President Donald Trump’s renewed bid to acquire Kalaallit Nunaat, also known as Greenland, is not adequately explained by the immediate benefits that possession of this country would give to the United States. Instead, this crisis is better explained in terms of the Trump administration’s political project, which seeks to reinvent the United States’ identity as a great power in an emerging post-rules-based international order. During his Davos speech, US President Donald Trump reaffirmed his desire to acquire Kalaallit Nunaat, citing that the US is a “great power, much greater than people even understand”. Trump also underscored that the US needed Greenland because it is a “part of North America, on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere,” which is a “core national security interest of the United States of America”. Trump reaffirmed the same security logic that was presented several months earlier, in the Trump administration’s November 2025 National Security Strategy which proclaimed the entire Western Hemisphere as the US sphere of influence under a “‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” (White House 2025, 5). Just several weeks later, the Trump administration intervened in Venezuela. The Trump administration’s sphere of influence discourse is not an epiphenomenon but the driver of the US’ newfound expansionism in the Arctic.

This article will first examine Greenland’s importance for the US in the context of the country’s colonial past and evolving political status. Then, it will argue that narrowly instrumental materialist explanations about security, resources, and China/Russia influence are unsatisfying. Instead, it will advance an interpretation of Trump’s Greenland campaign as a project of sphere‑of‑influence building and domestic legitimacy, drawing on IR literature on international status and state mythmaking. Finally, it will consider what the developing saga around Greenland means for Greenland’s future and for the future of the international order.

Greenland’s colonial legacy and the United States

Kalaallit Nunaat, or Greenland, is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark located on the world’s largest island with an area of ca. 2.2 million km² (836,330 sq mi). The crisis unfolding around Greenland is inseparable from its colonial past and present. Through the colonial gaze, the island’s value lies in its territory and its resources: its vastness, sparseness, and strategic location between the North American and European continents. It overlooks the fact that the country is home to 57,000 Greenlanders, the majority of whom are Indigenous Inuit. Paleo-Inuit populations were the first humans to arrive in Greenland around 2500 BCE, while the ancestors of the modern Inuit came to the island in the 13th century. Like the rest of the Arctic, Greenland was colonized by a European power; in this case, Denmark established control in the 18th century.

The US designs on Greenland are not new. As part of the North American continent, Greenland falls under the Monroe Doctrine, an American principle first declared in 1823 that stated the US would not tolerate European powers establishing new colonies in the Western Hemisphere. It was only at the end of the 19th century that the Monroe Doctrine was reinterpreted as an expansionist and exclusionist principle “used to justify American interventionism and ultimately empire”, paving the way for the recognition of the US as a great power (Murray 2019, 147). The original 1823 formulation did not envisage the Arctic explicitly. In the 19th century, US Secretary of State Seward, who negotiated the Alaska Purchase in 1867, dreamt of annexing Greenland and Iceland to the young American empire and began negotiations to purchase them from Denmark. A State Department report concluded in 1868 that the US “should purchase Iceland and Greenland, but especially the latter” for “the political and commercial” reasons. Back then, as today, the need to acquire Greenland was motivated by a hostile external great power: the United Kingdom.

The United States continued to entertain an idea of colonizing parts of Greenland under the principle of effective occupation, but finally recognized Danish sovereignty over Greenland in 1916 after the United States purchased the Danish West Indies (the Virgin Islands). Just days after Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, U.S. senators considered the idea of purchasing the island again, with more radical voices advocating outright annexation—but the idea that the United States would illegally use military force to expand its borders into an already occupied Denmark was out of the question. Instead, the United States, with the permission of Danish Minister Kauffmann, occupied the island protectively, while recognizing it as “a Danish colony”. The US relinquished control of Greenland following the liberation of Denmark, but American bases remained on the island per the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement, as the island effectively remained a part of the US and North American security architecture through NATO.

