The Greenland Grab: How America Would Trade a Liberal Order for One Island

Washington's Greenland Gambit Would Break the Liberal Order It Claims to Defend

When a superpower starts talking about taking land from an ally “if necessary, by force,” something deeper is going wrong than one more Trumpian provocation. The renewed talk in Washington about seizing Greenland is not just a bad Arctic real‑estate deal. It is a frontal attack on the very liberal order that has made the United States rich, powerful, and trusted for three generations.

From a liberal point of view, that is the real scandal. It is not only that Greenland would suffer. It is that America would trade a consent‑based system of alliances, free commerce, and monetary privilege for a world in which it looks like just another empire grabbing land because it can—inviting everyone else to start planning for life after U.S. hegemony.

Greenland belongs to its people

The starting point should not be Pentagon maps; it should be Greenlanders as self‑governing individuals and communities.

Greenland is not some ownerless Arctic prize. It is an autonomous territory within the Danish realm, with its own parliament and government, and a long‑running debate about how far and how fast to move toward full independence. European leaders have now gone out of their way to say the quiet part out loud: “Greenland belongs to its people,” not to Denmark’s government, and certainly not to a foreign president’s wish list.

That phrase is not just moral rhetoric. It is the essence of the Western norm of self‑determination—the idea that borders rest, in the end, on the consent of the governed, not on the desires of big states. That norm is written into the U.N. Charter and has been defended, at least in public, by every U.S. administration since 1945.

Classical liberalism takes that norm seriously because it starts from individuals, not “civilizations.” People own themselves, then they own property, then they combine into voluntary associations—up to and including nations. When Washington floats the possibility of acquiring Greenland “one way or another,” or lets aides say that “the military is always an option,” it is not just being “tough.” It is toying with the idea that some people’s self‑ownership is negotiable when a great power’s strategic planners get creative.

The security the U.S. already has

The irony is that, in security terms, the United States already has almost everything it wants in Greenland—by agreement.

Under a long‑standing 1951 defense treaty with Denmark, the U.S. operates the Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule), a crucial hub for early‑warning radar, missile defense, and space surveillance pointed at the Arctic and Russia. Denmark and Greenland have, in recent years, expanded their own Arctic patrols, surveillance, and infrastructure precisely to make NATO more credible in the North Atlantic and Arctic.

If you actually care about American security, this is close to ideal:

· The U.S. enjoys basing rights and strategic depth without having to administer a vast, sparsely populated, climate‑harsh island.

· Danish and Greenlandic authorities absorb much of the political risk and daily governance burden.

· Allies share costs and legitimacy, and the arrangement rests on treaties, not threats.

Analysts who have looked closely at the “buy or seize Greenland” idea point out that owning Greenland adds little marginal capability on top of these existing agreements. What it adds is a massive new bill—fiscal, political, and military—for running and pacifying a territory that would, overnight, become the most contested patch of ice on earth.

In other words, from a classical liberal perspective, the current cooperative regime is the kind of bargain you want: mutual gain, contract, predictability. Throwing that away for the symbolism of conquest is not strategic thinking. It is a status play.

How to blow up NATO in one easy move

The deeper risk is not Greenland itself; it is what a land grab would do to the alliance system that underwrites American power.

NATO was built on a simple promise: members will defend each other, and they will not redraw each other’s borders by force. That is what makes it a club of relatively high‑trust states rather than an armed truce. When a U.S. president and his advisers start openly musing about using the military to take a piece of a NATO ally, they are not just being impolite—they are sawing at the branch the United States is sitting on.

European leaders are treating this as exactly that kind of threat. A recent joint statement from major European capitals stressed that “only Greenland and Denmark can decide their future,” a diplomatic way of saying that any U.S. attempt to force their hands would amount to an attack on the basic terms of the alliance itself. Danish officials have been blunter in broadcast interviews: an American strike on Denmark would be “the end of everything” NATO is supposed to stand for.

Think through the incentives. If the U.S. shows it is willing to coerce a small democratic ally to get what it wants:

· Every European government has to plan for a world where U.S. power is a risk factor, not just a protective umbrella.

· Political appetite grows for more independent European defense, diplomacy, and sanctions policy.

· Space opens for Russia and China to present themselves, cynically, as defenders of “small nations” against American overreach.

From a classical liberal angle, this is a textbook case of time inconsistency and broken promises. America built a prosperous order by convincing other countries that aligning with it was better than balancing against it. Jeopardizing that for one territory—one that is already functionally integrated into Western defense—is a terrible trade.

