Greenland is not a prize: why both the US and Denmark must step back

When elephants fight, as the saying goes, it is the grass that suffers.

The renewed remarks by United States President Donald Trump that Greenland is "needed" by Washington for security reasons have once again dragged a largely Indigenous people into the crosshairs of great-power politics. 

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Denmark's unusually sharp response - that any US attempt to annex or attack Greenland would effectively spell the end of NATO - has exposed not only a transatlantic rift, but a deeper moral and historical contradiction that neither Washington nor Copenhagen seems willing to confront. 

In the escalating exchange, European allies have lined up to insist that the United States should "stay out" of Greenland. 

Yet this framing misses the more fundamental question that must be asked: shouldn't both the United States and Denmark stay out of Greenland?

Trump's argument is not new. 

The United States has long viewed Greenland through a purely strategic lens. 

As early as 1946, shortly after World War II, the United States offered to buy Greenland from Denmark, recognizing its military and geopolitical value in the emerging Cold War. 

That offer was declined, but Washington continued to maintain a significant presence, including the Thule Air Base, a key site for early-warning missile defense and Arctic surveillance. 

Over the decades, Greenland's strategic importance only grew, driven by Arctic shipping routes, access to rare earth minerals, and increasing competition with China and Russia in the region. 

Trump's repeated statements about the "need" for Greenland echo these longstanding calculations, repackaged in the language of modern geopolitics.

What is new is the brazenness with which this interest is now articulated, as though strategic need alone grants entitlement. 

When a US president speaks of Greenland as a security asset rather than a society of people with political agency, he echoes an older imperial language that treated territory as inert space to be acquired, traded, or defended, regardless of who lived there.

Denmark's reaction, while understandable in diplomatic terms, is no less revealing. 

By framing any US move on Greenland as an existential threat to NATO, Copenhagen casts itself as Greenland's protector and rightful sovereign, rather than as a former colonial power whose authority over the island remains contested and deeply resented. 

Denmark's outrage is not rooted in a sudden concern for Greenlandic self-determination, but in the defence of its own sovereignty and standing within the Western alliance. 

In doing so, it inadvertently reinforces the very logic it claims to oppose: that Greenland's fate should be decided in foreign capitals.

This is the central hypocrisy now on display. 

The United States treats Greenland as a strategic prize. 

Denmark treats it as sovereign territory under threat. 

Neither starts from the most important premise of all—that Greenland belongs to Greenlanders.

Greenland's colonial history matters here. 

For centuries, Denmark exercised control over the island through paternalistic governance, economic monopolies, forced assimilation, and policies that systematically undermined Inuit language, culture, and autonomy. 

While formal colonial status ended in 1953, and self-government was expanded in 2009, the legacy of that history remains palpable. 

Many Greenlanders resent Danish dominance, not as an abstract grievance, but as lived experience: in language hierarchies, economic dependence, political asymmetry, and decisions made elsewhere that shape their lives.

At the same time, Greenlanders have not rushed headlong into independence. 

This is often misunderstood, particularly by outside observers who mistake caution for consent. 

The reality is more complex. 

Denmark's continued role is tolerated by many not because it is desired, but because it currently underwrites public services, provides economic stability, and absorbs responsibilities that a small population of roughly 56,000 people cannot easily assume overnight. 

This is not endorsement; it is pragmatism born of structural constraint.

That distinction matters profoundly. 

To grudgingly accept Denmark is not to reject independence. 

On the contrary, most Greenlandic political parties and much of the public regard independence as the long-term goal. 

What they debate is not whether Greenland should be sovereign, but how and when sovereignty can be achieved without plunging the country into economic or geopolitical vulnerability. 

This makes Trump's rhetoric all the more dangerous. 

By injecting US power politics into an already delicate process, Washington risks turning Greenland's cautious path to independence into a battlefield for competing external interests.

Denmark, too, bears responsibility. 

If Copenhagen genuinely accepts Greenland's right to self-determination—as it claims to under the 2009 Self-Government Act—then its role should be to facilitate a responsible exit from control, not to entrench itself as Greenland's permanent guardian against other powers. 

True decolonisation is not measured by how loudly a former colonial power defends territory from rivals, but by how seriously it prepares that territory to stand on its own.

This is where the call for both the US and Denmark to "stay out" of Greenland must be properly understood. 

It does not mean abandonment, indifference, or the sudden withdrawal of support. 

It means stepping back from control while stepping forward in responsibility. 

It means rejecting the logic that Greenland's value lies primarily in its geography, minerals, or military utility, and affirming instead that its future must be shaped by the will and interests of its people.

For the United States, staying out means abandoning any language—implicit or explicit—of acquisition, annexation, or entitlement. 

It means recognising that security cooperation is legitimate only if it is freely negotiated with Greenlandic authorities, not imposed through Denmark or justified by global rivalry. 

It means treating Greenland as a political subject, not a strategic object.

For Denmark, staying out means something more demanding. 

It means using its current position not to defend indefinite authority, but to actively dismantle the structures that make Greenland dependent. 

This includes investing in education, governance capacity, diversified economic development, and international representation in ways that are explicitly designed to make Danish involvement obsolete over time. 

Anything less risks transforming "partnership" into a softer, more palatable form of permanence.

The NATO dimension only underscores the urgency of this shift. 

An alliance founded on collective defence and shared democratic values is ill-equipped to manage disputes rooted in colonial legacies and Indigenous sovereignty. 

If NATO finds itself destabilised by competing claims over Greenland, that is not a failure of Greenlandic politics, but of Western powers' inability to move beyond imperial habits of thought.

Ultimately, Greenland should not be forced to choose between Copenhagen and Washington, between an old colonial relationship and a new strategic dependency. 

That is a false choice imposed from outside. 

The real choice - the only legitimate one - is whether Greenlanders are given the space, support, and respect necessary to decide their own future.

In that sense, the most principled position is not simply that the United States should stay out of Greenland, but that Denmark should, too—not by turning its back, but by finally letting go.

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