The acquisition of Greenland is not about narrow material interests

The US’ renewed claim to Greenland is an attempt to re-establish a sphere of influence rather than a conventional territorial grab for military bases or resources. Trump’s “‘Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” calls for “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” and seeks to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets”. This comes in sharp contrast with the previous US policy, which actively sought to counter Russian designs on a sphere of influence in Eurasia (Ferguson and Hast 2018). This change is not simply rhetorical; it is a normative claim that the US has a right to exclusive influence in the Western Hemisphere. As Hedley Bull (2002) argued, spheres of influence are recognized not just as a matter of fact, but also as a matter of right: the fact that other countries recognize a sphere of influence does not mean that they accept it as legitimate. It was the US policy not to recognize other countries’ spheres of influence, nor to declare its own sphere of influence explicitly. Before the first Trump administration (2017-2021), the US calmly observed Chinese investments in Panama and even helped broker China’s admission as the Arctic Council observer state in 2013. In response to the start of the Russian war against Ukraine in 2014, President Obama stated that “the days of empire and spheres of influence are over” and that “bigger nations must not be allowed to bully the small or impose their will at the barrel of a gun”. This changed already in 2019, when Trump for the first time proposed to purchase Greenland from Denmark in a “large real estate deal”, arguing that “strategically, for the United States, it would be nice”.

First, the acquisition of Greenland in the way proposed by President Trump is not necessary to enhance the security of the United States. Despite Donald Trump’s assurances that the US needs ownership of Greenland “for strategic national security and international security”, Greenland’s defense is not currently a military concern. Greenland’s location is indeed strategically important, but the US does not stand to gain anything new by acquiring ownership of the country. Greenland is important for the US to monitor space and air activities (potential missile launches), as well as submarines and other activities at sea through the GIUK gap (Greenland-Iceland-Great Britain). However, the US can already meet its needs through NATO. Greenland is already deeply integrated within the North American security architecture through NATO and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It was the US itself that chose to close its bases in Greenland in 2003 and later reopened one in 2020 as the Pituffik Space Base. The current administration has emphasized that its interest in Greenland has to do with the construction of a “Golden Dome”, but when it comes to surveillance and homeland defense, there is still room for maneuver for the US to expand its presence through existing frameworks. Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, summed up the situation thusly: “Greenland is enormously important to us and our national security. But the fact that we already have two military bases there and the ability to negotiate further is more than enough for us to satisfy that need”.

Second, resources are not the reason that the US is interested in Greenland. Many speculate that Greenland is important to the US because of its rich natural resources, especially rare earth elements. In a Senate hearing, Ted Cruz said that “[I]f the U.S. were to gain access to Greenland’s resources, it could significantly reduce our dependence on foreign suppliers, particularly China, which currently operates a virtual monopoly on the rare earth market”. This motivation was denied by Trump himself, who posited that “to get to this rare earth, you have to go through hundreds of feet of ice” and it is “not the reason we need it”. Rare earth elements, indeed, are considered critical minerals in the US. China controls large parts of the rare earth value chain. There are two known deposits in Greenland, both in South Greenland. One is the Kvanefjeld deposit, which also contains uranium. In 2021, Greenland passed a law prohibiting uranium mining, due to concerns about soil and water contamination. Radioactive waste must be managed sustainably, which is very demanding. At the same time, this deposit is one of the largest known deposits of rare earths, with a relatively high concentration. There is also another deposit, the so-called Kringlerne deposit, which is controlled by a US-backed mining company, Tanbreez. The Kringlerne deposit is not radioactive, and Tanbreez is preparing to start mining.

Third, an argument has been made that acquiring Greenland would allow the US to deal with the strategic challenge that China and Russia present to the United States in the Arctic. Trump argues that Greenland sits “undefended in a key strategic location between the United States, Russia, and China.” Further, the argument is based on Trump’s claim that there were Russian and Chinese ships “all over the place” around Greenland. A version of this argument first appeared in a speech by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a meeting of the Arctic Council at a time when there were actual Chinese proposals for a Polar Silk Road. However, the Polar Silk Road has been put on ice following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (Lamazhapov et al. 2023), and the last time a Chinese research icebreaker operated near Greenland was in 2018. Furthermore, it has been reported that Nordic diplomats with NATO security clearance reject that there were signs of Russian or Chinese ships or submarines around Greenland. Likewise, reports of Russian and Chinese ships around Greenland were denied by the Commander of Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command, as well as by Greenland’s Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen. China has indeed expanded its presence in the Arctic, but much of it revolves around epistemic, not physical presence (Eiterjord 2024). This epistemic presence revolves around the production of scientific, cartographic and legal knowledge about the Arctic, which in turn allows China to gain a “remote” access to the region (Bennett and Eiterjord 2023).

