In a joint press conference on the 22nd of September 2026, the Greenlandic premier, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, and the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, announced that the renewed trilateral Arctic security agreement between the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland would not only strengthen the NATO alliance, but also reaffirm “the kingdom’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” whilst respecting future Greenlandic self-determination. Hailed as a victory for Danish and Greenlandic diplomacy, the renewal of the 1951 Agreement on Greenland makes continued NATO membership a condition of the U.S. security presence on the island and appears – at least for now – to mark an end to recent U.S. threats of military intervention and annexation. Greenland was also a party to the negotiations, as it had been in the 2004 Igaliku Agreement, the 2026 agreement also being the first international agreement authenticated and executed in the Greenlandic language (kalaallisut). Yet as in 2004, participation did not translate into visible leverage. The substantive gains – new U.S. bases in Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig, American influence over future investment, the preservation of Danish sovereignty – went to the same two powers that have settled Greenland’s status in the mid-twentieth century.

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The agreement’s central promise, to reaffirm “the kingdom’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” rests on an assumption that Danish sovereignty over Greenland is the natural starting point from which Greenlandic self-determination may one day depart. This article argues that this assumption obscures more than it explains. Danish sovereignty over Greenland was not simply inherited; it was assembled in the early twentieth century through a series of bargains with outside powers, most notably the U.S., in which Greenlanders had little to no part. Seen in that light, despite Greenland gaining a seat at the negotiation table, the 2026 agreement is less a break with the past than its latest instalment.

Tracing Danish-Greenlandic-U.S. relations historically reveals how layered and contested sovereignty over Greenland has always been. I argue that Danish sovereignty was built and maintained through bargains with outside powers – first Norway, but above all the United States – and that today’s agreement sustains that relationship rather than breaking from it. This article first traces how Denmark secured recognition of its claim to all of Greenland, then examines how that claim came to depend on American power during and after the Second World War. It then draws on scholarship in international law, sovereignty and hierarchy to explain why this pattern has proved so durable.

Sovereignty by recognition

Originally colonised in 1721 by the Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede, Greenland’s colonial status ended in 1953, after increasing pressure from the newly established United Nations. Greenland was subsequently integrated into the Danish Commonwealth as a constitutionally “equal” county – an equality that existed largely on paper (Natalia Loukacheva 2007). To get Greenland to Danish levels of welfare in the postwar world, the Danish government implemented the G50 and G60 Commissions to “Danify,” that is, to urbanise and improve general welfare conditions for the Greenlandic Inuit. Recent revelations have, however, revealed several injustices committed towards the Greenlandic Inuit since the incorporation into the Danish Commonwealth (see e.g., the ongoing IUD scandal, the “Little Danes Experiment,” or the birthright criteria that set up a dual-wage system). In 2023, the UN Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Cali-Tzay, noted that Greenlanders living in Denmark still go through systemic racism and discrimination (2023). During the decolonisation negotiations in the early 1950s, the option of independence was never on the table; no Greenlander was present to negotiate the conditions of integration (Anne Kirstine Hermann 2021). Greenland later obtained Home Rule in 1979 and, in 2009, Self-Rule as an autonomous region, which also included a self-determination clause through a national referendum in Greenland. Today, Greenland receives an annual block grant (bloktilskuddet) of around 4.5 billion DKK (~ £516 million or $683 million), and Denmark oversees all borders and foreign affairs in Greenland, despite Greenland’s increased presence on the international stage. In addition to participation in the Arctic Council and the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Greenland was first represented in Igaliku in 2004, then, in 2008, alongside Denmark at Ilulissat, and most notably in the recent trilateral negotiations between Denmark, Greenland, and the U.S.

What Greenland holds, in other words, is self-government under Danish suzerainty: internal autonomy combined with external subordination, with Copenhagen retaining final authority over foreign and security policy. In 2014, Adler Nissen and Gad published a special issue in Cooperation and Conflict examining the conceptualisation and workings of “post-imperial sovereignty” within the Nordic context, that is, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as semi-or fully autonomous regions such as Åland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. In this, they argued – echoing Iver Neumann (2014) – that the post-imperial situation can be........

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