In your briefing today:

📣 The US is discussing a range of options to acquire Greenland including the use of its military, the White House has confirmed. That statement came as European leaders - including Keir Starmer - issued a statement supporting Denmark and saying “Greenland belongs to its people”. (BBC)

📣 “Tens of thousands of families” are being priced out of housing across Scotland because only eight percent of private rental homes are affordable for those on state support, analysis by the Herald claims.

Moreover, only a small part of a Scottish Government housing support fund is available to help families whose benefits fall short of covering their rent, with the cash handed out by councils coming only as short-term, non-guaranteed top-ups.

The average rent for a one-bed private home in Scotland has risen by 27% in only three years, to £738 a month. (Herald £)

📣 It remains icy cold across all of the UK today, with plenty of snow in the north of Scotland too. Almost all of the UK is under a weather warning this morning, with the threat of disruption to all forms of travel as a result. (BBC)

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📣 Former Scotland and Manchester United star Gordon McQueen attributed his dementia to heading footballs, an inquest was told yesterday. (Daily Record)

📣 MSPs will get a £3,000 pay rise next year, taking their salaries up to £77,710. But Holyrood’s finance committee was told the increase meant salaries would not keep pace with inflation, Westminster or the Welsh Senedd. (BBC)

📣 Scotland has a new radio station: STV Radio hit the airwaves yesterday morning, with breakfast duo Ewen Cameron and Cat Harvey launching their show with a special version of Simple Minds’ 1982 hit, Promised You a Miracle. (STV)

📣 Britain has signed an “historic” deal to deploy troops inside Ukraine as soon as any ceasefire with Russia comes into force. The deal also comes with Donald Trump’s blessing. (Independent)

📣 Russia has deployed a submarine and other naval vessels to escort an empty, rusting oil tanker that is north of Scotland and steaming towards the North Sea. (🎁WSJ - gift link)

📣 Elon Musk’s Grok AI is creating “absolutely appalling” fake sexualised images, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has said. She’s calling for the company to introduce better controls. (Sky News)

📣 Why are so many young people getting bowel cancer? Century-old tumour samples, which have been held in storage, are being re-examined to look for clues. (BBC)

📣 Road safety plans for England and Wales could see the drink-drive limit reduced to the equivalent of one pint, and bans for over 70s if they fail eye sight tests. (ITV News)

⚽️ Rangers notched up a comfortable 2-0 win over Aberdeen last night, leading to an extraordinary stat: it’s the first time in 500 days that they’ve moved above Celtic in the league table. It may only be by dint of having played a game more, but it keeps the pressure on Martin O’Neill’s side… and also on Hearts, only three points ahead - but also with a game in hand. It’s a three-horse race, for sure.

⚽️ Scotland legend James McFadden has been made bankrupt with debts of more than £2.5 million. (The Sun has the exclusive)

⚽️ In England, West Ham are facing relegation: they lost 2-1 at home to fellow strugglers Nottingham Forest last night, and are now seven points off safety with 17 games to go. The club, which won the European Conference in 2023 under David Moyes, haven’t won a game in 10. (BBC)

🗣️ Really? It is a question which we have, now, to at least take seriously. After all, a week ago we would have likely scoffed at the notion that US forces would forcibly abduct the leader of Venezuela and bring him - and his wife - to New York to face a range of charges in court. Yet here we are.

As President Trump flew back to Washington from his Florida home on Sunday night, flushed with the success of that operation, he reiterated his long-expressed view that “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”

Those remarks drew an immediate response from Denmark, with Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen warning any US attack on a NATO ally would spell the end of “everything” - “that includes Nato and therefore post-second world war security,” he said.

Cynics might argue that even this sort of talk indicates both Nato and that post-second world war compact are long-dead, at least least since the publication of the US National Security Strategy late last year. That reoriented the US strategy away from attempts to bestride the world, and towards a world divided into spheres of influence, held by a small number of larger, richer, stronger nations. (See this Brookings Institute analysis for more on that).

But a US invasion of the territory of another Nato member would certainly nail the coffin tightly shut: it would send a powerful signal to Russia that the Baltic states, occupying a similar strategic importance to Moscow, were fair play. Beijing might also eye Taiwan that little bit more hungrily.

As the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs wrote last spring, “For Russia, the collapse of NATO could be a more valuable prize than territorial gains. […] A scenario in which NATO’s collective defense clause is rendered ineffective would leave the Baltic states dangerously exposed.”

It would, however, be consistent with the views of Stephen Miller, the hard-right deputy chief of staff in Trump’s White House, whose worldview is framed by a belief that force is the preferred mode of operation. As the New York Times reports (🎁gift link), he told Jake Tapper of CNN: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”

Readers looking for some reassurance might note that the US actually has a great many unused powers in Greenland: as Euractiv notes, its base there could house up to 10,000 people, but is home to 150 at the moment. That number could increase without Danish approval.

But Russian and Chinese military footprints in the Arctic are growing: the US may be eying creating a chain of military bases along Greenland’s rugged coastline, and thinking ownership would make that process faster and simpler.

Another US President - Harry Truman - had designs on Greenland back in 1946, after the US had sent troops to Greenland for its protection during the second world war. His $100 million bid was rejected at the time. That’s equivalent to around $1.6 billion in today’s money: the surest bet on an outcome here could be that access, even ownership, for the US simply comes down to a big cheque, and a diplomatic fudge - possibly involving security guarantees for Ukraine.

The views of the people who actually live in Greenland? At grave risk of becoming casualties in this brutal new era of art-of-the-deal realpolitik.

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