“No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.” Hans Christian Andersen, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
Musk-Trump inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality, and are taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and relationships that underpinned the largest economy in world history. This too they are breaking.
The American vice-president, JD Vance, visited an American base Greenland for three hours yesterday, along with his wife. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and his wife also came along. Fresh from illegally using an unsafe social media platform to carry out an entirely unnecessary group chat in which they leaked sensitive data about an ongoing military attack to a reporter, Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip which was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.
The overall context was Donald Trump’s persistent claim that America must take Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan had been that Usha Vance would visit Greenlanders, apparently on the logic that the Second Lady would be an effective animatrice of colonial subjection; but none of them wanted to see her, and Greenland’s businesses refused to serve as a backdrop to photo ops or even to serve the uninvited Americans. So instead the American couples all made a very quick visit to Pituffik Space Base. (Pete Hegseth, another group chatter, stayed home; but his wife was in the news as well, as an unorthodox participant in sensitive military discussions.)
At the base, in the far north of the island, the American visitors had pictures taken of themselves and ate lunch with servicemen and servicewomen. They treated the base as the backdrop to a press conference where they could say things they already thought; nothing was experienced, nothing was learned, nothing sensible was said. Vance, who never left the base, and has never before visited Greenland, was quite sure how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to Greenlanders, none of whom was present, or anywhere near him. He claimed that Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and that the United States would. Greenland should therefore join the United States.
It takes some patience to unwind all of the nonsense here.
The base at Pituffik (formerly Thule) only exists because Denmark permitted the United States to build it at a sensitive time. It has served the United States for decades as a central part of its nuclear armory and then as an early-warning system against Soviet and then Russian nuclear attack.
When Vance says that Denmark is not protecting Greenland and the base, he is wishing away generations of cooperation, as well as the NATO alliance itself. Denmark was a founding member of NATO, and it is already American’s job to defend Denmark and Greenland, just as it is Denmark’s job (as with other members) to defend the United States.
Americans might chuckle at that idea, but such arrogance is unwarranted. We are the only ones ever to have invoked Article 5, the mutual defense obligation of the NATO treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita more Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war than were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?
The threat in the Arctic invoked by Vance is Russia; and of course defending against a Russian attack is the NATO mission. But right now the United States is supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine. No one is doing more to contain the Russian threat than Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine is in effect fulfilling the entire NATO mission, right now, by absorbing a huge Russian attack. But Vance opposes helping Ukraine, spreads Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and is best known for yelling at Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office. On the base, Vance blamed the killing in Ukraine on Biden rather than on Putin, which is grotesque. Vance claimed that there is now an energy cease-fire in place between Russia and Ukraine; in fact, Russia violated it immediately. Russia is now preparing a massive spring offensive against Ukraine; the response of Musk-Trump has been to ignore this larger reality completely while allowing Biden-era aid to Ukraine to come to an end. Denmark meanwhile has given more than four times as much aid to Ukraine, per capita, as does the United States.
Greenland, Denmark, and the United States have been enmeshed in complex and effective security arrangements, touching on the gravest scenarios, for the better part of a century. Arctic security, an issue discovered by Trump and Vance very recently, was a preoccuption for decades during and after the cold war. There are only a couple hundred Americans at Pituffik where once there were ten thousand; there is only that one US base on the island where once there were a dozen; but that is American policy, not Denmark’s fault.
We really do have a problem taking responsibility. The United States has fallen well behind its allies and its rivals in the Arctic, in part because members of Vance’s political party denied for decades the reality of global warming, which has made it hard for the U.S. Navy to persuade Congress of the need to commission icebreakers. The United States only has two functional arctic icebreakers; the Biden administration was intending to cooperate with Canada, which has some, and with Finland, which builds lots, in order to compete with Russia, which has the most. That common plan would have allowed the United States to surpass Russia in icebreaking capacity. This is one of countless examples of how cooperation with NATO allies benefits the United States. It is not clear what will happen with that arrangement now that Trump and Vance define Canada, like Denmark, as a rival or even as an enemy. Presumably it will break down, leaving Russia dominant.
As with everything Musk-Trump does, however, the cui bono question about imperialism in Greenland is easy to answer: Russia benefits. Putin cannot contain his delight with American imperialism over Greenland. In generating artificial crises in relations with both Denmark and Canada, America’s two closest allies these last eighty years, the Trump people cut America loose from security gains and create a chaos in which Russia benefits.
The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The United States has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last eighty years, all of the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk-Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the United States will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking. And of course wars rarely turn out the way one expects.
Much effort is spent trying to extract a doctrine from all this. But there is none. It is just senselessness that benefits America’s enemies. Hans Christian Andersen told the unforgettable tale of the naked emperor. In Greenland what we saw was American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain.