Russian and Chinese presence in Greenland fits the definition of what Snyder (1991, 80) calls “strategic myths”, or “promiscuous, hydra-headed” rationales that justify expansion, often “sincerely believed,” but also often overselling threats and benefits. The myth is not the presence of Russia and China itself, or even the threat they pose – the myth is that the only policy answer is an outsized necessity for expansion that overstates the threats and benefits. Even if the US were to obtain sovereignty over Greenland, the US’s traditionally broad reading of the freedom of navigation under the law of the sea would not give the US much room to control the presence of other states’ vessels in waters around Greenland. Furthermore, all attempts by various Chinese actors to establish themselves in Greenland have come to nought. Chinese companies that invested in Greenlandic mines ultimately faced multiple hurdles due to US, Danish, and Greenlandic concerns, which prompted Chinese investors to pull back or refrain from investing in Greenland (Andersson and Zeuthen 2024). Likewise, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) withdrew its bid for developing airports in Greenland after Copenhagen declared this could give China information about critical infrastructure and stepped up to finance the construction of the airports (Shi and Lanteigne 2019).

The Bering Strait provides a natural chokepoint for monitoring Chinese power projection into the Arctic. If the US were really concerned about Chinese presence in the Arctic region, then there would be more discussion of the increased scope of Sino-Russian activity near the coast of Alaska. Both countries have increased their joint exercises in the Bering Strait region. Already, the first Trump administration gave funds to construct Coast Guard icebreakers, but the US failed to deliver them. But after the Trump administration slashed science funding, the US National Science Foundation actually lost the lease for its only research icebreaker in 2025. In the meantime, China conducted its largest Arctic expedition north of Alaska, featuring four research icebreakers. I have previously argued that for China, these expeditions and even military exercises have a status-seeking significance (Lamazhapov 2025; Lamazhapov and Østhagen 2025). If the Greenland crisis really revolved around strategic concerns, the Bering Strait would be the most natural place to start. To be clear, the absence of a more assertive posture in the Bering Strait region is not proof that security concerns are irrelevant, but muted response to tangible Sino‑Russian activity near Alaska and the hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding Greenland indicates that the island occupies a special symbolic place in the administration’s geopolitical imagination.

The same logic about excluding Chinese influence applies to Iceland. Apart from occasional think-tank reports, there is currently little discussion of Iceland’s role in US defense strategies. In fact, China and Iceland maintain science cooperation and China even operates a research observatory there (Ingvarsdóttir and Hauksdóttir 2024). However, the US has not called for annexation of the country, despite it having the same security position as Greenland. Instead, the US has chosen a sober strategy of a continued bilateral security partnership. Iceland has not yet been included in the US sphere of influence, and the US has not made any moves to gain sovereignty over the country.

Taken together, these security and resource‑based explanations suffer from a problem of deficient necessity: they cannot account for the intensity of the administration’s rhetoric, nor for its insistence onownership as opposed to continued access. If the US security interests are already well served by the existing arrangements, what explains Trump’s recent push to own the island? The 2025–26 campaign to ‘own’ Greenland is best read as a move that reintroduces spheres of influence as an element structuring the geographies of space and remaps American identity in a post‑rules-based order. As Murray (2019) has argued, the establishment of a sphere of influence is not just about security politics, but also concerns international status. Moreover, according to Pu Xiaoyu (2019, 27), states often go to great lengths in their desire for international status and prestige, and readily pay material costs, especially due to “a domestic political struggle for legitimacy”. Otherwise said, as Jack Snyder (1991, 20) holds, “among the great powers, domestic pressures often outweigh international ones in the calculations of national leaders”. Indeed, Snyder’s analysis indicates that often “the domestic legitimacy crisis is so grave that long-run foreign policy consequences must be disregarded”.

Greenland’s symbolic value for the US

Snyder (1991) argues that great powers repeatedly convince themselves that security requires expansion, and that this belief is a myth produced and sustained by domestic politics, not an objective necessity. As Snyder notes, “domestic pressures often outweigh international ones in the calculations of national leaders” (20) and “contending bureaucracies, military factions, or interest groups” can, through coalition logrolling, generate expansionist policies “more overcommitted than any of the interest groups sought individually.” (41). The success of this mythmaking depends on securing support of key coalition players by making concessions, and, besides Trump’s own political movement, Make America Great Again (MAGA), not many other political groups seem to be convinced. The rhetorical emphasis has thus been on what ownership of Greenland could bring them: concentrated and sustained effort on countering China for China-hawks, more investment into defense for the military-industrial complex, an autarkic resource base for investors, and even a libertarian tech hub for the Silicon Valley.

