Politics

How Greenland’s Independence Could Catalyze Canada’s Balkanization

Barry Scott Zellen, PhD Liberty , , , , , ,

The Westphalian map of North America is fracturing before our eyes. For over a century now, the establishment has treated our continent’s borders as permanent, sacred lines etched immutably into polar ice. But they’ve been ignoring the deeper tectonics of history, resource economics, and indigenous self-determination.

If Nuuk moves closer to cutting its final colonial cords to Copenhagen, it will not merely be charting a path to liberate Greenland. It will instead be pulling the linchpin from an over-centralized, overly archaic Canadian confederation. Indeed, when Greenland successfully achieves full sovereignty, it won’t remain an isolated event for long.

It will light a fuse: a cascading domino of pent-up yearning for independence and newly nurtured secessionist sentiment will quickly roll across Canada, breaking this vast, centralized state apart into a more logical, decentralized alignment under a continental American umbrella.

Ottawa’s long era of continental neglect is approaching its terminal hour: an inevitable liberation of Greenland will provide the ultimate spark for a sweeping prairie fire of state collapse and geopolitical realignment.

Proximate Polar Pioneers: Nunavut and the Northwest Territories Will Lead the Way

The first dominoes to tumble would likely be from the High North. The artificial cartography of the 20th century explicitly severed the Inuit nation across colonial boundaries. Once Greenland secures its status as a sovereign state protected by an American aerospace shield, the structural logic for Nunavut to remain tied to a chronically underfunded Ottawa will disappear entirely.

Nunavut would likely be the first to follow Nuuk’s lead, exercising its inherent right to self-determination. For decades, Iqaluit’s economic autonomy has been stifled by federal mandates. By seceding from Canada, Nunavut can merge its multi-level indigenous governance model with a newly independent Greenland, creating a unified, greater Inuit maritime power.

The Northwest Territories (NWT) would quickly follow this northern exodus. The NWT’s vast mineral wealth—critical for the digital age—remains locked behind federal regulatory paralysis. A sovereign NWT, unburdened by Ottawa’s red tape, would logically align its economic and security architecture with Alaska and the Yukon. This would complete a contiguous, resource-rich northern buffer zone under a single, streamlined continental command structure.

Western Revolt: Alberta’s Financial Liberation

As the northern rim detaches, the economic engine of Western Canada will inevitably look for its own exit. Alberta’s grievances against the Laurentian elite are structural, deep-seated, and entirely justified. For generations, federal equalization formulas have systematically plundered Albertan energy wealth to subsidize the political dependencies of Eastern Canada.

• Fiscal Plunder: Ottawa drains billions annually from Calgary while actively sabotaging its industrial growth.

• Pipeline Paralysis: Federal environmental mandates deliberately choke landlocked energy corridors to global markets.

• Sovereignty Act: Alberta has already built the legal framework to nullify federal overreach.

Greenland’s transition to a high-growth, sovereign partner of America will provide Alberta with the ultimate blueprint. A newly independent republic of Alberta would no longer plead for market access. It could instead secure it directly through a bilateral strategic partnership with Washingtonl , seamlessly integrating its massive oil and gas reserves into the American energy heartland.

The Pacific Gateway: British Columbia’s Continental Pivot

With Alberta gone, British Columbia (BC) would face an existential geographic choice. Cut off from the rest of Eastern Canada by an independent prairie republic, Victoria could not remain an isolated outpost of a dying state. BC’s economic reality has always been oriented vertically along the Pacific Coast, rather than horizontally across the Rocky Mountains.

An independent British Columbia could execute a rapid continental pivot. The Cascadia corridor—stretching from Vancouver to Seattle and Portland—is already an integrated economic ecosystem. BC’s vast critical mineral deposits, clean hydropower, and strategic deep-water ports make it a natural titan of the Pacific Rim.

Freed from Ottawa’s strategic inertia, a sovereign BC could directly negotiate its own trade and security protocols with Washington and Tokyo. It would transform its coastline into the premier, unhindered gateway for democratic commerce across the Indo-Pacific.

Final Fracture: Quebec’s Unfinished Journey

The western and northern departures would leave the historical core of Canada fundamentally unsustainable. Quebec has kept one foot out of the confederation door for over half a century. The cultural, linguistic, and political friction between Francophone identity and Anglo-federalism is an unhealable wound.

• Linguistic Sovereignty: Quebec operates as a distinct nation in all but name.

• Hydro-Power Independence: Its energy grid is completely autonomous and globally integrated.

• Institutional Readiness: The province maintains its own civil legal code and international offices.

When Western Canada fractures, the remaining federal state will lack the financial capacity to appease Quebec’s nationalist aspirations. But Quebec’s secession would not be an act of chaotic rebellion; it would instead be the orderly final step of a decades-long march toward statehood. 

A sovereign Quebec would control the St. Lawrence River gateway, trading seamlessly with its neighbors while preserving its distinct cultural civilization free from Anglo-federal meddling, and its proximity to Nunavut would position it to be an emergent near-Arctic power unto itself.

New Continental Equilibrium

Critics within the obsolete foreign policy establishment will decry this potential balkanization as a dangerous collapse of order. They fundamentally misunderstand the nature of modern statecraft. The breaking of the Laurentian empire would not be an act of imperial chaos; it would be an act of democratic renewal.

The old Canadian confederation remains a product of British colonial architecture, designed to keep different regions artificially bound together against their natural economic inclinations. By allowing these distinct regions to find their true sovereign potential—just as Greenland is currently attempting to do—we can replace a hollow, dysfunctional federal state with a vibrant, high-growth brotherhood of independent nations.

Every single one of these emerging republics—from the pristine Arctic tundra of Nunavut to the vast and lucrative oil and gas fields of Alberta to the deepwater ports of Cascadia—shares a common destiny.  They will find their ultimate security, their market access, and their democratic baseline under a reimagined, pan-American umbrella. 

The era of Arctic and western neglect is drawing to a close. Greenland is writing the playbook, but if successful in its quest for liberty, the Canadian dominoes will quickly follow.

Greenland and the Spirit of 1776

Barry Scott Zellen, PhD Liberty , , , , , , , ,

On this sacred 250th anniversary of our Republic’s birth, to fully grok how the liberation of Greenland can fulfill our unextinguishable Spirit of 1776, we must discard the outdated notion that the Arctic is a frozen, peripheral wasteland. 

Throughout my career analyzing Arctic sovereignty, borderlands, and geopolitics, I have argued (since I was a young man in 1991) that the Far North is emerging as a central arena for global freedom, resource independence, and democratic sovereignty. Upon this July 4th’s sacred, quarter-millenium celebration of our liberty, this long-foreseen centrality has come to pass.

In my view, the Spirit of 1776 is not a static historical event: it is instead an ongoing, dynamic process of expanding self-determination, rolling back old-world colonial empires, and securing our continental perimeter against authoritarian overreach. 

To fulfill our Spirit of 1776 in the 21st century, the United States must extend its democratic umbrella northward! This is not an act of alliance-imploding imperial conquest as Denmark has sought to portray; rather, it is an inclusive act of collaborative liberation. 

By helping Greenland sever its last colonial ties to Europe and integrating it into North America’s hemispheric security and economic architecture, we can achieve three philosophical and strategic imperatives:

Continental Completeness: We complete the geopolitical vision of the Monroe Doctrine, ensuring North America is entirely governed by consent and free from European or Asian state interference.

Democratic Self-Determination: We empower the Kalaallit (Greenlandic Inuit) people with true economic and military independence, backed by American constitutional guarantees.

Frontier Ethos: We re-ignite the American pioneer spirit on the Arctic frontier, viewing the far north as a dynamic space for democratic civilization.

