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Originally posted by Wezil
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The long war is coming to an end.
The National Post has learned that Canada and Denmark are apparently this close to hammering out a deal over Hans Island, the vitally important strategic chokepoint that has kept these two warrior nations on the brink of mutual annihilation for the last eight years. With a little luck and perhaps some Annan-style shuttle diplomacy, our long national nightmare might soon be over.
The plan is brilliant for its simplicity. There will be no exchange of atomic energy monitors, no prisoner swaps, and no gradual pullbacks to the positions the countries held on the first day of the costly conflict. Neither side will have to disarm its military forces or surrender commanders for war crimes trials. Instead, the deal under discussion between Ottawa and Copenhagen would take Hans Island, a rock roughly a square kilometre in size and — get this — simply divide it in half.
There’s a certain beauty to this arrangement. Hans Island, which rests between Canada’s peace-loving Ellesmere Island and Danish-occupied Greenland, exists in legal limbo. The two sides have already agreed to a maritime border, but never defined how Hans itself was divided. The peace plan, if successfully implemented, would take that imaginary line in the ocean and extend it right through Hans Island, dividing it almost perfectly in half. There is no word yet on whether the divided Hans Island would need a peacekeeping force, group of UN observers or Korean Peninsula-style demilitarized zone to separate Free Hans Island from Danish-Occupied Oppression Land (the other 500 square metres).
This assumes that the two sides are able to come to an agreement, of course. That’s far from certain. Neither Canada nor Denmark wants to admit defeat in this long struggle. “The political complexities of making an announcement are, in many ways, much more complicated than settling the actual territorial dispute,” said Whitney Lackenbauer, associate professor of history at St. Jerome’s University. “Both governments publicly staked their sovereignty claims. The early messaging of ‘standing up for Canada’ puts our government in a difficult position.”
Very true. We can only pray that Denmark’s war-mongering leaders appreciate the position Canada is in. There’s nothing more dangerous than a frightened, cornered beaver. And we are certainly ready to fight — on Wednesday, one of Canada’s submarines was successfully lowered into the ocean without sinking, and another recently fired a torpedo. Even if Denmark chose to resist in the face of such overwhelming naval odds, in a war of attrition, Canada would prevail while still having a totally respectable 29 million people left over. Dansk, meanwhile, would be spoken only in hell.
Clearly, such a conflict would serve the interests of no one outside the arms manufacturing community. It is imperative that the world’s diplomats focus their efforts on where they are truly needed. The rest of the world’s problems are clearly small fry next to the simmering hostility between two advanced democratic NATO allies pitted against each other over control of a contested pebble located somewhere north of nowhere. Because clearly, this is an issue that no two nations could reasonably be expected to figure out on their own.
National Post
mgurney@nationalpost.com
The plan is brilliant for its simplicity. There will be no exchange of atomic energy monitors, no prisoner swaps, and no gradual pullbacks to the positions the countries held on the first day of the costly conflict. Neither side will have to disarm its military forces or surrender commanders for war crimes trials. Instead, the deal under discussion between Ottawa and Copenhagen would take Hans Island, a rock roughly a square kilometre in size and — get this — simply divide it in half.
There’s a certain beauty to this arrangement. Hans Island, which rests between Canada’s peace-loving Ellesmere Island and Danish-occupied Greenland, exists in legal limbo. The two sides have already agreed to a maritime border, but never defined how Hans itself was divided. The peace plan, if successfully implemented, would take that imaginary line in the ocean and extend it right through Hans Island, dividing it almost perfectly in half. There is no word yet on whether the divided Hans Island would need a peacekeeping force, group of UN observers or Korean Peninsula-style demilitarized zone to separate Free Hans Island from Danish-Occupied Oppression Land (the other 500 square metres).
This assumes that the two sides are able to come to an agreement, of course. That’s far from certain. Neither Canada nor Denmark wants to admit defeat in this long struggle. “The political complexities of making an announcement are, in many ways, much more complicated than settling the actual territorial dispute,” said Whitney Lackenbauer, associate professor of history at St. Jerome’s University. “Both governments publicly staked their sovereignty claims. The early messaging of ‘standing up for Canada’ puts our government in a difficult position.”
Very true. We can only pray that Denmark’s war-mongering leaders appreciate the position Canada is in. There’s nothing more dangerous than a frightened, cornered beaver. And we are certainly ready to fight — on Wednesday, one of Canada’s submarines was successfully lowered into the ocean without sinking, and another recently fired a torpedo. Even if Denmark chose to resist in the face of such overwhelming naval odds, in a war of attrition, Canada would prevail while still having a totally respectable 29 million people left over. Dansk, meanwhile, would be spoken only in hell.
Clearly, such a conflict would serve the interests of no one outside the arms manufacturing community. It is imperative that the world’s diplomats focus their efforts on where they are truly needed. The rest of the world’s problems are clearly small fry next to the simmering hostility between two advanced democratic NATO allies pitted against each other over control of a contested pebble located somewhere north of nowhere. Because clearly, this is an issue that no two nations could reasonably be expected to figure out on their own.
National Post
mgurney@nationalpost.com
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