I feel it should be noted that Denmark wishing to be the colonial power tied to Greenland is done for the same monetary reasons/speculation the US is going to replace Denmark in that. Ethics plays no role in either.
big red buzzer sound; that is a huge misreading of the attitude here. there are basically three attitudes.
- some indeed think like that, in that it's pure geopolitics, economic speculation, or even colonial ambitions.
- some want greenland to be remain of the kingdom, but literally only because they're reliant on our subsidies. this group otherwise supports independence. < most danes think like this.
- some want greenland to be independent specifically because they don't want to pay the subsidies.
other attitudes exist, but they're far fewer from my impression.
the general attitude and trajectory has been towards greenlandic independence for a very long time. your idea of the danish attitude here is informed by (reasonable!) knowledge of geopolitics elsewhere here. it doesn't reflect what's been happening in denmark and greenland for at least half a century - and it mistakes denmark for having a different international attitude than it's been having for 200 years. while we've recently enjoyed snuggling up to the power players, we don't actually want to be part of any of that imperial crap anymore. been like that since
1864.
like, so, from the cursory google search, this question popped up as a reddit result:
and i cannot express enough how ridiculous the divide between how people think of territorial constituents elsewhere in the world, and how the danish think about it. a question like this, to a dane, will always seem to come out of nowhere; this asked question was innocious and fair, of course. but it's still a sheer divide from how danes generally feel. we don't want any colonies, actually, no thank you. most danes want to help greenland due to an empathetic obligation over a people with, whether anyone likes it or not, common history, and that's a current constituent in the danish kingdom. it's not just a question of time. it's like asking whether we regret losing our navy, losing england, losing scania, losing sweden and norway, estonia, etc, etc, because to a lot of other countries there's actually a somewhat living sentimentality about the glory days of the past, but we literally are
done with it.
like, since 1864, the only real event that challenged our disinterest in imperial ambition was the
easter crisis, which ended up reaffirming the current view on that kind of stuff.
a core part of this point is that
even danish fascists just appeal to pretty beaches and crap. they don't want the virgin islands back or whatever. there's not a whole lot of talk about military and reclaiming random areas around the world. among my acquaintances, and this is anecdotical, the people that just want to dump greenland because of the subsidies are the cryptofascists. those that speculate in geopolitics are usually the liberal-conservative types.
small nationalism, baby.
anyways, only stats on the divide between the three groups
in denmark i've found from a cursory google glance was a bunch of russian polls with very low factual credibility. so i can't speak on the stats.
If anything, the US has the added security reasons - since Denmark won't ever be protected by a fortified border at Greenland.
and on this, what it's basically changed about the situation is that danes sympathetic to greenlander independence have become worried as to greenland's ability to indeed defend themselves if invaded. they don't have the same diplomatic capital & treaties that denmark does right now. so that'd require work on the behalf of those that were worried about leaving them without subsidies.