To help actualize this collabarative liberation, Greenland can craft a Constitution mirroring while customizing our own paradigmatic Constitution. Some key components could include the following.

A Proposed Constitution of the Republic of Kalaallit Nunaat

Preamble

We, the people of Kalaallit Nunaat, grateful to our ancestors who survived and thrived across the Arctic frontier, determined to preserve our culture, our language, and our environment, and committed to the universal principles of human liberty and democratic self-governance, do establish this Constitution for our sovereign Republic.

Article I: Sovereign Status and Geography

  1. The Republic of Kalaallit Nunaat is a sovereign, democratic, and independent nation encompassing the entire island mass of Greenland, its continental shelf, and its territorial waters.
  2. The sovereign power resides in the people, to be exercised through their elected representatives and direct democratic referendums.
  3. The official national languages are Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) and English.

Article II: Bill of Rights and Liberties

  1. Fundamental Rights: Every citizen is born free and equal in dignity. No law shall discriminate based on race, ancestry, language, or creed.
  2. Freedom of Expression: The right to free speech, a free press, and peaceful assembly shall not be abridged.
  3. Property and Private Enterprise: The right to private property is guaranteed. Free-market enterprise is the baseline economic system of the Republic, protected against arbitrary state nationalization.
  4. Indigenous Customs: The collective right of the Inuit people to hunt, fish, and manage local community lands in accordance with sustainable tradition is permanently protected.
  5. The Right to Bear Arms and Self-Defense: The right of the people to keep and bear arms for self-defense, protection against wildlife, hunting, and the security of the Republic shall not be infringed. No law shall prohibit the possession, carry, or responsible use of firearms by citizens. Licensing and registration shall be kept minimal and non-prohibitive to ensure remote families are never left defenseless against the elements or predators.
  6. Inherent Rights to Traditional Harvest and Lifeways: The right of citizens to engage in traditional hunting, fishing, gathering, and harvesting is an unalienable birthright. This includes the absolute right to harvest marine mammals, specifically whaling and sealing, as well as terrestrial fur trapping. The use, breeding, training, and deployment of sled dogs (Qimmit) for transportation and hunting is protected. No administrative regulation or international treaty shall penalize or restrict these practices. The local trade, consumption, or garment-making of legally harvested furs, skins, or traditional foods shall not be criminalized.
  7. Conversion of Ecological Zones to Subsistence Hunting Preserves: All lands previously designated as national parks, restrictive nature reserves, or ecological preserves under foreign administration are permanently converted into National Subsistence Hunting Preserves. The right of local populations to access these lands for subsistence hunting, traditional trapping, fishing, and temporary shelter is absolute and supreme over pure preservationist mandates.
  8. Family Sovereignty and Prevention of Child Removal: The family is the foundational and sacred unit of society. No agency of the state or external non-governmental organization shall have the authority to separate families or remove children from their parental home based on poverty, standard of housing, or adherence to traditional indigenous child-rearing practices. Separation shall be permitted only as an absolute last resort in instances of proven, severe physical harm, established by an independent jury of peers in a court of law. Preferential placement must be given to extended kinship networks and local community members.

Article III: Legislative Branch (Inatsisartut)

  1. Legislative power is vested in a unicameral parliament, the Inatsisartut, consisting of 31 members elected by proportional representation every four years.
  2. It has sole authority to pass domestic laws, levy taxes, approve national budgets, control and restrict immigration, and ratify commercial treaties.
  3. All laws concerning the extraction of critical mineral wealth require a three-fifths supermajority vote.

Article IV: Executive Branch (The Presidency)

  1. The executive power of the Republic is vested in the President, elected by direct popular vote for a term of five years, limited to two terms.
  2. The President serves as the Head of State, Head of Government, and Commander-in-Chief.
  3. Strategic Alliance Provision: The President has the constitutional power, with the consent of parliament, to delegate the external defense and aerospace protection of the Republic to the United States of America under a permanent Compact of Free Association.

Article V: Judiciary

  1. The judicial power is independent of the executive and legislative branches, vested in a Supreme Court and lower regional courts.
  2. The courts interpret the laws of the Republic, integrating western common law with traditional Inuit customary justice.

Article VI: Amendment and Ratification 

  1. Amendments to this Constitution may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of the Inatsisartut or by a petition signed by twenty percent of registered voters.
  2. An amendment becomes valid only when ratified by a majority vote of the citizens in a nationwide referendum.

Why This Fulfills the Spirit of 1776

Greenland’s current status under the Danish Realm represents a lingering anomaly of old-world European colonialism. While Nuuk has enjoyed increasing “Home Rule” and later “Self-Rule” governance, its security, defense, and monetary systems remain anchored in Copenhagen, with multiple levels of continuing dependency.

The Rejection of Imperial Feudalism: The Spirit of 1776 revolted against a small island nation in Europe governing a vast continent across the sea. Denmark’s management of Greenland inverse-mirrors this dynamic with a small continental nation governing a vast North American Arctic island. Facilitating Nuuk’s exit completes the decolonization of the Western Hemisphere.

Guarding the Empire of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson envisioned a continental space where democratic institutions could multiply safely. By more tightly integrating Greenland into America’s hemispheric perimeter, we can more ably protect critical minerals and contested seabeds from our rivals, while expandine the rule of law and the zone of liberty.

Self-Actualization of Indigenous Peoples: My scenario of liberation places the Kalaallit people at the center of their own destiny. By partnering with the United States, they trade a paternalistic European welfare state for a high-growth, constitutionally protected partnership, becoming absolute masters of their own nation.

It is time for their colonial dependency to end. It is time for the whole of North America to be free. It is time, on this sacred quarter millennium since America’s birth, for Greenland to declare its own independence, and to join us in the brotherhood of nations and free peoples. Let our 250th Independence Day become Greenland’s first!

Code Blue: How America Can Help Heal Greenland’s Rural Health Crisis

Barry Scott Zellen, PhD Liberty , , , , , ,

The vast, ice-locked expanse of Greenland is facing a quiet, structural rural health crisis. While global powers look north to debate emerging shipping lanes, untapped deposits of rare-earth minerals, and increasingly salient geopolitical positioning in the Arctic, a human crisis is unfolding across the territory’s remote coastal settlements. Greenland’s rural healthcare system is straining under the weight of persistent staffing shortages, extreme geographic isolation, and an overwhelming infrastructural deficit.

As America expands its diplomatic and strategic footprint in the Arctic and High North Atlantic, Washington can no longer afford to view Greenland solely through the lens of national defense and radar stations. Addressing Greenland’s rural health crisis is not just a moral imperative; it is a critical opportunity for the United States to practice meaningful, localized diplomacy that secures long-term stability and goodwill in a vital region.

The recent public rejection of a U.S. hospital ship by Greenlandic and Danish officials was a triumph of nationalist pride, but a tragedy for the island’s most vulnerable residents. The political friction began on February 21, 2026, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he was deploying a “great hospital boat” to Greenland, claiming the population lacked proper care.

The response from Nuuk and Copenhagen was immediate. As ABC News reported, “‘It’s a no thank you from here,’ Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said,” just hours after President Trump’s generous offer: “‘President Trump’s idea of sending an American hospital ship here to Greenland has been noted. But we have a public healthcare system where treatment is free for citizens. That is a deliberate choice — and a fundamental part of our society. That is not how it works in the USA, where it costs money to see a doctor.'” But as all residents of Nordic states know, it costs money to see doctors there too, through higher taxes and in the specific case of Greenland, Danish subsidies.