Hegemony runs on trust—and the dollar

Now connect this to something Americans feel in their wallets: the status of the U.S. dollar.

The dollar’s dominance as the world’s main reserve and invoicing currency sometimes gets treated as a law of nature. It is not. It rests on a bundle of advantages: the size and depth of U.S. financial markets, yes, but also an ecosystem of trade, alliances, and legal norms that make everyone else willing to hold and use dollars.

Recent analyses from central banks and think tanks point out that trust in U.S. institutions and restraint is a major part of that “exorbitant privilege.” Governments and firms hold dollars because they expect the U.S. to keep markets open, respect contracts, and behave in broadly predictable ways, especially toward allies.

A Greenland land grab would send the opposite message:

· That Washington is willing to tear up NATO norms and the U.N. Charter when it suits a short‑term political agenda.

· That smaller allies cannot rely on the U.S. to respect their territorial integrity if they stand in the way of some strategic vision.

· That the “rules‑based order” is, at bottom, just a sophisticated marketing slogan for American power.

If you are sitting in Berlin, Paris, or Brussels, watching U.S. officials discuss Greenland as a target of opportunity, you do not have to hate America to start hedging. You simply have to do your job. That means:

· Building out euro‑denominated payment systems that can bypass U.S. control.

· Deepening European sanctions and financial tools that do not rely on U.S. law.

· Gradually diversifying reserves away from the dollar into a mix of euros, other currencies, and non‑currency assets like gold.

Financial commentators are already describing a potential NATO crisis over Greenland as a “black swan” risk for Treasuries and the dollar: not an overnight collapse, but a shock that accelerates existing trends toward de‑dollarization at the margins.

From a classical liberal perspective, this is again about rules vs. force. A hegemon that behaves as if rules do not bind it should not be surprised when other actors start looking for alternatives to its money and its courts.

The cost to Greenland—and to liberalism

None of this is to minimize what a U.S. seizure would do to Greenland itself.

Greenland’s own foreign and security strategy in recent years has been built around the principle “nothing about us without us”: more Western investment and military presence, but on terms negotiated with local authorities and with an eye to independence down the line. That strategy tries to balance three things:

· Managing pressure from the U.S., Denmark, the EU, and China.

· Protecting local communities already dealing with climate change and social problems.

· Leveraging natural resources and shipping opportunities without becoming a pawn of any single patron.

A forcible annexation would blow that up. It would likely provoke resistance, civil disobedience, and a new anti‑base movement in Greenland. It would freeze or scare off long‑term investment in minerals and infrastructure because nobody quite knows what government will be in charge, or what sanctions and countersanctions might follow.

But the damage would go beyond Greenland. For many people in the Global South, the word “colonialism” would suddenly feel current again, not as a historical accusation against Europe, but as a live description of American behavior in the Arctic. Commentaries are already making exactly that connection.

For classical liberals, who have spent decades arguing that free trade, open markets, and liberal democracy are the anti‑colonial answer—that wealth comes from consent and exchange, not conquest—this would be a devastating self‑inflicted wound.

The better kind of power

It is easy to say “this will never happen,” and perhaps it will not. There is significant pushback inside the U.S. national‑security establishment, and serious policy analysts have already laid out, in plain terms, why “Seizing Greenland Is Worse Than a Bad Deal.”

But the fact that something so obviously at odds with liberal principles can keep coming back in mainstream debate is a warning sign. It suggests that parts of the American right are drifting from a vision of the U.S. as a contractual hegemon—first among equals in a voluntary order—toward a vision of the U.S. as a straight‑up empire that takes what it wants and lets the lawyers clean up later.

A liberal, cosmopolitan foreign policy should reject that drift. It should say, clearly:

· Security gains that depend on tearing up treaties with free societies are not real gains; they are hidden losses.

· The United States gets more value from being trusted than from being feared, especially among other rich democracies.

· The right way to “secure” Greenland is to keep deepening cooperative defense arrangements with Denmark and Greenland’s own elected government, not to threaten them.

The U.S. does not need to own Greenland to defend the Arctic. It needs Greenlanders and Danes to want it there. That is what gives Pituffik and the broader Arctic posture their legitimacy, and what keeps NATO from fracturing under the stress of great‑power competition in the North.

The real test of American greatness is not whether it can plant a flag on more ice. It is whether, at a moment of rising rivalry and temptation, it can remember what made its leadership attractive in the first place: a commitment to law over whim, to bargains over bullying, and to the simple principle that Greenland—and every other place on the map—belongs, first, to its people.