Thread by @johnkonrad

Can we pause the Greenland noise for one second and admit the obvious?

Denmark isn’t sovereign anymore it’s in lockstep with @Maersk.

The UN @IMOHQ is run by NGOs.

Maersk and the UN @IMOHQ are in lockstep with China.

Here’s the history 🧵

In practice, its government moves in near-lockstep with @Maersk—the world’s largest logistics empire.

Not officially.
Not on paper.
But in outcomes, incentives, and red lines.

Here’s how we got here.

Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940.

The King stayed. He became a symbol of quiet national continuity.

But Denmark had no army to celebrate. No Normandy. No Stalingrad.

What it did have was a merchant fleet at sea, one of the largest in the world, which joined the Allied cause. Danish sailors carried fuel, food, and munitions under Allied control while their homeland was under German occupation.

They were 💯 critical to allies success.

Over a thousand Danish merchant sailors died while serving with the Allies

Those sailors became Denmark’s war heroes.

And that mattered.

It meant that after the war, shipping companies that fought with the allies had enormous political legitimacy in Denmark in a way the U.S. Merchant Marine never did in America.

After WWII, Truman created the Department of Defense and removed the Secretary of the Navy from the Cabinet.

The Navy responded by consolidating all budget and political power around warships.

They viewed:
•The U.S. Merchant Marine
•The U.S. Coast Guard
•And even the U.S. Marine Corps

as competitors for funding.

The USMC survived only because it had veterans in Congress.

The Merchant Marine and Coast Guard did not.

FDR had promised Merchant Mariners full veterans’ status.
The Navy fought it.
They also blocked recognition of Allied merchant mariners.

Why?

Because if Merchant Mariners were “civilians,” not “military veterans” the Navy could funnel all prestige, propaganda, and money into battleships and carriers.

That decision gutted America’s commercial fleet.

Then Washington sold off the massive wartime merchant fleet for pennies with the Navy’s full support.

European companies, especially Maersk, bought it with free money from the Marshall Plan

In 1949 Denmark joined NATO—but grudgingly.

The treatment of merchant sailors (their heroes) left a deep bitterness toward U.S. military dominance. Denmark became NATO’s most skeptical member:
•Opposed the Korean War
•Opposed Vietnam
•Banned nuclear weapons on Danish soil
•Prioritized diplomacy over force

They became known as “the footnote state”—agreeing to NATO statements but caveating them in practice.

Denmark believed diplomacy would win the Cold War but Reagan believed naval supremacy would bankrupt the USSR.

He was right.

But to build a 600-ship Navy, he pushed U.S. shipyards to abandon merchant ships and build warships instead.

That crippled Sea-Land America’s flagship container line and the company that invented containerization.

It greatly benefited companies like Maersk in nations that greatly subsidized commercial shipbuilding

When Sea-Land collapsed because DC turned its back on subsides (and major mismanagement by its tobacco-company owner RJ Reynolds), Maersk acquired it, along with its massive U.S. military contracts,

It promised the DoD to invest in 🇺🇸logistics ships for U.S. defense.

From then on:
•The Pentagon got cheap logistics
•Maersk got global dominance
•Denmark got leverage over the military which has enormous leverage in congress

Because Maersk now had the majority of @US_TRANSCOM contracts and 🇺🇸 containerships the United States could not fight a war without its help.

Department of Defense became utterly reliant on Maersk and vis-a-vis Denmark

But Maersk profited enormously by globalization which they, via their strong US military ties and lobbying via unions and NGOs like the World Shipping Council.

And Danes in NATO, backed globalization too.

And they got the media to ignore shipping so nobody noticed.

And the globalists stamped out or throttled any 🇺🇸 maritime publication like @gCaptain via tools like banning press past to the UN and blacklisting us on Wikipedia (which social media used to throttle us)

gcaptain.com/day-seafarer-c…

Then Trump was elected and Denmark is progressive and felt disgusted by his administration.

Further Trump’s commerce secretary was a ship owner and knew all about the games Maersk played.

We spiraled into chaos as the Dems and Republicans fought each other at every turn

The Danes are very smart and realized Biden’s plans would fail.

They assessed that the US was a lost cause,

They needed a new best friend.

Then COVID Made Maersk a Financial Superpower

During COVID:
•Port congestion
•Stimulus spending
•Consumer panic

sent freight rates into the stratosphere.

Maersk printed billions in cash.