As a parting shot, Vance told Greenlanders that life with the United States would be better than with Denmark. Danish officials have been too diplomatic to answer directly the insults directed at them from their own territory during an uninvited visit by imperialist hotheads. Let me though just note a few possible replies, off the top of my head. The comparison between life in the United States and life in Denmark is not just polemical. Musk-Trump treat Europe as though it were some decadent abyss, and propose that alliances with dictatorships would somehow be better. But Europe is not only home to our traditional allies; it is an enviable zone of democracy, wealth and prosperity with which it benefits us to have good relations, and from which we can sometimes learn.
So consider. The US is is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is number two (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97 and the US 84 on freedom — and the US will drop a great deal this year. An American is about ten times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and essentially free health care; Americans spend a huge amount of money to be sick more often and to be treated worse when they are. Danes on average live four years longer than Americans. In Denmark university education is free; the average balance owed by the tens of millions of Americans who hold student debt in the US is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid parental leave. In the US, one parent might get twelve weeks of unpaid leave. Denmark has children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. The US has children’s story writer JD Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five.
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Recently, I wrote about how we’re seeing a general softening of demand for travel to the United States, for a variety of reasons. There’s no denying that the most contentious situation is between Canada and the United States, and we now have some data that shows just how extreme the change in demand is.
We’ve known that travel demand between Canada and the United States has been decreasing, both by air and by roads. We’ve seen some airlines scale back their flight schedules between the two countries, and we’ve also seen a substantial decline in road border crossings. However, it looks like what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.
Aviation analytics company OAG has published some data on the decline in flight bookings between the countries, and it’s worse than most people probably imagined. Specifically, the company compared summer season bookings in March 2024 vs. March 2025. In other words, at this point in both years, how many people have booked transborder flights in April through September?
Well, I hope you’re sitting down. For that six month period, the number of tickets booked is down anywhere from 71.4% to 75.7%. Just as an example, April is less than a week away, and here’s how bookings between the two countries are looking:
I knew it was bad, but I didn’t expect it would be that bad, as that level of demand shift is something you almost never see.
Everyone can draw their own conclusions as to what’s causing this. It’s also anyone’s guess if we’re at rock bottom in terms of consumer sentiment, and if we’ll see more close-in bookings than in past years. But either way, April is right around the corner, and those drops are massive.
We’ve seen airlines cancel a bit of capacity between the United States and Canada, but nothing that nearly reflects the decline in future bookings that we’re seeing. According to OAG, so far airlines have slashed anywhere from 1.6% to 3.5% of their schedules between the two countries for April through September.
However, based on current data, that doesn’t even begin to cover the adjustments that will need to be made, unless something drastic happens soon. Obviously one would assume that Air Canada would be most impacted by these changes, given that the airline has the largest transborder network. Perhaps we’ll see Air Canada shift more capacity domestically, or to countries other than the United States, to account for where consumers want to travel to.
This can’t be an easy situation for those in airline route planning, since it’s hard to know for how long demand will remain so depressed. It’s not easy to just totally rework your route network, especially when it’s anyone’s guess how this evolves.
We’ve known that there has been a decline in travel between Canada and the United States. However, the situation for future flight bookings looks much worse, with an over 70% reduction in flight bookings for the summer season. So far airlines have slashed at most 3.5% of their schedules, so presumably some significant changes will still have to be made.
What do you make of these statistics on future transborder flight bookings? Are you surprised by the size of the decline?
Will a very Musk-friendly Trump administration be willing to put the brakes on Musk’s Martian ambitions? If not, will the international community respond? Their main option for a response would likely be sanctions, either on the US or on Mr. Musk’s overseas business interests. But given the size of the American economy, and of Mr. Musk's wallet, it’s unclear how successful this might be against a determined US administration.
So here we are. The OST, born in fear, designed in part to avoid 19th century style territorial scrambles remains in place. Partially this is because it has served the interests of Earth nations, and partially this is because technology has limited human expansion. Today, the technology is catching up with the space ambitions of the 1960s, and much of that is down to one company: SpaceX. Its leader seems adamant about starting a nation in space, and with his growing political power it’s not clear the United States will stop him.
Although we are skeptical of the idea of a million-person Mars city any time soon, we believe space expansion will eventually happen. And while the first Space Race was a peaceful contest to perform a specific mission, the rhetoric surrounding the Moon and Mars today often concerns territory and mineral access. A contest between nuclear powers is concerning; a turf battle between nuclear powers far more-so. And while traditionally, human spacefaring is mostly about national prestige, a scramble for territory might offer the victor something altogether new: a chance to rewrite the rules.
In his 1962 speech at Rice University, president Kennedy said of the then-new science of spacefaring his nation had entered into: “only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.” Thanks in no small part to Mr. Musk, the United States now has that pre-eminence.