Denmark’s leadership quickly reinforced this message. As the New York Times reported, “Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defense minister, told Denmark’s public broadcaster, DR, that his government had not been made aware of the plan. He said that there was ‘no need for special health care efforts, in Greenland.'” Perhaps he needs to spend more time in rural Greenland before making such a bold but dubious claim.

Danish PM Mette Frederiksen — who barely survived Denmark’s March parliamentary elections by assembling a four-party minority coalition government 69 days after her party, the Social Democrats, delivered their worst electoral performance in over a century — responded similarly but indirectly to President Trump’s generosity, writing on Instagram “I’m happy to live in a country where there is free and equal access to health care for everyone,” as the New York Times also reported, “The same approach exists in Greenland.”

In dismissing the U.S. President’s generous offer so quickly and cavalierly as an unnecessary political stunt, these Greenlandic and Danish leaders touted Greenland’s free, national healthcare system. Yet, their defensive reaction masks a grim reality familiar to anyone living outside the capital of Nuuk: for Greenland’s remote and isolated settlements, access to that “free” healthcare is often a distant, and at times dangerous, illusion.

Just look at the dispararity in life expectancies in Greenland and Denmark: in Greenland, the average life expectancy is 69.3 years for men and 73.9 for women, while in Denmark it’s 79.9 for men and 83.7 for women—nearly a full decade of precious life longer for both men and women (for those lucky enough to have survived Denmark’s decades-long policies of Greenlandic population suppression). Outside of Nuuk, whose life expectancy numbers enjoy a boost from its high concentration of non-Greenland born residents, life expectancies are even lower by some three to four years.

While elite urban leaders lean into their ideological purity from modern, state-of-the-art “Potemkin” facilities, rural Greenlanders continue face severe doctor shortages, long transport times for emergencies, an ongoing specialist crisis, and heartbreaking levels of suicide. In a vast, Arctic nation where geography is the ultimate barrier to the practice of medicine, a floating, fully-equipped hospital ship is not an insult to sovereignty—it is a highly practical, life-saving solution to the undeniable failures of rural Arctic healthcare.

Anatomy of an Arctic Health Crisis

Greenland operates a universal healthcare system that is free at the point of use. However, equity in theory does not translate to equity in geography. For most of the island’s 57,000 residents—scattered across dozens of isolated villages accessible only by plane, helicopter, dog sled, or boat—access to basic medical care is akin to a lottery. The system is suffocated by an unsustainable reliance on short-term, rotational medical professionals traveling from Denmark. These practitioners rarely stay long enough to learn Greenlandic or understand local cultural nuances. This in turn exhausts the few permanent, bilingual local health workers, driving severe burnout and rapid turnover.

In the remotest of settlements, basic lifesaving tools like defibrillators are frequently absent. When emergencies strike, the territory relies on expensive, logistically complex medevacs. At a rate of 7.7 evacuations per 1,000 inhabitants every year, these flights drain tens of millions of dollars from an already strained public budget. Because preventive care is practically non-existent in the rural periphery, chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease and cancer are routinely diagnosed at late, terminal stages.

Compounding these structural challenges is a profound legacy of historical trauma. The revelation of protracted, forced contraception campaigns enacted by Danish authorities in recent decades has left deep scars. It has fostered a persistent, understandable distrust of institutional medical systems among Indigenous communities.

Washington to the Rescue

For decades, America’s relationship with Greenland has been transactional, anchored by the strategic outpost of Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base). However, in an era of renewed Arctic competition, hard military power is no longer enough to maintain durable alliances.

The Greenlandic government currently faces an estimated one-billion-kroner (US $150 million+) deficit just to modernize its clinical infrastructure and bridge the health equity gap between rural settlements and the capital, Nuuk. By actively intervening to help close this gap, the United States can deploy a strategy of medical diplomacy. This approach will alleviate human suffering while demonstrating that American partnership brings tangible, life-saving benefits to everyday Greenlandic citizens.

An Action Plan for American Medical Diplomacy

The United States possesses the exact technological, logistical, and clinical infrastructure needed to revolutionize rural health care in Greenland. To achieve maximum impact, Washington should deploy a targeted, three-tiered action plan:

1. Scale AI-Powered, Pan-Arctic Telehealth Collaboration

The greatest barrier to rural healthcare in Greenland is distance. Rather than trying to solve this in isolation, the United States should integrate Greenland into a broader, pan-Arctic telehealth network. By creating a collaborative digital medical grid between Alaska’s tribal health organizations—which have decades of experience in remote, sub-zero care—and Greenland’s regional clinics, providers can seamlessly share best practices, billing efficiencies, and translation strategies.

Crucially, this pipeline can be supercharged with Artificial Intelligence. American technologists like Elon Musk can help develop and deploy automated AI diagnostic software to rural Greenlandic nursing stations. These algorithms can instantly evaluate X-rays, spot early-stage oncological abnormalities on skin scans, and read basic blood work without waiting days for a specialist in Nuuk or Copenhagen. By pairing low-Earth orbit satellite arrays with AI triage tools, minor health issues can be resolved locally, stopping the financial bleed of avoidable medical evacuations.

2. Deploy Seasonal U.S. Hospital Ships for Direct Care

While digital health addresses daily care, Greenland’s immense surgical backlogs require physical intervention. The United States Navy maintains the world’s most capable floating medical platforms. Washington should institutionalize annual, seasonal deployments of U.S. hospital ships (such as the USNS Comfort or Mercy, or newly designed agile medical vessels) to the High North Atlantic and Arctic during the ice-free summer months.

Operating as high-profile medical diplomacy, these ships would anchor off regional hubs like Qaqortoq, Sisimiut, or Ilulissat. Over a multi-week deployment, American naval surgeons and dental corps could perform hundreds of elective surgeries, joint replacements, and advanced dental procedures that rural Greenlanders currently wait years to receive. This surge of direct, high-impact clinical aid would immediately relieve the strain on Greenland’s domestic budget while forging deep cultural goodwill directly with the populace.

Indeed, commissioning a new, dedicated medical icebreaker designed for maritime health delivery to Arctic coastal villages would provide a critical, helpful new layer to the region’s much-needed rural healthcare infrastructure. Geopolitical grandstanding aside, achieving this logistical breakthrough requires cooperation over pride. America can genuinely help by offering specialized maritime medical expertise and use of its hospital ships, but Denmark can and must do more too, leveraging its substantial wealth and sovereign responsibility to co-fund a permanent mobile care solution for the citizens it aims to protect.

3. Establish a High North Atlantic and Arctic Medical Scholarship Program

True healthcare sustainability cannot be imported; it must be grown from within. The U.S. State Department should launch a scholarship and residency pipeline inviting Greenlandic students to train at top-tier American medical and nursing schools, funded by allied donors who will all benefit from a healthier and more secure Arctic.

This program must place special emphasis on rural medicine, telehealth deployment, and culturally informed community health care. In exchange, graduates would commit to returning to Greenland’s rural clinics for a designated period. This initiative would systematically build a permanent, bilingual, and Indigenous medical workforce, directly dismantling the cycle of foreign medical dependency.

Rx for Change

True Arctic security is impossible to achieve when the region’s inhabitants are left vulnerable to preventable systemic health crises. The structural deficiencies in Greenland’s rural healthcare network require resources, technology, and logistical capabilities that Nuuk cannot assemble alone.

By stepping forward with an innovative blend of AI-driven pan-Arctic telehealth networks, seasonal hospital ship deployments, and long-term educational pipelines, the United States can help heal a profound humanitarian rift in the High North Atlantic and Arctic. In doing so, America will prove that its commitment to the Arctic is measured not just in military muscle, but in the health, dignity, and longevity of the people who call the Arctic home.

