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“Where is Greenland and why is it important to Trump?” The question comes from a recent BBC article—an exemplary “backgrounder,” to use the journalistic jargon—that tried to make sense of the U.S. president’s latest push to seize the island. The text soberly explains that “there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources, including rare earth minerals, uranium and iron.” It goes on to note that seizing those riches probably isn’t the main motive for his obsession. The authors posit that U.S. President Donald Trump is more worried about the “threat he perceives from Russia and China in the region.”

The updated version of the article then summarizes Trump’s speech in Davos, Switzerland, this week, including his assertion that “I don’t have to use force, I don’t want to use force, I won’t use force.” (Listeners don’t seem to have been entirely placated, though, considering the general incoherence of his remarks, which repeatedly confused Greenland and Iceland.)

“Where is Greenland and why is it important to Trump?” The question comes from a recent BBC article—an exemplary “backgrounder,” to use the journalistic jargon—that tried to make sense of the U.S. president’s latest push to seize the island. The text soberly explains that “there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources, including rare earth minerals, uranium and iron.” It goes on to note that seizing those riches probably isn’t the main motive for his obsession. The authors posit that U.S. President Donald Trump is more worried about the “threat he perceives from Russia and China in the region.”

The updated version of the article then summarizes Trump’s speech in Davos, Switzerland, this week, including his assertion that “I don’t have to use force, I don’t want to use force, I won’t use force.” (Listeners don’t seem to have been entirely placated, though, considering the general incoherence of his remarks, which repeatedly confused Greenland and Iceland.)

Nowhere, though, does the BBC article mention that Trump is perfectly capable of exploiting Greenlandic natural resources without stealing the territory from Denmark—or that the entire resource argument is hogwash for a litany of reasons, ranging from the fact that the supposed critical minerals riches are covered in a thick sheet of permanent ice to the fact that the United States already has........

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