DAVOS AND GREENLAND A useful framing for this year’s Davos is that it is a 🏴‍☠️ “parley” 🏴‍☠️ between the capital owning “pirates” of International finance and the new sovereign powers who will no longer tolerate making concessions to those who plunder their systems. The former have historically maintained power by integrating sovereign power into their systems at the elite level via the pretence of making tolerable accommodations (e.g. ESG). But ESG didn’t work for those left behind by the system on Western turf. They were the ones funding the concessions that empowered the rise of the new global power elite. When one of those grifting elites unexpectedly switched sides in 2016 to become a champion for such disgruntled elements not only did it break the pirate code system (articles of agreement/rules based order), it threatened to destabilise the grift for all elites. The war between sovereign populist power and international capital began at that point. Any focus on Trump’s personal grift is a distraction from this fact, as it ignores that grift (also known as rent extraction) is a pervasive and common phenomenon across the entire elite system. Since the old elites snubbed the op to negotiate new grift allocation terms under the Mar-a-Lago framing (not neutral ground), it is a significant signal that Trump is sending a large delegation to Davos. Davos is supposed to be neutral ground, yet in practice it hasn’t been such a thing for years. [That said, it may have regained some legitimacy as neutral ground after the Swiss came to Washington in 2025 to make terms.] Nonetheless, it still edges toward the historical home turf of the international piracy base. Thus, while for most people the sudden escalation over Greenland is disorientating and makes little to no sense, it very much does make sense when viewed from a historical statecraft perspective. Especially vis a vis piracy systems. Think Barbary wars. Historically, no sovereigns gets anything from a parley without demonstrating a major show of force ahead of negotiations. You have to show the other side just what you are capable of in real power terms if negotiations don’t go your way. This is a well trodden historical norm. Before agreeing to talk with pirates, authorities always made sure pirates could see that force was available. Common methods included: 1) sailing warships visibly into the area. 2) Running out cannon and clearing for action. 3) Forming a blockade or partial cordon. 4) Public displays of militia or marines. This established a baseline message: “We are choosing to talk — not because we must, but because we can afford to.” Without this, parley risked looking like submission. Trump has clearly chosen Greenland as the location he will display that force if it must come to it. Thus IMHO the escalation over Greenland has little to do with any of the standard narratives you are hearing about. It’s not about security. It’s not about access to rare earths. And it’s not about arctic passages. For a man obsessed with achieving global peace, it is arguably - should it come to it - the optimal battleground for determining how global power will be allocated if negotiations in Davos don’t play out. It is a remote, low population, territory where the human costs of any drawn out battle would be minimized and where a traditional power like the USG has a critical structural advantage over most other players. Greenland is a sinkhole to avoid a more costly and bloody battle elsewhere. At the same time a defeat there for any engaged power represents a Suez moment that totally reasserts the power order. In that sense Greenland finds itself at the crossroads of the key super powers who are vying for power, much the way Poland found itself in a similar position ahead of both world wars.