For MAGA, re-establishing a sphere of influence is a move that could enact American greatness. Vice-President J.D. Vance’s visit to Greenland in April 2025 featured in the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s MAGA Minute as “historic”. Trump’s uncompromising stance during negotiations is a direct response to the US’s perceived weakness under the Obama and Biden administrations. Some Republicans criticized Obama’s approach to diplomacy as a sign of weakness, dubbing it Obama’s “apology tour”. In contrast, Trump’s political image seeks to project an unapologetic and assertive United States. The desire for enhancement of the US international status and a heavy-handed foreign policy is not new among the Republican voters. The fear of appearing weak partially helps to explain why the administration not only refused to rule out military means to obtain Greenland until Davos but also threatened retaliation in the form of tariffs to NATO allies for sending troops to Greenland. US rhetoric is a means of achieving credible political effects, where the only credible measure of sovereignty is a complete deference by NATO allies.

In this case, there are plenty of domestic incentives to dramatize American greatness through territorial expansion (over Greenland), which outweigh purely rational assessments of strategic necessity. In particular, expanding US territory could indeed ameliorate Trump’s legitimacy concerns. Trump won the presidency in 2016 but lost the popular vote, which contributed to some uneasiness around Trump’s first presidency. Though Trump won the popular vote in 2024, his presidency was marred by the legacy of the January 6 attacks on the Capitol. At the time when he was sworn into office for a second time, Trump’s net approval rating was 11 points lower than that of Biden at the time of the latter’s inauguration. The entire second term so far has been marked with wide-scale protests, such as the No Kings protests and protests against ICE. In addition to this, Trump’s own MAGA camp went through a high-profile split.

The acquisition of Greenland could work as a legitimacy booster because it mobilizes strong imaginaries of frontier and exploration associated with American exceptionalism. Donald Trump proclaimed October 9, 2025 as “Leif Erikson Day”, celebrating him as “the first European to ever set foot in the New World” who travelled to America through Greenland and as the forefather of the “American story — from the pioneers who tamed the Western frontier to the Apollo 11 astronauts who proudly planted the Stars and Stripes on the Moon”. This revitalization of American identity hopes to strengthen the domestic legitimacy of the administration. It builds upon the discourse of manifest destiny to establish control over the North American continent and enclose the frontier. As Campbell (2008) writes, “the frontier is a powerful and recurring image in American political discourse,” indeed, “the constitution and regeneration of the identity of the European-American self has been made possible by the enactment of violence upon the Indian other”. In this script, Inuit and Danish claims become background noise to an essentially US story of exploration and destiny. In this narrative, the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty comes with a promise of regeneration through domination.

Though the desire to instigate a crisis around Greenland might have been motivated by the Trump administration’s desire to enhance its international status and legitimacy, it does not preclude that Trump is not sincere in believing that this US expansionist rhetoric is a defensive one. Indeed, as Snyder (1991) observes, it is often the case that “state mythmakers somehow come to believe their own propaganda.” The push to acquire Greenland was foregrounded by the US securitization of Chinese efforts to establish a foothold in the Arctic.

Re-centering Kalaallit Nunaat

Adding urgency to the current crisis is the host of US anxieties about Greenland’s potential slippage from the US sphere of influence. Kalaallit Nunaat is not a passive object of great power competition but is an actor in its own right, and for the past several decades Greenland has been taking incremental steps towards independence. In 1953, Greenland became a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark and gained representation in the Danish Parliament. However, this did not stop the Danish state’s continued policies disempowering the Indigenous population, including attempted experiments of forced assimilation of Inuit children and violations of the reproductive rights of Indigenous children and women. This painful colonial past forms the background for the Greenlandic moves towards full nationhood. Greenlanders successfully achieved home rule in 1979. Greenland adopted its flag in 1985. In 2008, the majority of Greenlanders voted to expand their Self-Government, forcing Copenhagen to devolve competence over all issues other than defense and foreign policy to the Greenlandic government under the 2009 Self-government law. Paragraph 21 of the law stipulates that “the decision on Greenlandic independence is made by the Greenlandic people.” Indeed, successive Greenlandic governments have made small but consistent steps towards independence. For example, as part of its preparation for independence, Greenland established its own diplomatic representations in the most relevant diplomatic capitals: Copenhagen, Brussels, Washington DC, Reykjavik, and, since 2021, Beijing. Greenlanders have successfully used US and Chinese interests to diversify partners and increase bargaining leverage vis‑à‑vis Copenhagen (Gad et al. 2018; Jacobsen 2020).

