S. President Donald Trump. And to that, Landry says:

‘I will report back to him that ever since he began talking about Greenland back in 2016, he has actually put Greenland on the map. And what he essentially did was recognize that the United States, prior to President Trump, had neglected Greenland.’

Q: Some of the people we have spoken to feel somewhat offended by the tone coming from the United States. Do you think there is something in the rhetoric from the U.S. that people here simply do not understand, or what is it really about?”

“Well, listen, I have never paid much attention to what people say about me. People make memes and jokes and say harsh things. I will always say that people should judge me by my actions, not my words,” Landry replies before turning to Trump.

“Donald Trump is definitely a man of action. And he always wants to create opportunities for people. He wakes up every day working to make life better for Americans. And I believe that is the same kind of prosperity he wants to bring to Greenland as well. And it begins with security.”

The journalist tells Jeff Landry that some of the people DR has spoken to still believe that President Trump wants to take over Greenland.

‘And I have to ask you: Is that still the mission?’

‘The mission is to bring this country under the Monroe Doctrine in a way that is beneficial to Greenland. When I spoke with Greenlanders, every question was about this: Do you want the United States to be here? Not everyone says no — some want a closer relationship.’

‘And they are not only saying it with words, they are also showing it physically in a very clear way. So again, I would say those are the people Donald Trump cares about. And I certainly do as well,’ Jeff Landry explains.

(The interview took place yesterday.)

—DR
The organizer of Future Greenland, Christian Keldsen, said that although he does not believe Jeff Landry understood the conference’s main message, he is convinced that the other participants did:

“I have to conclude that the person everyone is talking about — even though he is not part of the conference — has not understood the message about what Greenland wants and what Greenland is capable of,” said Christian Keldsen.

“–But I believe everyone else has understood that there is something valuable here. There is a desire for cooperation, but it also has to happen on Greenlandic terms.”

—KNR
On Thursday, Malene Vahl Rasmussen, mayor of Kujalleq — Greenland’s southernmost municipality with 6,000 inhabitants — delivered a letter of protest to U.S. Ambassador Kenneth A. Howery.

She says that the municipality’s citizens are still affected by the aggressive American statements regarding Greenland.

Malene Vahl Rasmussen explains that she had not previously had the opportunity to deliver the protest letter — but now she has.

“I represent the citizens of the municipality, but I also represent my country, and I will do everything I can to protect it.”

Q: Do you still feel that your country is in danger?

“It’s damn unacceptable. That is not how you treat your allies,” she says about the American government’s way of acting.

—TV2
When I first got on the Intertoobs, the greatest revelation was that I could read newspapers and find points of view from countries other than my own. I found a column in an Irish newspaper. This was just after the Easter Accords, and the violence between Protestants and Catholics had abated. The author was a young Catholic woman who had never so much as crossed the street to the Protestant side of the neighborhood. It was literally a foreign country to her, lived in by foreign people. The divide in Northern Ireland had been that severe. 

It stuck with me because it was such a novel experience. I had read stories by non-American authors, of course; but those were imaginary, and carefully structured to be narratives. Even though you know almost every story Hemingway wrote was drawn from his experiences, are practically his memoirs; you also know they are stories. You know they are crafted from outside. This column, this story, was someone reporting on their life, on their experiences in a particular place at a particular time. Probably even an ordinary experience in that paper, to publish things like that; but to me, it was an open door into a world I hadn’t imagined existed. It gave the internet a lot of promise.

Ah, dem was de days.

The internet presented a chance to see the world from the world’s points of view. An amazing adjunct to world literature; a diptych, a palimpsest. A way to understand others once only available to travelers and expatriates.

And to diplomats, I assume. What else is the job of the diplomat but to understand people in other countries? We used to have people like that in our government; people whose job it was to understand other people. But now we have Trump, who isn’t interested in anyone but himself; and isn’t interested in anyone else who is interested in understanding other people.

🎶”Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?”🎶
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