Greenland

[Dill]

(08-16-2019, 12:10 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: $15m + $3.25m in assumed claims for the Mexican Cession (It was a lot more money in 1848.)

Phillipines/PR/Guam, I can find that they purchased it, but I can't find the exact numbers on hand.

The US never technically "owned" the Panama Canal, but had basically an endless lease. They paid $10m up front, and $250k/yr until they gave the Canal back to Panama in 1999.

Hmmm. As I understand it, the US conquered Mexico in the War of 1846-48; it was proposed to annex the entire country, but John C. Calhoun objected on grounds that it would incorporate a large non-white population into the US:

[We] have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race the free white race.  To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes.  I protest against such a union as that!  Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race.  The great misfortunes of Spanish America are to be traced to the fatal error of placing these colored races on an equality with the white race….
https://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1273.

Mexico had already raised the ire of Southerners by outlawing slavery. In any case, the US settled for the least populated areas most easily incorporated into the growing white nation.

Looks like the "purchase" ratified by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was "investing in land" at the point of a gun.

Same for Cuba, Guam and Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War. Nothing paid for Cuba and Guam. The 20 million paid for the Phillipines was, again, at the point of a gun.

All this brings me to a small side point here: I don't regard the acquirement of these territories as "purchases" in the sense of Alaska or the Louisiana Purchase. In any case, even those purchases were really a purchase of rights vis-a-vis other national powers. To the native Americans living in those areas, the land still belonged to them (until the US Army explained otherwise).

Back in the days when countries just took land from others by force or purchase, keeping the people (e.g., Cuba, Hawaii and the Philippines) was less of a problem. Now, however, the 56,000 Danish Greenlanders living on Greenland would be a good-sized problem. Would they willingly move? Become US citizens?  Be accorded some special status as permanent foreigners on US soil?

We could, of course, just take the island and pay Denmark whatever WE felt was fair (see Mexico and Spain above). But then, Denmark is a NATO signatory. We would be in effect attacking Danish soil, triggering Article 5. Another big problem.

The US already has an airbase on Greenland. I'm sure the people of Greenland are ready to do all kinds of business with the US.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49367792

I'm with Arturo on this. I think the resources of Greenland will be better husbanded if they remain in Greenlanders' hands.  Who knows though? Exxon might make them a deal they can't refuse.