However, the predicament in which Greenland finds itself today reduces its room for maneuvering. In his address to Congress in 2025, Trump addressed Greenlanders by saying, “[W]e strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America… One way or the other, we’re going to get it.” The desire of the US to get ahead of Greenland’s independence essentially presents Greenland with a choice of freely accepting an association with the US, however that would look like, or being given no say in the matter at all. This is fully consistent with the textbook definition of a sphere of influence, which seems to underpin Trump’s vision for the post-rules-based order, which also includes exclusive club governance institutions like the Board of Peace.

I have argued that the Trump administration’s push to “own” Kalaallit Nunaat is not driven by specific security or resource needs, but rather by the belief that the island should naturally fall within the United States’ sphere of influence. This is not to say that Greenland is unimportant to US security. Greenland is indeed important to the US security needs, and those are largely met through existing arrangements.

More broadly, the episode signals a deeper transformation of the international order. The liberal international order, which, with all of its numerous flaws, was underpinned by the spirit of cooperation, seems to be drawing to an end. The United States used to be a steward and a provider of public goods, bringing relative prosperity to the US, the rest of the West, and countries like China, which enjoyed a period of “peace and development” that enabled its rise. In Arctic geopolitics, the brief period was known as Arctic exceptionalism, emphasizing that the Arctic region had strong and stable foundations for continued cooperation between Russia and the US despite disagreements elsewhere. As Snyder (1991, 1) argues, great powers have a “striking proclivity for self‑inflicted wounds”, and the US has already incurred significant reputational costs. It is a mistake to think that the new post-rules-based world order will spell peril only for small nations like Kalaallit Nunaat.

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Ingvarsdóttir, Kristín, and Guðbjörg Ríkey Th. Hauksdóttir. 2024. ‘Science Diplomacy for Stronger Bilateral Relations? The Role of Arctic Science in Iceland’s Relations with Japan and China’. The Polar Journal 14 (1): 314–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/2154896X.2024.2342114.

Jacobsen, Marc. 2020. ‘Greenland’s Arctic Advantage: Articulations, Acts and Appearances of Sovereignty Games’. Cooperation and Conflict 55 (2): 170–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836719882476.

Lamazhapov, Erdem. 2025. ‘Polar Regions for Global Status: China’s Great Power Discourse and Status-Seeking Practice in the Arctic and Antarctic’. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, no. Online First (October). https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481251378895.

Lamazhapov, Erdem, and Andreas Østhagen. 2025. ‘China, Russia and the U.S. in the Bering Sea: Military Exercises and Great Power Politics’. In Arctic Yearbook 2025 – War and Peace in the Arctic, edited by Lassi Heininen, Heather Exner-Pirot, and Justin Barnes. https://arcticyearbook.com/arctic-yearbook/2025.

Lamazhapov, Erdem, Iselin Stensdal, and Gørild Heggelund. 2023. China’s Polar Silk Road: Long Game or Failed Strategy. The Arctic Insitute. https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/china-polar-silk-road-long-game-failed-strategy/.

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Shi, Mingming, and Marc Lanteigne. 2019. ‘A Cold Arena? Greenland as a Focus of Arctic Competition: Recent Questions over the Extent of China’s Ambitions for Greenland Deserve Close Scrutiny’. The Diplomat, June 10. https://thediplomat.com/2019/06/a-cold-arena-greenland-as-a-focus-of-arctic-competition/.

Snyder, Jack L. 1991. Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs). Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801468605.

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Further Reading on E-International Relations

Postcolonial Gaslighting and Greenland: When Post-Truth Gets in the Way of Independence

The Trump Corollary and the Legacy of the Monroe Doctrine: The End of International Law?

Opinion – After Greenland, is French Guiana America’s Next Territorial Prize?

The Emerging World Order in the 21st Century: An English School Approach

Opinion – A New World Order? From a Liberal to a Post-Western Order

Opinion – Muslims as Sufferers in the Liberal World Order

Erdem Lamazhapov is a PhD research fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute and the University of Oslo. He has published on the origins of China’s Arctic policy and explored how China’s great power status and ambitions impact its engagement with the Arctic region. His main research interests are the relationship between China and Russia, with a particular focus on the Arctic and related areas such as the Polar Silk Road.

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