Early this week, a piece appeared in Foreign Affairs called “How Greenland Falls.”

It’s by Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and it’s a great piece. You should read it.

But I realize most of you won’t (read it), so here’s a one-sentence summary: The article’s a hypothetical account, told from the distant future, of how the Trump administration takes over Greenland, not through any sort of showy military maneuver or any other kind of crude display of hard power, but rather via a series of insidious machinations that become known to posterity as “geo-osmosis.”

“Decades later, the Greenland gambit would be studied as the prototype for a new form of state expansion, one that blurs the lines between consent, coercion and capitulation,” Shapiro writes. “The Trump administration showed that territory need not be seized when it can be absorbed, affirm[ing] a simple truth of 21st-century geopolitics: In the absence of coherent international resistance, norms matter little; facts on the ground suffice.”

Whether or not the Greenland drama eventually results in “absorption,” there can no longer be any doubt that Donald Trump’s very serious about annexing the island. One means by which a determined US president could go about undermining local opposition to American imperialism entails, ironically, exploiting Greenland’s inclinations to independence.

As Shapiro noted in his piece, “The island’s semiautonomous government, limited budgetary sovereignty and simmering independence movement [make] it highly susceptible to external influence.”

Greenland’s premier, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, supports a glacial (no Arctic pun intended) independence process, whereby Greenlander home rule becomes full independence in due course, which is to say when the island has the economic and institutional capacity to thrive on its own.

By most external accounts, that’s a long way off, but the US could in theory accelerate the process if Washington were to embark on an ambitious program aimed at building out the island’s infrastructure and leveraging US know-how to tap into its natural resources, all in the name of benevolence.

Denmark would have no means by which to compete with a determined US development initiative. Copenhagen sends the island about $700 million every year in the form of a subsidy. Although that’s equivalent to more than 20% of Greenland’s current GDP, it could be made to look like a pittance if the US were to spend, say, $10 billion to juice the island’s economy.

In short, Greenland and Denmark need to get out in front of this now, because when the US contractors start showing up to, as Shapiro postulated in his hypothetical, “install broadband, train local officials and build roads, small airports and health centers,” it’ll be too late.

On Tuesday, ahead of what was guaranteed to be a vexatious, farcical meeting in Washington with JD Vance and Marco Rubio, Nielsen said that “if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, then we choose Denmark.”

He was joined in Copenhagen by Mette Frederiksen who, like a lot of world leaders, has a Trump problem that may not admit of a solution short of acquiescing to The White House’s demands. “This is a fateful moment,” she said at a political event on January 11. “If the Americans are actually turning their backs on NATO cooperation by threatening an ally, then everything will stop.”

Right. And that’s why Trump really can’t invade. Sending the Marines to — and I’m laughing as I type this — storm Nuuk, population 21,000, would count among the most absurd spectacles in modern military history. (The 150 US servicemembers already stationed at the Pituffik Space Base could probably “conquer” the whole island by themselves, but they shouldn’t need to because nobody — not Denmark and not Greenland — has said “no” to anything Trump’s asked of them short of voluntary annexation. In other words: This isn’t about strategic objectives for Trump. It’s about vainglory.)

In addition to being mercilessly lampooned by every comedian on Earth, a US military adventure to occupy Greenland would be decried in Western capitals as the end of NATO and seen in Beijing and Moscow as a green light to take whatever isn’t claimed by Trump. So, that’s out. Or at least I hope so.

Assuming no invasion and assuming, rightly I think, that Trump won’t be placated on this issue, the more likely trajectory for American dominion goes through the processes Shapiro described in his January 12 piece, with the end result being, as he put it, “a sovereignty twilight” for Greenland wherein the island will still be a part of the Danish realm formally, but over time “become functionally dependent” on the US.

Of course, Trump’s on the clock here. Even if he does intend to rule until he’s no longer physically able, he’s an old man. Depending on who succeeds him, any program to absorb Greenland could be nixed immediately, so the administration has to get moving.

Nielsen and Frederiksen are fully aware that the next few months will be critical. Ostensibly, their meeting this week with Vance and Rubio is aimed at talking things out, but Trump was very clear last week. “[We’re] going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” he said. “If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland.”

(With the caveat that it’s impossible to say, with certainty, what Russia and China are or aren’t planning on doing, it’s a safe bet that the only major power currently considering an invasion of Greenland is America.)

During his Tuesday remarks, Nielsen suggested Greenlanders might do well to back-burner the independence push for the time being. “Right now is the time to stand together,” he said. “Greenland stands within the Kingdom of Denmark and stands fully united in protecting the fundamental principles.”