http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?f=/stories/20010516/564195.html

Early signs suggest U.S. President George W. Bush's diplomatic efforts to win the NATO allies' consent for missile defence are paying off: It looks as if both Canada and the United Kingdom will be on board soon.

It's important that the United States seeks the blessings of its friends in this endeavour, of course. But it would also be a mistake to let the shaky nerves of a single ally compromise the whole project.

One of the peculiarities of the debate over missile defence, in fact, is how much say Denmark has in this matter. That's because Copenhagen administers the frozen island of Greenland, where the Pentagon will very much want to place an early-warning radar that doesn't comply with current specifications in the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. If the Danes refuse to co-operate with U.S. aims, the United States will have to search out a less ideal location for the radar. That would render a missile defence system both less reliable and more vulnerable.

It's troubling that a country whose entire population is comparable to that in the state of Wisconsin might hold so much sway. The Bush administration appears to be approaching the matter with an appropriate amount of diplomatic delicacy. Even before Mr. Bush gave his course-setting speech on missile defence, his officials were telling the Danish Parliament that the ABM treaty must be replaced or eliminated.

There's a better way: The United States should buy Greenland. It wouldn't be the first time the United States acquired a big chunk of territory for a price. In 1867, it bought Alaska from Russia for US$7.2-million. Critics slammed the sale as "Seward's Folly," after Secretary of State William Seward, who negotiated the deal. But who would think twice about doing it again?

It's a little-known fact that Seward also was interested in Greenland. In 1946 -- long after Seward's time -- the United States seems to have made a formal offer of US$100-million for Greenland, according to declassified documents discovered about 10 years ago in the National Archives. The purpose of the sale, wrote a state department official, was to provide the United States with "valuable bases from which to launch an air counter-offensive over the Arctic area in the event of attack." Secretary of State James Byrnes proposed the idea to the Danish foreign minister, but the record does not reveal whether the Danes formally turned down the offer or just ignored it.

The Bush administration should let them know the deal's still on the table, and that it's awfully rude of them not to have responded by now. They were much more agreeable in 1917, when the United States bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark for US$25-million.

It's worth remembering that one of the biggest missed opportunities in U.S. history was the failure to buy Cuba from Spain in the 1850s. It might have happened, but for the objections of anti-slavery politicians, who feared Cuba's admission to the Union as a slave state would have strengthened the South just before the Civil War. Yet it's hard to believe the war would not have arrived anyway, or that its outcome would have changed. The real difference would have come later: Fidel Castro wouldn't be the only remaining dictator in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, he'd be a Democratic senator drafting health care legislation with Ted Kennedy.

Greenland has a population of about 60,000 people, who have the island's 840,000 square miles all to themselves. They acquired home rule in 1979, so these folks probably would have to sign off on the sale in some capacity, too. Perhaps Mr. Bush could promise them a big tax cut.

Greenland's natural resources are -- let us put it charitably -- limited. The island got its name from Viking explorer Eric the Red in the 10th century. He wanted to encourage people to move there from Iceland. Wouldn't you rather live in Greenland than in Iceland? There is said to be a huge deposit of gold beneath the ice, but so far nobody has figured out how to extract it economically.

Like so much real estate, Greenland's value is its location: A lot of missile shots coming toward North America from Russia would fly right over it, or at least near it. The Pentagon understandably will want to chart their precise trajectories so its anti-ballistic missiles might blow them to pieces.

And if this global warming business turns out to be worse than expected, at least Americans will have somewhere to live.

John J. Miller is a writer for National Review, in Washington, D.C.