After Greenland’s Liberation: Inuit Sovereign Expansion

Barry Scott Zellen, PhD Liberty , , , , , , , , , ,

Why Greenland and Nunavut Could Join Forces Under a U.S. Shield

June 21 — just two weeks away — marks not only the summer solstice, but in Canada it’s also National Indigenous Peoples Day, a day that celebrates the resilience of the Arctic’s original inhabitants. Yet, celebration without sovereignty seems in many ways premature and incomplete.  True self-determination for Inuit still requires a profound political transformation.

Indeed, the path to a strong, viable and unified Inuit state runs through Nuuk, Iqaluit, and Washington. By leveraging Greenland’s path to independence from Denmark and negotiating with President Trump, and then more tightly integrating Greenland and Nunavut under America’s defense and economic umbrella, Inuit can finally achieve a cohesive and sovereign Arctic state, an historic first.

The current geopolitical map fragments the Inuit nation across artificial colonial borders. Greenland operates under Danish self-rule, while Nunavut remains a territory within the Canadian confederation. Both face a shared vulnerability: vast geographic scale, small populations, and intensifying pressures from Arctic and “near-Arctic” neighbors Russia and China (and, 80 years earlier, Germany and Japan).

Neither Nuuk nor Iqaluit possesses the economic or military heft to secure the top of the world alone. A bold diplomatic realignment is required to bridge this divide. This alignment would not be entirely unprecedented, but rather an historic restoration.

During World War II, the United States stepped in as the de facto protector of both regions. Following the 1940 Nazi occupation of Denmark, Washington established a protective mandate over Greenland to secure its strategic cryolite mines and critical Arctic weather stations. Simultaneously, the U.S. Army’s Air Forces built a massive and vital airfield at Frobisher Bay — now modern-day Iqaluit — to ferry aircraft to the European front. This shared history of wartime continental defense laid the early structural and geopolitical foundations for a unified North American Arctic.

Greenland holds the key to unlocking this future. As Greenland moves closer to full independence from Denmark, it faces a gathering financial and security vacuum. Denmark’s annual subsidy cannot be easily replaced, and an independent Greenland cannot defend its massive coastline and vast EEZ. 

This is where strategic pragmatism meets historic opportunity. President Trump has famously viewed Greenland through a lens of immense strategic and economic value. Rather than resisting this interest, Greenlandic leadership should lean into it.

Instead of pivoting to Copenhagen’s familiar embrace, Nuuk could instead leverage its ongoing (if fractious) discussions with Washington to flip the script and directly negotiate a compact of free association with President Trump. Turning the table like this has been done before, and is a quirk of Trump statecraft: Just ask the Taliban, which eventually learned the frenemy of my enemy is my new best friend.

Under a COFA framework, Greenland could achieve full sovereignty and a seat at the UN, while granting the USA exclusive and perpetual military basing rights and a mandate over its external defense (powers America largely has already, through its bilateral defense treaty with Denmark, its leadership role at NATO, and its predominance at NORAD). 

This would solve Greenland’s security dilemma and inject massive American infrastructure investment into its domestic economy, replacing Danish financial dependence with American strategic partnership.

With a secure, America-protected Greenland established, the second phase of Inuit unification can begin: with its sovereign expansion and integration of Nunavut. Nunavut’s current status within Canada limits its economic autonomy and binds its security to Ottawa’s chronically underfunded, albeit newly reaffirmed, Arctic defense efforts. To break free of its stagnation, Nunavut could exercise its right to self-determination, secede from Canada, and merge with a newly independent Greenland to form a unified greater Inuit state.

This expanded Inuit state could logically find safety under a COFA negotiated by Greenland, and once Ottawa came to accept Nunavut’s secession, all parties could amicably remain part of reimagined NORAD. For Washington, extending its Greenland defense umbrella over Nunavut is logical and efficient. It would create a contiguous, secure North American Arctic buffer, streamlining continental defense under a single, unified command structure. 

For Inuit, it rejoins families, ecosystems, and resources separated for generations by western cartography. Nunavut could offer Greenland its distinct, multilevel governance model wedding its three decade-long settled Indigenous land claim treaty with its quarter-century of territorial self-governance, deftly balancing tradition and modernity. This would be transformative.

Critics may argue that trading Canadian or Danish oversight for an American protectorate merely swaps one master for another. But this misunderstands the nature of modern protectorates, such as Palau and the Marshall Islands. Under a COFA, an Inuit state would retain complete domestic sovereignty, cultural autonomy, and control over its natural resources while leveraging its new economic and educational links to America. The United States would handle the financial and logistical burden of defense, leaving the Inuit free to govern their homeland.

On the upcoming 21st day of June, a day infused with so much symbolic meaning across the North, we cannot forget that the Arctic is melting, and that a geopolitical scramble for its resources is accelerating. The status quo leaves the Inuit homeland divided, and exposed to global power struggles. On this year’s National Indigenous Peoples Day, let us look beyond symbolic recognition. 

A sovereign Inuit state, anchored by Greenland, expanded by Nunavut, and shielded by American power, is neither a radical nor imperial fantasy. It is instead a realistic pathway to enduring Arctic autonomy, and a true Inuit sovereign restoration.

An Arctic Deal of the Century: Why It’s Time to Liberate Greenland

Barry Scott Zellen, PhD Liberty , , , , , ,
The old way of running the world is broken. For decades, Washington politicians sat back while China bought up global supply chains and Russia re-militarized its frontiers from Eastern Europe to the High North. European empires faded long ago, yet Copenhagen continues to hold onto Greenland — a massive landmass forty times its size — relying on outdated colonial attitudes and hierarchies that hold the Greenlandic people back from their true potential.

When President Donald J. Trump first spoke about acquiring Greenland years ago, the media laughed. They couldn’t see the big picture. Just as the critics of 1867 mocked “Seward’s Folly” before Alaska proved to be a geopolitical masterstroke, the establishment failed to understand Trump’s profound Sewardian vision. They didn’t comprehend the vast, untapped wealth under the ice or the incredible strategic value of that geography.

Today, the world increaingly sees that Trump was entirely right. But we aren’t looking to buy islands anymore. We are looking to make deals that unleash freedom and secure the western hemisphere. It’s time to execute a modern Sewardian breakthrough. It’s time for a new Arctic North American vision. It’s time for a sovereign, independent Greenland.

True sovereignty requires economic strength. Right now, Greenland is trapped in a cycle of financial dependence, relying on Denmark to fund half its public budget. Yet this dependency is not an accident; it’s the direct byproduct of a shameful legacy of Danish colonial oppression. For generations, Copenhagen enforced policies of forced assimilation and cultural erasure that amounted to a form of cultural genocide against the native Greenlandic population.

This urban engineering was epitomized by the infamous ⁠Blok P, built in Nuuk in 1966. This massive, soulless concrete monolith housed (imprisoned) roughly one percent of the island’s population, tearing Inuit families away from their traditional hunting communities and packing them into cramped quarters utterly alien to their way of life. Though the toxic, asbestos-ridden structure was mercifully demolished in 2012, its architectural ghost remains a symbol of top-down dislocation that fractured the social fabric of the island and suppressed Inuit language and identity before the era of Home Rule (1979), and later Self-Rule (2009), began.

Nowhere is this dark history clearer than in the horrifying “Spiral Case” (Spiralkampagnen), where Danish authorities fitted thousands of Inuit women and girls with intrauterine devices without their consent or knowledge in a calculated effort to suppress the Greenlandic birth rate. Copenhagen’s recent official apology comes too late and rings too hollow — a classic, half-hearted “sorry, not sorry” political gesture — to undo decades of systemic trauma.

