By Acquiring Greenland, US would Become ‘Arctic Player Equal in Size to Russia’ and Trigger Conflict with Moscow, Yevstafyev Says
January 27, 2025 by Paul Goble
US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the US should acquire Greenland from Denmark would dramatically change the balance of power in the Arctic and set the stage for new conflicts between Washington and Moscow, according to Dmitry Yevstafyev, a Moscow defense analyst and commentator.
“Today,” he says, “America is not a player in the Arctic” and is included as an Arctic country only because its state of Alaska border that sea. But, he continues, “America’s Arctic infrastructure is quite poor compared even to Canada,” something that would have to change if the US annexed Greenland (ura.news/news/1052880245).
And in that event and also because of American interest in developing the natural resources of Greenland, Yevstafyev adds, “America thus becomes the primary competitor in the struggle for the Arctic,” a new situation which makes direct conflicts between the two countries more likely.
Unlike Stalin, Putin will Leave Behind Not a Strong State but Only ‘Ruins,’ Shelin Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 22 – In a new book, Amusing Russia. 228 Answers, Sergey Shelin argues that Vladimir Putin is concerned only with himself and his own survival and as a result is not so much building a new political system as destroying its existing institutions. He will thus leave behind him not a strong state as Stalin did but only “ruins.”
The murder of Muamar Qaddafi shocked Putin and led him to conclude that the West was after him and that he must do everything possible to save himself regardless of the consequences for Russia or for the international system, the Russian commentator says (severreal.org/a/posle-putina-ostanutsya-razvaliny-228-otvetov-na-vse-voprosy-o-rossii/33283990.html).
That fear, Shelin continues, has put Putin on a very different trajectory than Stalin followed despite the frequent comparisons with the late Soviet dictator that are often made. “Stalin,” he writes, “adapted the state system of the USSR to himself and then worked to protect it.”
“Putin in contrast hats the state institutions of the Russian Federation” as constraints and has “managed to destroy them all.” That has consequences for the future: “After Stalin, a totalitarian dictatorship remained; after Putin, only ruins will be left” with the need to rebuild almost everything.
According to Shelin, “Stalin viewed the USSR as his ceation, but Putin looks at the Russian Federation as an instrument for his hobbies. All his feelings and interests are focused on himself. All his feelings and interests are focused on himself. That is why his state adventurism knows no bounds: he is not responsible to anyone for anything not even in his imagination.”
Putin’s exclusive focus on himself is not unique to Russian leaders, but it is an extreme form of that disease and one that shows what can happen when institutions designed to limit such people instead are destroyed by them and then have to be rebuilt from the ground up, Shelin’s book suggests.
The United States had a military presence in Greenland during the second World War that did nothing to corrupt our relations with the Russian people.