Why Greenland Has Become America’s Next Imperial Obsession – OpEd |
Donald Trump’s renewed threat to annex Greenland is not an eccentric outburst but a crystallisation of U.S. imperial logic in an age of climate crisis and hegemonic erosion. Beneath the rhetoric of “national security” lies a deeper project: subordinating political autonomy, militarising the Arctic, and converting ecological breakdown into a new frontier of accumulation. Greenland exposes the contradictions of American power—and the fragility of the Atlantic order itself.
When Donald Trump declares that the United States needs Greenland “very badly,” and refuses to rule out the use of force to obtain it, he is not merely provoking allies. He is articulating, with unusual candour, the imperial unconscious of U.S. power. What liberal administrations once wrapped in the language of partnership, deterrence, and rules-based order is now stated as entitlement.
This is not a personal pathology. It is a structural moment. As U.S. global dominance confronts material limits—economic, ecological, and geopolitical—the imperial centre increasingly abandons procedural restraint. Greenland is not an exception to U.S. foreign policy; it is a condensation of its logic under stress.
Trump’s willingness to contemplate military coercion against a NATO ally signals a profound shift: alliance commitments, legal norms, and democratic consent are now negotiable when they obstruct strategic acquisition. In this sense, Greenland is not simply an island. It is a test of whether sovereignty still constrains empire.
Greenland’s political status is often described as “self-governing,” but this formulation conceals a deeper asymmetry. Formally part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland exercises extensive control over domestic affairs while foreign policy, defence, and monetary authority remain in Copenhagen’s hands. This arrangement is not accidental; it is the residue of colonial rule stretching back nearly three centuries.
The Inuit population of Greenland has borne the costs of this history: forced assimilation, social engineering, and state-sanctioned violations of bodily autonomy, most starkly exposed in the forced contraceptive programmes imposed on Greenlandic women and girls in the 1960s and 1970s. These are not historical footnotes. They shape contemporary demands for independence and dignity.
Support for sovereignty is now mainstream in Greenlandic politics. But crucially, independence is framed as decolonisation—not as a pivot toward Washington. Polls consistently show that while Greenlanders favour eventual independence........