History suggests that great powers usually stumble into catastrophe not because they lack strength, but because they lack restraint.
The latest illustration of this rule may be unfolding not in a desert, jungle, mountain valley, or Middle Eastern oil field—but on the world’s largest island, Greenland, which covers more than 2.1 million square kilometers and is so dominated by vast ice sheets that it is far more white than green, despite the optimistic branding.
Donald Trump’s renewed fixation on Greenland, framed as a matter of national security, is less a coherent strategic doctrine than a masterclass in how to unsettle allies, confuse adversaries, and alarm everyone else simultaneously. While the Arctic does indeed matter geopolitically, the manner in which the United States is currently addressing Greenland risks transforming a legitimate security discussion into a textbook case of imperial overreach—one that could have consequences far beyond the Arctic Circle.
The first problem with Trump’s Greenland obsession is conceptual. Greenland is treated rhetorically as an empty, oversized slab of ice—strategically “massive,” resource-rich, and conveniently available. In reality, Greenland is a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, embedded in centuries of political, cultural, and human integration.
As Denmark’s foreign minister reiterated after his recent meeting with US secretary of state Marco Rubio and vice president JD Vance, nearly 17,000 Greenlanders live in Denmark, meaning roughly one-third of Greenland’s population resides on the Danish mainland. Conversely, every tenth person living in Greenland is Danish. These are not abstract diplomatic ties; they are family ties, educational ties, professional ties, and social ties.
Over centuries, Greenlanders and Danes have married one another in large numbers, producing countless mixed families whose lives span Nuuk and Copenhagen, Sisimiut and Aalborg.
These intermarriages are as unremarkable as the social patterns of Mumbai itself, where young people routinely meet future spouses at institutions such as St. Xavier’s College, IIT Bombay, or Mithibai College in Juhu—making Denmark and Greenland intertwined at the level of kinship in ways that are difficult for outside observers to fully comprehend.
Greenlanders enjoy full access to Denmark’s healthcare system, including specialized medical treatment unavailable on the island itself. It is common for Greenlanders to travel to Denmark for advanced care, including cancer treatment, where specialist expertise and facilities are more extensive.
This is a thoroughly egalitarian project, rather, functional integration within a welfare state that treats Greenlanders as citizens, not assets, and as fully equal partners.
Linguistically and culturally, the integration is equally deep. Most Greenlanders, including the current prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, speak fluent Danish alongside Greenlandic.
For those seeking a clearer analogy, Greenland’s relationship with Denmark resembles Gujarat’s relationship with India. Gujaratis speak Hindi fluently while maintaining their own language, Gujarati. They celebrate their distinct traditions, including recognizable regional dress such as Garba attire, without questioning their political belonging to India.
Greenlanders are no different. They have their own language, customs, and traditional clothing—and notably, since Trump’s threats of takeover intensified, many Greenlanders have begun displaying their traditional attire prominently on social media. Much like any community facing external pressure, cultural identity has become a quiet but powerful form of resistance.
The Trump administration’s defense of its position relies on familiar talking points: Arctic surveillance, rare earth minerals, and competition with Russia and China. None of these concerns are imaginary. What is imaginary is the idea that the United States currently lacks access to Greenland for defense purposes.
Under the 1951 US–Denmark Defense Agreement, the United States already maintains permanent defense jurisdiction over key facilities, including Thule Air Base. Former US Ambassador to Nato Nick Burns and other seasoned policymakers have correctly noted that America already possesses every strategic capability it claims to need, without annexation, coercion, or threats. In other words, the problem is not access; it is attitude.
Trump’s refusal to rule out military or economic coercion against Denmark, a Nato ally, has sent shockwaves across Europe. Public threats, tariff tantrums, and casual hints at force have achieved what even the most creative Russian disinformation campaign could only dream of: convincing Europeans that the United States might no longer be a reliable ally.
Support for Denmark and Greenland has spread well beyond Scandinavia. Political, civil society, and public opinion groups across Europe, and increasingly in Canada and Australia, have expressed solidarity with Copenhagen and Nuuk. This is not anti-Americanism, but rather a collective alarm at the remarkable unpredictability of the United States.
French president Emmanuel Macron’s warning was blunt: any violation of an ally’s sovereignty would have unprecedented knock-on effects. Those effects are already visible in strained trade negotiations, frozen diplomatic goodwill, and growing calls within the EU to reassess its economic engagement with Washington.
A forceful incursion into Greenland would not merely be controversial, it would be catastrophic. It could place Nato in an existential crisis, potentially provoke military confrontation between allies, and hand strategic advantages to adversaries who would not need to fire a single shot to gain from the chaos.
In response, calls within Europe to renegotiate or suspend EU–U.S. tariff agreements are not acts of hostility but defensive measures. The logic is straightforward: there can be no trade normality while territorial threats remain on the table. Until the United States explicitly and unconditionally withdraws all claims over Greenland, proceeding with favorable trade arrangements would reward coercive behavior.
Equally urgent is the need for a new transatlantic security understanding: US troops can remain stationed in Europe only under a binding commitment that the United States will not threaten, coerce, or invade any European ally. Such a treaty would merely formalize what was once assumed as obvious.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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