Greenland’s deep-seated, manufactured dependency blocks the world’s largest island from fully healing and independently stepping onto the world stage. Meanwhile, American technology, defense and resource companies stand ready to invest billions of dollars to responsibly extract Greenland’s massive deposits of critical minerals and rare earth elements. These are the exact materials we need to build our future, power our military, and eliminate our supply chain dependence on China.

We have a proven American blueprint for this exact kind of success, showing that resource development does not require cultural destruction. Look at how we empowered our own northernmost citizens: the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) unleashed a wave of historic business innovation by creating highly successful native corporations that transformed the regional economy. A decade later, the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) legally protected and preserved vital Indigenous hunting, fishing, and subsistence traditions.

By channeling the same forward-thinking statecraft that defined the Alaska purchase and its subsequent economic model, we can do the exact same thing for Greenland — combining native-owned, local and regional corporate economic engines with ironclad protections for ancestral ways of life. Further, by negotiating a Compact of Free Association (COFA), Greenland and America can create a win-win partnership built for the 2020s — 55 years after ANCSA, nearly 160 years after Seward’s prescient Alaska purchase, and a full 250 years since the founding of our beloved republic.

Under such a deal, Greenland will gain total domestic independence, and Greenlanders will keep their culture, their land, their flag, and their distinct identity. In return, the United States military will provide an ironclad security guarantee, installing an advanced aerospace missile shield — Golden Dome — to protect our shared northern skies from hostile powers, boldly continuing a tradition of innovative Arctic megaprojects in defense of our mutual security established in the 1950s by the DEW Line and its Greenland extension, the DYE stations.

This isn’t about empire building; it’s about empire breaking. We’re offering Greenlanders a seat at the table, as partners, fulfilling our bold vision for continental security. Our allies in Europe and our neighbors in Canada have nothing to fear from a free Nuuk: a secure, self-funded, independent Greenland will act as a permanent anchor of peace and stability in the global North.

It’s a smart deal, a beautiful deal, and a necessary deal for our national and hemispheric security. And with it, the era of Arctic neglect will be officially over — at long last.

Casual Empiricism: USPS

Rick Weber Current Events, Economics, Politics , , , ,

It looks to me (as I refresh tracking numbers) that the post office is still reeling after several months of attempted voter suppression. It also looks to me like even though Trump is on his way out, there is no reason to believe that someone just as terrible couldn’t come along at any point in the next 50 years and outdo him.

As far as the USPS goes I think there’s a fairly simple solution that should make most people happy: split the USPS in two: a private for-profit firm that delivers junk mail and competes with UPS and Amazon, and a government agency that handles government business including things like distributing ballots and census surveys.

But the USPS is just one small part of a much larger problem. When the Trump II comes along, he’ll have more powers, including (very likely) a lot more power to mess with the health care sector. There are a lot of reasons I don’t like the idea of more government in health care, but this one should be terrifying to everyone.

Real Decision Rights Theory and Political Coalitions

Rick Weber Comments, Economics, Law, Liberty, Philosophy, Politics , , , , , ,

Libertarians understand these two big ideas:

  1. A system of individual rights can allow widespread cooperation and human flourishing.
  2. The world is full of emergent orders, like markets, with aggregate outcomes that are more than the sum of their parts.

But commitment to the first idea often blinds us to the full implications of the second.

Complex adaptive systems involve an infinity of illegible signals involving cooperation and competition in networks so complex that it would be impossible to replicate their success in any conceivable top-down system. The market is a discovery procedure. But the “it” that is the market is a collective thing. It’s a jointly produced phenomenon and it’s impossible to split it up without fundamentally changing it.

Likewise, a system of rights (including the rights underlying a functioning market) is a jointly produced common good.

Why does it mean anything to say that I own my laptop? Because when push comes to shove (if I’m willing to shove hard enough), other members of my community are willing to act in ways (formal and informal) that enforce my property right. (Interesting aside: If I reported my laptop stolen to the local police, they wouldn’t do anything about it. Perhaps this reflects the median voter’s level of regard for other people’s property rights…)

Ownership is not as simple as “I own this piece of property, period.” Instead, to own something is to have some bundle of rights to make particular decisions. I can decide what to plant in my garden, but I can’t decide to build a nuclear reactor in my front yard. I don’t need to go through some elaborate chain of natural rights reasoning to argue that your negative right to avoid externalities supersedes my positive right to do a thing. Doing so might be a useful exercise to see how (in)consistent our ruleset is. But the real system is much simpler (and much more ad hoc). Rights are as rights are enforced.

What am I driving at here? First, that we should be dealing with property decision rights as they are more than we deal with them as they ought to be. Second, individual rights require collective support. This puts constraints on how we move towards our Utopias.

Debating/convincing our intellectual opponents is necessary, but it’s really just a negotiation tactic. Discounting idiotic opponents is reasonable in the intellectual sphere, but we can’t just overlook the fact that those opponents are part of the environment we’re trying to shape. We don’t necessarily have to throw them a bone, but when we don’t make some group part of our coalition, we have to expect someone else will.

Our normative theories will convince us that group A can’t make group B’s lives worse for the sake of A’s ego. But if A perceives the subjective value of that ego boost to be high enough, and if A has the relevant rights, then B had better look out.

Improving the world isn’t simply a matter of making the right arguments well. We have to be entrepreneurial, and keep an eye out for how others might do the same. Political entrepreneurship means looking for the under-priced voters which is exactly what Trump did in 2016. He found a group A full of low-status voters who had been discounted by the political establishment. And because their rights to shape the collective outcome went unexercised so long, it was that much more disruptive when they were finally brought to the table. Likewise, BLM protests reveal that there is a group B that is ready to throw their weight around.

That leaves a big pile of questions. What is the cost of pride? How can we ensure people have enough dignity that they won’t want to destroy what a functioning (if imperfect) society? How do we account for potential political energy (particularly when we remember that voting is only a tiny part of political participation)?

I don’t know the answers, but I know this: we can’t escape getting our hands dirty and engaging in some political exchange. I don’t like it, but I’m not the only one deciding.

Throwing the Bums out is Insufficient

Aside Rick Weber Comments, Current Events, Politics , , , ,

It’s election season (those quite weeks between October and November three years later) which means a resurgence in political economy superstitions! A particular tempting one is the Throw the Bums Out Theory of Governance.

The theory goes like this: things are awful, awful people are in positions of power, therefore we need to get rid of those awful people.

As instincts go, it’s not the worst. But it’s Twitter level thinking. Yeah, it’s worth celebrating the regression to the mean that will be the end of Trump’s presidency. I’m looking forward to the “regular” amounts of corruption and embarrassment. But those “regular” amounts are still problematic. The lesser of two evils still sucks. The mean we’re regressing to is the real problem.

In other words: the political outcomes we get reflect the underlying political reality (give or take). As Mencken said: we get what we want good and hard. Political outcomes involve (mostly bad) luck, but Trump wasn’t some utterly random accident. He happened because enough American voters wanted that (more than the next best alternative, anyways).

Throwing the bums out is cathartic, but there’s no shortage of bums to replace them.

The problem is not the bums, it’s the system as a whole. Trump was able to screw things up so badly because we’ve set up ground rules that a) gave him the ability, and b) required more competence than he was ready or able to apply. But elections don’t choose the qualified candidates, they choose the popular candidates. And if one thing is obvious in 2020, it’s that we can’t count on magically educating our political opponents into having the enlightened views necessary for us to make sure the best candidates are always the most popular.

In the long-run, the task is to make incompetent morons less important–something I hope everyone can agree is a worthwhile goal (#neverHillary, #neverTrump). The current system means ideological tribes have to be constantly warring with each other to make sure presidential power doesn’t get into the wrong hands. Can we please agree that this is a terrible system?