At the same time:
•Companies began exiting China
•Beijing panicked
•China turbo boosted subsidies but few companies took them

Maersk doubled down in China, building terminals, warehouses, and fleet with the CCPs subsidies and help at rock bottom prices. gcaptain.com/maersk-ceo-cle…

Problem was all their competitors were also raking in billions and the COVID boom was ending

The container lines were now in a knife fight:
•Maersk
•MSC
•CMA-CGM
•COSCO
•ONE

So they made a deal:
Stop competing. Divide the world into trade lanes. Create monopolies.

The problem?

When the US created the post war rules based order they gave the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission @FMC_gov enormous power to break global shipping cartels.

So Denmark and the EU pushed climate regulation instead.

The plan:
•Make oil tankers and conventional ships impossible
•Force every company to pick a different green fuel
•China builds all the ships
•Maersk locks in methanol ports
•Routes become monopolies
•The UN @IMOHQ UN Carbon Tax on non-compliant ships

The Shanghai–Los Angeles “Carbon-Free Corridor” was the pilot.

This wasn’t environmentalism.
It was cartelization.

Trump Blew It Up

Trump killed the UN carbon tax.

Who fought him hardest?
Denmark and Canada.

Maersk still has enormous leverage over US military logistics but then Hegseth announced massive funding for the U.S. Merchant Marine.

Trump promised to “keep the ships” used in Venezuela.

Maersk lost its leverage.

Remember:

Maersk holds extraordinary influence over the Danish government

Denmark controls Greenland.

That is the fulcrum of this entire geopolitical struggle.

The other country that fought hardest for the UN Carbon Tax was CANADA.

Why does that matter? Because Greenland only matters because Canada has failed to secure the Northeast Atlantic and Arctic missile corridor.

Nearly ICBM from China or their ally Russia aimed at the U.S. East Coast must fly over or near Canada

The Golden Dome can cover the West Coast from Alaska.

The East Coast remains exposed unless the northern corridor is sealed.

That leaves only three realistic options:
1.Canada radically increases defense spending to afford installing Golden Dome (including battleships) which it can only afford by slashing its social-welfare state
2.Canada becomes the 51st state

3. The United States takes strategic control of Greenland so Golden Dome coverage overlaps with Alaska

Those are the only ways to close the nuclear missile corridor to New York and Washington.

China opposes all three.

Beijing must preserve:
•An Arctic submarine route into the Atlantic past Greenland and Canada
•A ballistic-missile corridor to the U.S. East Coast

That makes Danish control of Greenland an ABSOLUTE strategic necessity for China.

Denmark knows how to play this game. Just as it “footnoted” NATO for decades, it will placate Washington by allowing base expansions but it will defend one absolute red line it’s had since joining NATO:
No nuclear anything on its soil.

Historically that meant no nuclear weapons but could be expanded to…

No nuclear interceptors.
No nuclear-armed subs.
No nuclear anti-submarine weapons.

And that matters because there is serious discussion that the Golden Dome may require nuclear airburst interceptors to stop Chinese ICBMs in space.

Denmark could also extend its no-nuclear doctrine to U.S. submarines transiting Danish or Greenlandic waters the very subs that would be needed to hunt Chinese SSBNs coming down from the Arctic.

Ht @navalnewscom & HI Sutton

So here is the alignment:
•China needs Greenland kept nuclear-free to preserve its strike corridor
•Maersk needs China to protect the tens of billions it invested there
•Denmark depends on Maersk for economic power and global leverage

All being backed by massive UN @IMOHQ NGO support

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ Which means Greenland isn’t governed by Copenhagen.

It’s governed by Maersk, NGOs, Canada, the United Nations and China

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ With the most weight at intersection of Maersk’s balance sheet and China’s nuclear strategy.

And that is why this fight is not about ice, climate, or sovereignty.

It is about whether the United States will be allowed to close the last open nuclear highway to New York and DC

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ Final thought: stop the “Denmark can defend Greenland” and “NATO will turn on the U.S.” fantasy.

Denmark sent its most powerful frigate to the Red Sea and it suffered a total weapons failure against the Houthis. 👇

gcaptain.com/danish-frigate…

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ And even if it was possible to trigger NATO Article 5 against the United States (it’s not) they really couldn’t do much to stop the US if they tried 👇

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ And now you know why out everyone in new pentagon press corps - including BIG names like @LauraLoomer @mattgaetz @JackPosobiec @BreannaMorello - CNN’s @halbritz and @drewharwell, zeroed in on me for this big Washington Post hit job to get the ship guy discredited and kicked out:

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ @LauraLoomer @mattgaetz @JackPosobiec @BreannaMorello @halbritz @drewharwell Thank you all for sharing this thread!

If you want to stay informed of the truth behind shipping please go follow @gCaptain and hit the bell icon

If you want to dive deeper into the strange history of @Maersk then go read my article here: gcaptain.com/day-seafarer-c…