Ice for the empire: Why Washington wants Greenland

Trump’s renewed bid to seize Greenland is not a diplomatic oddity but a blunt declaration of imperial intent. Beneath the language of “security” lies a project of Arctic militarization, climate-driven resource capture, and the denial of Indigenous self-determination. Greenland reveals how empire speaks when it feels entitled.

Empire without apology

When Donald Trump says of Greenland, “We have to have it,” he abandons the euphemisms that usually cloak U.S. power. No talk of partnership, no liberal rhetoric of shared values—only possession. The statement is not an aberration. It is the imperial unconscious speaking out loud.

Greenland, a self-governing Arctic territory of just 57,000 people, is treated not as a society but as a strategic object. Trump’s appointment of envoys who speak openly of annexation, his hints at force, and his bullying of Denmark mark a shift from managed dominance to naked entitlement. In an era of declining hegemony, empire sheds its manners.

This is what American power looks like when it feels cornered.

Colonial afterlives and the question of aovereignty

For nearly three centuries, Greenland lived under Danish colonial rule. Even after home rule in 1979 and expanded self-government in 2009, foreign affairs and defense remain in Copenhagen’s hands. Formally, Greenlanders are Danish citizens; historically, they are a colonized Indigenous people struggling to reclaim political agency.

Independence commands wide support across the island. But it is imagined as decolonization, not realignment. Polls show an overwhelming rejection of becoming part of the United States. The phrase repeated in Nuuk and beyond—“Greenland belongs to Greenlanders”—is not only nationalist. It is anti-imperial.

Trump’s proposal attempts to inherit colonial authority, not dismantle it. It treats Denmark’s lingering control as transferable property, and Greenlanders as silent extras in a transaction between powers.

The Arctic as strategic chokepoint

From Washington’s perspective, Greenland is a geostrategic hinge. The shortest missile routes between Russia and North America pass over the Arctic. At Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule, U.S. forces operate early-warning systems central to nuclear strategy. Greenland is already embedded in the architecture of American war planning.

But militarization is intensifying. Russia is expanding Arctic bases. China declares itself a “near-Arctic state” and invests in polar infrastructure. For U.S. strategists, the Arctic is no longer a margin. It is a future front.

Control of Greenland would mean control of radar, airspace, sea lanes, and the logistical spine of any northern conflict. In imperial logic, sovereignty matters less for its people than for its platforms.

This is not defense of territory. It is defense of dominance.

Climate collapse and polar capital

What turns strategy into obsession is climate breakdown. Melting ice is opening shipping routes and exposing mineral deposits long trapped beneath permafrost. Greenland holds rare earths, uranium, and critical minerals vital for weapons systems, batteries, and green technologies.

As Washington seeks to break dependence on Chinese supply chains, Greenland appears as a substitute quarry—an extractive frontier at the top of the world.

From a Marxist perspective, this is accumulation by polar dispossession. Ecological catastrophe becomes the condition for new circuits of profit. What capital destroyed in the south, it now exploits in the north.

Trump’s insistence that the U.S. wants Greenland “not for minerals” is ideological theatre. Empire never separates military command from economic capture. Security clears the ground; capital moves in.

Security as empire’s alibi

“National security” is the magic phrase that dissolves law, silences democracy, and sanctifies coercion. In Greenland’s case, it functions as an alibi for annexation.

Yet the security of Greenlanders—facing housing shortages, social dislocation, and the legacies of forced modernization—barely figures in Washington’s calculus. Nor does the security of Arctic ecosystems already pushed to the brink.

What is being secured is U.S. primacy: the right to dominate strategic spaces before rivals do. Security here does not mean safety. It means command.

Empire calls it protection. The protected are never asked.

A long imperial desire

Trump’s bid is only the latest episode in a century-long American pursuit. After buying Alaska in 1867, Secretary of State William Seward sought Greenland as well. In 1946, Washington offered Denmark $100 million to purchase the island, citing Cold War necessity. During World War II, the U.S. occupied Greenland and never fully relinquished its military foothold.

What changes with Trump is not the ambition but the tone. Where earlier administrations relied on treaties and bases, Trump revives the language of purchase and possession. He makes explicit what imperial management usually hides.

This is empire without diplomacy, empire without shame.

Law, hypocrisy, and the Atlantic order

Annexation by coercion violates the UN Charter and the principle of self-determination. Greenland is not terra nullius. It is a self-governing society whose people have the right to decide their future. Denmark’s insistence that the island is not for sale is a defense of international law against imperial appetite.

But Trump’s threats expose the fragility of that order. When a powerful state treats law as optional, rules become moral theatre for the weak.

The episode also lays bare NATO’s hierarchy. If a loyal ally’s territory can be publicly targeted, then the Atlantic alliance is not a community of equals but a chain of command. Empire demands obedience even from friends.

Greenlandic refusal and decolonial politics

Across Greenland, leaders and citizens answer with a quiet but firm no. Independence, they argue, must be built by Greenlanders, for Greenlanders. Not imposed by Washington. Not negotiated over their heads.

When Greenlanders say Trump treats them like something to be bought, they name the commodity logic at the heart of empire. To be purchased is to be stripped of political subjecthood.

Their refusal is decolonial. It insists that land, culture, and destiny are not transferable assets in great-power games. In that sense, Greenland becomes a frontline in the global struggle against the normalization of imperial entitlement.

Against the Arctic empire

The scramble for Greenland reveals the future taking shape: a world where climate collapse fuels militarized competition, where new frontiers are carved from planetary ruin, and where empire speaks openly again.

Against this stands a simple principle: self-determination over subordination, cooperation over conquest, survival over supremacy.

Greenland is not a base. Not a mine. Not a bargaining chip. It is a society.

When Trump says, “We have to have it,” he speaks for an order that believes everything can be owned. When Greenlanders reply, “We decide our own future,” they speak for another world struggling to be born.

The task of the people is to choose that side.

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