We can lower the stakes. We can push power back to the state and local level (and give people an incentive to actually pay attention to local issues!). Let’s take a break from partisan entertainment–as fun as Project Lincoln is, let’s face it, they’re not convincing anyone–and get to the hard task of being a self-governing society. Let’s ask how we could set things up so we don’t have to worry about the next Clinton or Trump.

Until we change the system, we’re going to keep seeing more of the same. Let’s shift the conversation away from “that candidate’s terrible, how can we defeat them?” and towards “this setup attracts terrible candidates, how can we fix that?”!

Politics according to the Bible

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Liberty, Politics, Religion ,

Yeah, let’s go for a topic that is generally polemic. What I’m going to present here will not be exhaustive, but at least I believe it’s a fair and honest (although very breathy) treatment on the topic.

First things first, I believe that the Bible is the Word of God. I believe it was written by people (very likely all men) who were inspired by God. This means that the Bible is not their book. It’s God’s book. Also, although it was written in contexts and cultures very different from ours today, it is still true because it speaks of things that are eternal. So, with that in mind, here are some things I believe the Bible teaches on politics.

The whole Bible is a story of creation, fall, redemption and restoration. God created the World “very good”. However, man fell from this status when he sinned. Sin is to disobey God’s law or to fail to conform to it.  When the first man, Adam, sinned, we all sinned, because Adam was our federal representative. It may sound unfair that we are all punished for something that someone else did, but students of politics shouldn’t be surprised. We suffer (or benefit) from things we didn’t do all the time. In this particular case, God chose Adam as humanity’s representative. God is just. It was a just choice. After Adam fell, Jesus became the federal representative of a part of humanity that God decided to save. This is the “redemption”. The restoration is God reversing the effects of the fall through the church.

The whole Bible story can be summarized as “kingdom through covenant”. A covenant is a solemn agreement between at least two (not necessarily equal) parties, involving promises and sanctions. God made a covenant with Adam. Adam broke that covenant. God made a covenant with Jesus. Jesus fulfilled the covenant. By fulfilling it, Jesus became the king of a people, the church.

Jesus’ covenant was anticipated by some covenants in what we call the Old Testament. Although the theories vary, the point is that God’s covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David somehow anticipate Jesus. This means that in the Old Testament God’s people was mostly one nation, Israel, organized as a nation-state. This nation-state had civil laws. One great mistake is to try to apply these civil laws to any state today. Israel was an anticipation of the real people of God, the church. The church is not a nation-state. It doesn’t have civil laws. Actually, Jesus repeatedly said that his kingdom was not of this world, meaning that it would not be brought by political force.

The fact that Israel was an anticipation of the true church doesn’t mean that all the laws given to Israel are irrelevant today. The moral law given in the 10 commandments is still biding. even the civil laws, although no longer bidding, can be informative. The point is that these laws cannot be enforced by any state. They have to be preached. People must be left free to join. Or not.

What the church can expect from the state? It would certainly be great to live in a country that fully conforms to God’s moral law, but this is not a realistic expectation. The best we can expect is a state that keeps people free to decide whether they want to join the church or not. Other than that, there is a moral law that we all can benefit from: don’t hurt others and don’t pick their stuff without permission.

Trying to enforce God’s kingdom was one of the greatest mistakes Christians committed through the centuries, and I believe many Christians are still doing it today. We want people to be Christians not out of their free choice, but by coercion. Or we want people to externally behave as Christians when they are not. Again: the best we can do is to let people free to decide. And meanwhile, demand that we are also free to practice our religion, no matter what other people think about it.

Relicts of the past? The current challenges for diplomacy

Alexander Albrecht Comments, Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , , , , , ,

The last few weeks were quite a blast for me: I’ve interned at the German embassy in Rome. A new job in a new city. I thought to process the experiences I made here in one (or a few?) articles.

It’s been quite a rough month for Germany’s Foreign Affairs department. First, Daniel Kriener, the German ambassador in Venezuela, was forced to leave the country after welcoming Interim President Guiadó at the airport of Caracas. Interestingly, although plenty of other diplomats joined him, he was the only one to be declared a “persona non grata” for interfering in Venezuela’s internal affairs. A few weeks later, a deputy speaker of the German Bundestag (who is also a member of the liberal party) demands to expel the US ambassador Grenell for the same offence. Prior, the US diplomat has criticized Germany’s plan to break their promise of contributing more to NATO’s defence budget. Albeit I politically agree with both actions of the diplomats in these cases, they delineate the ongoing structural changes in the diplomacy sector. To illustrate this, I will first provide a theoretical framework to analyze ongoing diplomatic challenges before trying to examine the role of diplomacy in the future.

Principal-Agent Theory and decreasing relevance

I conceive diplomacy as mostly a principal-agent based problem. I believe that many problems in diplomatic negotiations can be traced back to the classic effects of asymmetric information. Since two principals, in this case two states, cannot negotiate with each other directly in most cases, these arbitrations are carried out between various agents. Those agents are of course not always the ambassadors. In a broad meaning, one can apply the principal-agent paradigm to diplomacy by every negotiating process initiated by the state.

Through the lens of the principal-agent paradigm, I perceive the main task of diplomacy to achieve a good negotiating position, for example through an informational advantage. However, due to globalization, state-to-state diplomacy has been drastically weakened. The negotiating game is now mostly carried out within other institutions with lower transactions costs. Two countries want a new trade deal? Just orientate on WTO Rules. Sue another country? Call the International Criminal Court. A few voices made reasonable arguments even for abolishing unnecessary embassies and only keeping the crucial ones. The Trump administration, for example, seems not eagerly committed to fill the around 18 vacant ambassador positions hastily.

Certainly, the globalization combined with the expansion of robust institutions leaves little space for traditional diplomacy as a driving force in interstate relations. This is not necessarily a bad development: As Paul W. Meerts points out, this can be a huge chance for weaker states since negotiating in multilateral rather than bilateral constellations tends to weaken the position of stronger states. Thus, playing out the trump cards in negotiations will be harder for the hegemon. We can currently witness this in the Brexit debate: Even though the strong states, Germany and France, have a vast repertoire of power resources to use as leverage against GB in the negotiations, the can hardly deploy them through EU’s multipolar negotiating structure.

Contrary, there are also recent examples of deploying bilateral traditional diplomacy measures successfully. China’s initiation of Italy’s accession to the Belt Road Initiative (see Tridivesh Singh Maini’s great article here for a quick overview) is a prime example for this. But no other case shows the weaknesses of bilateral diplomacy in a more drastic way: China was able to transpose their tremendous power resources into a deal which heavily favours the Chinese economy. The very ambiguous agreement laid down a strategy of “closer economic collaboration.” The oppositional criticism of the deal coming from the very left and the right is based on economic nationalism and thus misses the important point. Chinese government exerts immense influence on key enterprises like  Tencent, Alibaba, and Badoo: Digital fundamental research topics such as AI were distributed to the firms not through competition but through the state ( I highly recommend Amy Webb’s EconTalk if you want to dig deeper into this.). Once they build sufficient digital infrastructure here in Europe, network effects and technological advantage will come into effect and engender high entry barriers and exit costs. This makes it easy for China to enforce its regulation rather than obeying European ones. Although it is hard to finally determine if multilateral negotiations would have secured a politically better deal, I favour higher short-term transaction cost of multilateral negotiations over the long-term threat showed above.

