| Strategic security and a wish to exploit the mineral resources of the country has been explained as the reasons behind the demand from Trump to get control over Greenland. But the real reason for his obsession with this issue | is something rather different, simple and trivial: If Greenland becomes american, America will be much larger: For Greenland is huge, and at the map it looks even bigger. |
But why does Greenland look så big in the map ?The North- and Southpoles are points with no extension, while the equator of the earth is about 40 000 km long. If you are to make an two-dimensional image of the earth, which is a sphere, a common way is to pretend that Poles are lines with the same length as equator. This causes that islands and countries that lie in the vicinity of the Poles look relatively bigger than islands and countries that lie closer to equator. |
Have you ever heard about "The War with the Eskimoes" ?No, most probably you have not, because such a war never has taken place. But the author J.D.Salinger published in 1953 a collection of short-stories where one of the stories had the title "Just Before the War with the Eskimos". Such a war is not described in that story either, but the idea of starting it comes up in a conversation between two young men with experience from the war in Europe, as an expression for the meaninglessness of war in general. J.D.Salinger had also been a soldier in the war in Europe, and his experiences from that had made him extremely desilusionated. In the more than 70 years that have passed since Salinger used this expression as an example on something completely absurd, I guess no one ever have even thought of starting a war against Greenland, before now Donald Trump evidently is seriously concidering it. |