The fable was supposed to be a criticism. Read it again.
Timothy Snyder, the Yale historian, published a fable about Greenland this weekend. He intended it as criticism of the administration’s posture. I read it twice. He has accidentally made the strongest case for strategic clarity I have seen from an academic.
Let me explain what Snyder actually revealed, because I do not think he understands what he wrote.
The Facts He Admits
Snyder confirms what serious analysts have known for decades. The United States has maintained a military presence at Pituffik, Greenland, since 1951. We currently station approximately two hundred troops there. During the Cold War, we stationed thousands. American companies can sign contracts for Greenland’s natural resources. The Danes, Snyder writes, “readily agreed” to our presence when we determined we had “urgent need” of the site for nuclear defense.
Read that again. When America demonstrated urgent need and the will to act, Denmark readily agreed.
Snyder intends this as evidence that we already have what we need through alliance cooperation. I read it differently. I read it as evidence that clarity of purpose produces results. The Danes agreed in 1951 because American leadership was unambiguous. We knew what we needed. We said so. They responded.
What has changed since 1951 is not Danish willingness. What has changed is American clarity.
The Fable Problem
Snyder tells a story about a “mad stamp collector” who borrows a stamp collection from a neighbor, keeps it for decades, then breaks into the neighbor’s house to demand ownership. The moral, as Snyder sees it, is that the collector destroyed the cooperative relationship that gave him access in the first place.
I have written about Greenland’s strategic importance before. The fable misunderstands the situation entirely.
Borrowing is not the same as possessing. Access is not the same as control. A neighbor who loans you something can take it back. A neighbor who changes his mind, or comes under pressure from other neighbors, or decides he no longer likes you, can revoke the loan. This is not paranoia. This is strategic reality.
Snyder asks why we would want to own what we can borrow. I ask why we would depend on borrowing what we could own. The answer reveals the difference between an academic and someone who thinks about security.
The NATO Question
Snyder argues that threatening Denmark threatens NATO itself. “If the NATO alliance ceases to exist,” he writes, “then Greenland immediately becomes much less secure—and, for that matter, so does every other member of the alliance, including the United States.”
This is presented as an argument against the administration’s posture. I read it as an argument for it.
If NATO cannot survive a direct conversation about strategic priorities, then NATO is weaker than its defenders claim. If our allies cannot tolerate American clarity about American interests, then the alliance is built on a foundation of polite ambiguity rather than genuine partnership. Genuine partners have difficult conversations. They do not collapse when one partner states what he needs.
Snyder mentions, almost as an aside, that we could “ask the Danes to build another base on another part of the island.” We could ask. We have been asking. Asking is what weakness does. At some point, you stop asking and you start telling. That is not madness. That is leadership.
What The Fable Actually Shows
Snyder’s stamp collector is meant to represent pathology. A man so obsessed with possession that he destroys the relationships that gave him access. But consider the story from another angle.
The stamp collector had the stamps for decades. He kept them, maintained them, probably cared for them better than the original owner would have. And yet, at any moment, the neighbor could have demanded them back. The collector lived for decades in a state of dependency, his access contingent on another man’s goodwill.
One night he decided that dependency was intolerable. He decided that what he had maintained for decades should be his. Snyder calls this madness. I call it the recognition that borrowing is not the same as having.
The neighbor, in Snyder’s telling, is shocked and offended. The neighborhood turns against the collector. But the collector now has what he needs, and he no longer depends on anyone’s permission to keep it.
Snyder writes that the collector “has nothing except for his madness.” I would put it differently. The collector has the stamps. He has clarity about what belongs to him. He has freed himself from the anxiety of dependency.
That is not madness. That is sovereignty.
Snyder, like most academics, cannot distinguish between cooperation and dependency. He cannot see that an alliance which requires permanent American deference is not an alliance at all. He tells a fable meant to illustrate pathology and instead illustrates the psychology of a nation that has remembered what strength looks like.
The timeline on Arctic security is not infinite. The Russians are building icebreakers. The Chinese are watching. And a Yale historian is telling us that wanting to own strategic territory is a form of mental illness.
I respectfully disagree.
About the Author