Embassies as service provider

Of course, taking care of a good interstate negotiation position is not the only task of an embassy. A popular counterargument is that the principal-agent perspective neglects the vital daily business of embassies to help their citizens abroad. Speaking of large and prestigious Embassies though, I estimate that their role as service provider for abroad living citizens will further decline. Most of their maintenance work for citizens living abroad will be redundant due to technological process and further institutionalization. Renewing a Passport, issuing visas and transporting back coffins (yep) are a frequent task, but easy to “source out” to private actors in the future.

But what is the role for ambassadors and embassies then?

This question is where it gets interesting in my opinion. Deeply rooted in international conventions and international customary law, discreet and silent work has been prerequisite for an ambassador. Carefully collecting small pieces of information and building bridges to local actors were the key for a good negotiating position. But as elaborated above, international institutions do the job more efficiently. A new role of ambassadors as advocates for concrete policy measures would be diametrically opposed to international conventions. Based upon the “legality creates legitimacy” premises, a further politicization of diplomacy seems not at present having a majority and thus is unlikely to be buttressed by legal means.

However, if we fall back into a narrative of nationalism, bilateral diplomacy will regain relevance. Otherwise, it will continue to slowly lose importance and eventually wane. Hence, the main challenge nowadays is to look for the right niche for traditional diplomacy – and it seems that it has not been found yet.

What is ‘Good’? What was Arendt pursuing?

Shree Agnihotri Liberty, Philosophy, Politics , , , , ,

Arendt is not the most consistent or coherent philosopher. Her writings display shades of sentimental as well as stoic rationality. Some might scoff at the progression of her thoughts. But the depth of her emotion is what grants her literature the luminescence that we need in times of moral darkness. The world was left waiting for what could have been a monumental work on political judgement when Arendt passed on before getting a chance to complete the final segment of The Life of Mind. The piece entitled ‘Judgement’ was left with an epigraph:

Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni.

Taken from Lucan’s Pharsalia, it translates to ‘the victorious cause pleased the gods, but the defeated one pleases Cato.’ It refers to the Roman philosopher and thinker Cato’s life and beliefs. He chose to commit suicide rather than give in to the faction he thought was ‘wrong’. Thus, what is ‘good’ would remain good even if it is defeated a hundred times. His stoicism and moral stubbornness is perhaps what Arendt wanted us to inculcate as a way of moral disciplining of the mind. But also of relevance is the presumption that there is, in fact, something good that is universal and not subject to fluctuations of regions, religion, class or caste. It is like music? Only humans have the capacity to perceive beats, melody, pitch and a number of other variables that combine to make music as we know it. Irrespective of how isolated or engaged our culture might have been with a globalized world, we carry within us the ability to differentiate good music from bad. What differs is our perception of what is happy from sad. A Balinese music for cremation might sound quite happy and serene to the uninitiated. Similarly, perhaps we possess the capacity to ascertain the ‘good’ pursuits from the bad. While culture, upbringing and circumstances of nature might affect the way we perceive the degree to which we are obligated to act upon the thus discovered moral, no (non-sociopathic) human can deny the existence of the goodness of the moral once confronted with it.

I remember asking my professor once about what he thought was that one universal value in constitutions around the world that need protection from majoritarian attempts at amendment. He answered, without blinking, equality. I knew there was something within the wide array of norms that we associate with equality that I know is a good that commands universality. However, there was enough in the substantive affirmations of equality that had room for reasonable disagreement such that as an unbiased spectator I would not be able to dismiss one side over the other. Perhaps the universal principle requires a Humean recognition or a Kantian deliberation. Either way, that it exists and is worth pursuing is an unquestionable precursor to an Arendtian enquiry into the state of things.

There are some hints as to what she might have thought definitely existed within the set (and let us treat it as a set of values/ideals/principles for nothing if not humility about the extent of our understanding and knowledge) of what is ‘good’. Political freedom features quite prominently into her thought. The freedom to participate in public affairs as equals seems to have a place of prominence for Arendt. Not so much the concept of equality extended to realms outside the political. We are not born equal and cannot and should not try to find a natural occurrence of equality for that would require an unjust comparison of the distinctions and characteristics that distinguish individuals. The last blog post talked about Arendt’s insistence on separating the political from social and personal realms. While identity politics is often engaged to make a case for equality, and Arendt had nothing against the ideal of equality, she believed that it is in the political realm that we needed to affirm the ideal of equality most vehemently and zealously. This is because it affects directly our participation in the political which in turn affects everything about our existence in the world.

A better way to read Arendt is to go meta-psychological on her. Perhaps one of the ‘good’  values within the set is a form of communicative rationality, the desire and pursuance of a method of thinking representatively. And perhaps, just as liberation is a necessary precursor to freedom, so is the engagement of Arendtian judgment to finding that which is ‘good’.

The Shelf Life of the Self: Arendt on Identity Politics

Shree Agnihotri Liberty, Philosophy, Politics , , ,

Demands for separating one’s public and private identities are neither new nor simple. As the argument goes, many a political philosopher have claimed that to engage in worthwhile and productive politics, we must shed our private identities to better see, so to speak, the concerns that need a more universal outlook. Thus, to better communicate and deliberate upon political questions within a polity, say a nation, the citizens need to view themselves as citizens alone sans any group affiliation based on gender, religion, race and caste. This is not to snub the importance of social identities in general but only in so far as they affect our political judgement. On the other hand, the response to such a proposal has predictably highlighted the benefits, both political and moral, that one’s private identity has on their political participation. After all, the walls between the identities are not quite as impervious to each other as the philosophers are making it to be. Our individual selves are more than just a simple addition of our social, cultural and personal experiences. How we think about political dilemmas is often and quite rightly influenced by what we anticipate from a rival social group. A female advocating the freedom to make reproductive choices is not just assessing the positions of the stakeholders involved, as Arendt’s call for ‘enlarged mentality’ would require of her. The said female also has to keep in mind the gender hierarchies at play around her.

Arendt was famously non-feminist. She believed that the transposition of the private and the social identities into our political identities can destroy the very fabric of political communication and thus, political judgement. To resolve political dilemmas facing our society, Arendt believed we needed the exact opposite of what identity politics has to offer. Our private and social selves come with a shelf life. They end where the political begins. According to Arendt, the politicization of personal and social identities brings to the fore a self-defined and accepted discrimination that takes us away from the equality that politics demands of us. To think representatively, we need to not only be treated as but also feel like political equals.

While identity politics does well to highlight a history of suppression, it also contributes to a further strengthening of political cleavages that prevent us from ever going back to the ideal state that was disturbed by the suppression. Identity politics causes harm to inter-sectionalities because it forces us to choose between conflicting identities. But more importantly, it conflates the many dimensions of our self with the identity that we have thus chosen to speak through, politically. This conflation results in a demonization of everything that does not conform to our sense of identity, resulting in a fear of the unknown (of which Martha Nussbaum has talked about in the Monarchy of Fear). In the creation of this battleground, we forget that the other side is human. Just like us. And it is easy to not think about our moral obligations to each other when the enemy has been dehumanized and reduced to a label.

Arendt on identity politics deserves much greater scrutiny. Especially because of the overwhelming reliance of social cleavages but current political leaders. The era of identity politics has given us a society with walls that mask themselves as political ideologies but are nothing more than a refusal to recognize that the other side is human too. An essential step in Arendtian judgement is to accept the inherent and equal worth of each individual, irrespective of their social identity. We would do well to find common grounds in our humanity, first.

2018 Hayek Essay Contest

Edwin van de Haar Books, Current Events, Economics, History, Law, Liberty, Philosophy, Religion , , ,

The 2018 General Meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society will take place from September 30 – October 6, 2018 at ExpoMeloneras and Lopesan Hotels in Meloneras, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands. As with past general meetings, the Mont Pelerin Society is currently soliciting submissions for Friedrich A. Hayek Fellowships. The fellowships will be awarded through the Hayek Essay Contest.

