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Putin’s endorsement of Trump’s Greenland takeover reflects their vision of a new world order

The Russian president in Murmansk, where he crafted a historical argument to Trump’s ambitions similar to his own territorial designs. Photograph: Getty Images

The Russian president in Murmansk, where he crafted a historical argument to Trump’s ambitions similar to his own territorial designs. Photograph: Getty Images

As JD Vance touched down in Greenland, the Trump administration received an unlikely endorsement for the US’s first potential territorial expansion since 1947: Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at an Arctic policy forum in the northern Russian city of Murmansk on Thursday, Putin presented a more comprehensive case than any US official yet for Donald Trump’s plan to annex Greenland, crafting a historical argument that sounded suspiciously convenient in terms of Russia’s own territorial designs on Ukraine.

The US’s plans to take control of Greenland “may surprise someone only at first glance, and it is a deep mistake to believe that this is some kind of extravagant talk by the new American administration,” Putin began. “Nothing of the sort.”

The US had plans to buy Greenland in the 1960s but Congress would not support the deal, Putin said. It “protected the territory from Nazi occupation” in the 1940s and made an offer to buy the island that was rebuffed. Even going back to 1910, the US had designs on Greenland, the Russian leader noted, calling the US plans “serious” with “longstanding historical roots”.

Then Putin moved on to Alaska, which was sold by the Russian empire to the US in 1867 in what has become a national case of seller’s remorse. “Let me remind you that by 1868, the purchase of Alaska was ridiculed in American newspapers,” Putin continued. Now, he said, the purchase under president Andrew Johnson had been vindicated.

In short, Putin concluded, get over it. Big countries have territorial ambitions. Deals for land and annexations are not just historical relics – they are a modern reality. And, rejecting generations of international norms not to take territory by force or through extortion, it is none of our business what they do over there.

“As for Greenland, this is an issue that concerns two specific states and has nothing to do with us,” Putin said, while adding that Russia would continue to defend its interests in the Arctic from “dangerous” powers such as Finland and Sweden.

It does not take a Kremlinologist to understand why Putin has come out in support of Trump’s annexation plan. As US power recedes in Europe, the Kremlin is seizing its chance to establish its long-awaited “multipolar world” in which it holds dominion over a sphere of influence, particularly in Ukraine and Belarus. Putin has railed against US hegemony since his Munich speech of 2007, and he finally has a US president who is just as derisive of the postwar order as he is.

Putin’s mantra that countries should mind their own business dovetails closely with Trump’s transactional view of the world, as well as his deep suspicion of transnational organisations and alliances set up after the second world war.

Those range from the United Nations, to the international criminal court, to even foreign economic blocs such as the EU, which he said was “formed in order to screw the United States”.

“The postwar global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us,” said Marco Rubio during his Senate confirmation hearing in January. He is among the more moderate members of Trump’s cabinet. Those toward the more extreme, including Vance, have elevated “restrainers” seeking to accelerate the US withdrawal from Europe or even openly antagonise the US’s erstwhile allies.

But as US power recedes abroad, the White House has declared ambitions throughout the western hemisphere in a turn that some commentators have compared to the Monroe doctrine of 1823, under which the US proclaimed itself the protector of the hemisphere. And with each soundbite declaring that the US should take back the Panama canal or that Canada should become the 51st state, Trump will find an enthusiastic ally in the Kremlin who will see his jaded vision of a new world order reflected in another.

Author: Andrew Roth in Washington

Source: The Guardian

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