Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
so, ok.I was using the word "bribe" because selling off one's country feels ... immoral?
However, it would be neither illegal nor especially difficult to publicly propose a deal where every Greenlander gets paid a lump some of money, if their government agrees to XYZ.
they already get substantial subsidies. these grants are trustworthy, because they're within reason.
let's overshoot the bribe price for a short hypothetical.
say greenland's news announced that elon was willing to pay every greenlander 1 billion dollars. elon supports this in public statements. trump endorses this. you can sign up on elon's website. if you listen to the politically enfranchised who do deep digs into statements like this, they also say it's legit.
now, would you take that deal? like, sure, you might take it. but would you take it? try to put yourself into that situation. something is absurdly fishy about it. this seems like some real nigerian prince stuff, doesn't it?
the danish subsidies are trusted to continue because they're within a reasonable amount and have already been distributed for a living memory. whatever would be handed over should both beat that offer and to a degree that it overcomes greenland's wish for independence (because there's no f* way the us will let them be independent like denmark is fine with) and stay within an amount that sounds reasonable. for a lot of this, it comes down to basically changing a person's framing of mind (a lifelong want for independence is a cultural pillar of the majority of greenlanders right now, like, it's a core part of what it means to be greenlandic to a lot of them), which, again, simply requires work and time. it's also completely individual. you can't just f* put a check on a parliament table and expect something to happen here, no matter how large; if it gets too big, the reasonable individual voter will think it's too big, because it is.
you noted in another post that it can be done by doing grassroots work and foreign-influence an election in a country, giving their parliament a mandate to arrange the sale. now, this is electoral influence to the degree that they'll give up on a completely core principle, instead of like doing a nudge (which is how most electoral influence works). if you know how to do that, feel free to explain it to me, because i would love that power.
like jesus this is all so absurdly 4X-brained. i'm sorry about the tone, but can we talk about the greenlanders as real people? because the real world doesn't work like that. you can't just send reality's equivalent of Espionage Points or Diplo Points into the province interface and have them vote for your guy. you don't just buy a city. you make arrangements with individuals through careful deals, one at a time. if you fix the talking heads, then you have the city.
so you'd have to go through the administrative bottlenecks, and let's just presume here that the us could just bribe the greenland parliament; that is more of a technical possibility. ugly, but a more reasonable hypothetical. and that current government just doing the deed on their own? they told the world. they're not interested. the us can up and well invest in the area like any other power currently has the rights to.
a blanket cash grant on votes/annexation is absurd in the case of greenland. their economic situation does not reflect a dire need for it, and they have strived to not get annexed by countries since, well, they were colonized.