The Hayek Essay Contest is open to all individuals 36 years old or younger. Entrants should write a 5,000 word (maximum) essay that addresses the quotation(s) and question(s) detailed on the contest announcement (available at the above link). The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2018. The winners will be announced on July 31, 2018. Essays must be submitted in English only. Electronic submissions should be sent in PDF format to this email address (mps.youngscholars@ttu.edu). Authors of winning essays must present their papers at the General Meeting to receive their award. The essays will be judged by an international panel of three members of the Society.

Please feel free to share this announcement with any individuals who may have an interest in submitting an essay for consideration of a fellowship award. All questions may be directed to the MPS Young Scholars Program Committee by email at mps.youngscholars@ttu.edu or phone at +1.806.742.7138.

MPS Young Scholars Program Committee

A feast of classical liberal thought: Mont Pelerin Society in Stockholm

Edwin van de Haar Comments, Current Events, History, Law, Liberty, Philosophy , , ,

Last week, Stockholm hosted a special meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) on the populist threats to the free society. MPS meetings are held under Chatham House rules, which means I cannot report in any detail about the proceedings. Yet a few impressions can be shared.

I have been a MPS member since 2010, when my nomination was accepted at the end of the general meeting in Sydney. In those days the old rules still applied, which meant you had to attend three meetings before you could be nominated for membership. However, this strict rule led to the erosion of the membership base (the MPS was literally starving out), so the rules to join as a member have been made easier.

My first MPS meeting was in Guatemala City, in 2006. I had participated in the essay contest for young scholars which is always organized in the run-up to the bi-annual General Meetings. As a runner-up I won free entry to the meeting. I happened to be in the south of the USA in the weeks before, doing PhD research at the Mises Institute in Alabama, so could easily make the trip to Central America. Because I lived in Manila during those years, I could also easily attend the 2008 meeting in Tokyo.

I had are number of reasons for wanting to join the MPS. First of all, the quality of the meetings offer a great chance to listen to and speak with the leading scholars within current classical liberalism. Increasingly multidisciplinary (back in the old days the economists dominated), the programme committees of the MPS Meetings always succeed in attracting an impressive crowd of high quality speakers and commentators from across the globe. I always find this a great intellectual treat. Second, the meetings are characterized by extremely pleasant and open atmospheres. Everybody mingles with everybody, you can talk with everybody, no matter your age, or academic background. Thirdly, the meetings take place across the globe, so they offer a great opportunity to travel and see places. Although it must be added that even when you do not stay at the conference hotel, the meetings are never very cheap, so it remains an investment. Fourth, for a Hayekian like myself, it feels very good to be a member of the society founded by the master himself, which had and has such an illustrious membership, ever since its beginnings 70 years ago.

Besides the big one week General Meetings held every two years, there are shorter regional or special meetings in the other years. Last week’s MPS meeting in Stockholm was a special meeting, very well-organized by the Ratio Institute. The theme was discussed from numerous angles, through sessions on Russia’s foreign policy, the economic issue of secular stagnation, or the danger of political Islamism. Two sessions were focused on new classical liberal ideas to counter the threats. At the opening day there was a session for young scholars to present papers. This was of course also a way to attract new talent and interest in the MPS. And at the end of the second day there was something different: beer tasting while listening to Johan Norberg. A rather splendid combination!

The speakers and commentators were high level, including MPS chair Peter Boettke (George Mason), David Schmidtz (Arizona), Deirdre McCloskey (Illinois), John Tomasi (Brown), Leszek Balcerowic (former president of Poland’s Central Bank), Russia specialist Anders Aslund, German thinker Karen Horn, Jacob Levy (McGill), Mark Pennington (Kings College London), Paul Cliteur (Leiden), Amigai Magen (Hoover Institution), and the energetic Ralf Bader (Oxford). A lineup like this guarantees a number of new insights, solid arguments, and general intellectual stimulus. Many answers were provided, yet in true academic fashion, many questions remain.

While well represented in this program, International Relations are normally a minor topic at MPS meetings, and there are not many IR scholars around (nor are sociologists or legal scholars, by the way). Personally I am convinced that the future appeal of classical liberal thought also relies on taking into account world affairs. So there is a need to keep on writing and publishing about it, to expand the basis for thought, also in the MPS. To hear about the concerns and insights of other classical liberals in other disciplines helps my thought process, besides remaining up to speed with current classical liberal issues in general.

So it was a great meeting again, And for all you young scholars out there: if you are interested make sure to regularly check the MPS website (www.montpelerin.org) to see if there are opportunities to participate in one of the upcoming meetings.

The Asian Age

Edwin van de Haar Books, Current Events, Economics, Liberty , , , , , ,

I love Asia. Ever since my student days I have had a keen interest in South East Asia and China, with my course on the Politics of the Asia Pacific at the London School of Economics in the run up to the handover of Hong Kong as a high point. This was followed almost a decade later with four years of living in Manila, with time spend as a freelance journalist covering Philippine politics and society, as well as teaching for three years at the European Studies Program at the elitist Ateneo de Manila University. I also had the opportunity to travel to almost all countries in the region (with the notable exceptions of Laos, Taiwan and the Koreas, but one should keep something to be desired). I admire the resilience of the Asians, their humour, great work ethics, the beauty of their countries, and of course their sumptuous food.

As a classical liberal I always have a keen interest in the economic developments of the region, which to me serve as the prime evidence for the great and positive impacts freeing up economies have. The rise of Asia in essence is the empirical proof that classical liberal ideas work, that capitalism has the capacity to improve the life of millions of people, in a very short term. This despite the imperfect implementation of capitalism throughout the region, so there is much room for further improvement. In this light it is also interesting to see how long economic freedom and political lack of freedom can co-exist. Classical liberal ideas predict, most clearly expressed by Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom, that one follows the other. Economic and political freedom cannot be separated forever (nor forever suppressed together, as the experiences in the former Soviet bloc continue to make clear, even despite Putin’s increasing autocratic rule).

For an international relations observer from Europe, the developments in the Asia Pacific are of particular interest, because the rise of Asia seems to go together with the fall of Europe as a geopolitical player. Or more precisely: the fall of the middle rank European powers, as the European Union itself is a significant player in trade politics only, the only field where it represents all member states and policy is determined at the European level, with a leading role for the European Commission.

The recent book Easternisation: War and Peace in the Asian Century, by Financial Times journalist Gideon Rachman, deals precisely with this issue.

blog-easternisation

It is a great book, bringing together Rachman’s extensive experience in the US, Asia, and Brussels. Often, books written by journalists lack sound analysis for the mid to long term, and historical perspective. While Easternisation is not an academic tome either, it does provide sufficient deep analysis, especially by tackling developments in all important countries which play a role in the process. It is not just another volume of simply USA or EU bashing, as we have seen before with the huge literature on the alleged Japanese take-over of the US economy.

Rachman’s main argument is that the influence of the West, Europe in particular, has crumbled. This may lead to a major conflict in the Asia Pacific, most notably between China and the US, which also endangers the global economic order. Yet many other conflicts are also building up, in a region which heavily invests in armaments. In short, in the 21st century, ‘rivalries between the nations in the Asia Pacific will shape global politics, just as the struggles between European nations shaped world affairs for over 500 years from 1500 onwards’. I think this is an important message, which should be taken seriously by everybody. Certainly by the Europeans, who are in danger of just inhabiting the world’s largest open air museum within a few decades.  One thing is certain: the Asians will not wait for them to come to terms with the current shift of power.