The world’s most expensive ski resort has once again become the backdrop for a performance of such profound geopolitical vulgarity that one can almost hear the ghost of Metternich weeping into his schnapps. Donald Trump, arriving via the obligatory swarm of helicopters—because nothing says 'climate concern' like a localized jet-fuel fog—has decided that the Arctic is less a fragile ecosystem and more a fixer-upper with great potential for a golf course. The setting, of course, is Davos, that annual ritual where the world’s elite gather to congratulate themselves on their own existence while the rest of the planet burns, or in Greenland’s case, melts. It is the perfect stage for the latest act in this tragicomic theater: the attempted acquisition of an entire territory as if it were a distressed hotel property in Atlantic City.

The proposition is as straightforward as it is exhausting: the United States would like to acquire Greenland. Immediately. Please pull the car around and sign the title. It is the diplomatic equivalent of a man walking into a museum and asking the curator how much for the floorboards. There is a specific kind of American audacity, a blend of real estate hubris and historical amnesia, that views the map of the world not as a collection of sovereign entities with pesky things like 'history' or 'peoples,' but as a listing on a particularly cold Zillow page. The demand for 'immediate negotiations' suggests a man who has spent too much time in boardrooms and not enough time reading a map, or perhaps he simply recognizes that in the current global climate, borders are merely suggestions for those with enough leverage.

Denmark, naturally, is playing the role of the bewildered homeowner who wasn't aware their lawn was up for auction. The Prime Minister’s repeated 'not for sale' should be a period at the end of a sentence, but in the Davos theater, it’s merely a starting bid for the persistent. Trump’s insistence that he won’t 'use force' is perhaps the most deliciously ironic part of the entire ordeal. It is the gentleness of a shark promising not to bite while its jaws are already encircling the surfboard. We are meant to be relieved, I suppose, that the 82nd Airborne isn’t currently parachuting onto the ice sheet to plant a golden flag. Instead, we have 'negotiations'—the slow, grinding pressure of the world’s largest economy leaning its shoulder against a small Scandinavian door. It is soft-power imperialism with the subtlety of a sledgehammer wrapped in a silk tie.

One must admire the sheer lack of subtext. Usually, imperialist expansion is dressed up in the tattered rags of 'spreading democracy' or 'security interests.' Here, it is nakedly transactional. The Arctic is melting, the Northwest Passage is opening, and the mineral wealth beneath the permafrost is finally becoming accessible to those with enough capital to ignore the rising sea levels. It is the ultimate 'I told you so' for those of us who have long argued that the veneer of international law is about as thick as the ice currently disappearing from Disko Bay. The global order is not a system of values; it is a liquidation sale, and the United States has decided it wants the biggest item on the shelf before China or Russia can reach for their wallets.

The irony of doing this at Davos is not lost on anyone with a functioning sense of the macabre. Here, the global elite gather to discuss 'sustainability' and 'stakeholder capitalism' over bite-sized canapés, while the leader of the free world tries to buy a massive chunk of another country to ensure his successor has a place to drill for the very carbon that is destroying the venue. It is a loop of stupidity so perfect it borders on the divine. The European reaction—a mixture of polite horror and frantic consultation of treaty law—is equally predictable. We cling to our protocols like a Victorian widow clutching her pearls at a tavern brawl. We believe that because we have rules, because we have the Kingdom of Denmark and the sanctity of borders, the real estate mogul will eventually get bored and go home. But we forget that the mogul doesn't need to win the argument; he only needs to exhaust the audience.

Greenland, meanwhile, remains an abstraction to these men. It is not a place where people live, where cultures exist, or where the environment is signaling a planetary emergency. To the Davos crowd, it is a strategic asset, a chess piece, or a very large ice cube in a very warm drink. The 'immediate' nature of the demand reflects the frantic pace of a world that knows the clock is ticking, but rather than stopping the clock, it simply wants to own the gears. As the helicopters roar back into the sky, leaving the Swiss peaks to their subsidized silence, the message remains clear: everything is for sale if the buyer is loud enough. The tragedy isn't that a President wants to buy an island; the tragedy is that we are still surprised by the blatant commodification of the earth. We are watching the final act of a very long, very expensive play where the actors have forgotten their lines and have started haggling over the set pieces before the curtain falls for good.