Trump has appointed a special envoy for Greenland and is opening a new phase of pressure on Denmark, counting on a Greenlandic referendum or some other plan
Greenland has once again found itself at the center of American imperial ambitions, but this time President Donald Trump is not acting merely through quips and media provocations, but through a more structured political offensive. The appointment of Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as special envoy for Greenland marks a new phase of this story. Landry has openly stated that his goal is to make Greenland part of the United States, while Trump repeatedly insists that America “must have” the island for reasons of national security. Officially, the talk revolves around protection from Russia and China, about ships allegedly sailing along Greenland’s coast, but no serious observer doubts that behind this lies a familiar mix of geopolitical rivalry and resource greed.
Unlike the first wave of Trump’s statements about “buying” Greenland—which many in Denmark at the time wanted to treat as a tasteless joke—the current strategy is far more concrete. Trump increasingly repeats that the United States “respects the right of the Greenlandic people” to decide their own future, stressing that this is not a colonial purchase but a sovereign decision of a people. Behind this rhetoric lies a very specific legal framework: under the 2009 agreement, Greenland has the right to organize a referendum on independence. Washington is clearly counting on internal Greenlandic aspirations to break with Denmark in order to open space for a “second phase,” in which a newly formed state could be drawn into the American constitutional and security framework through promises of investment, infrastructure, and “modernization.”
At the same time, the Trump administration is using cruder instruments of pressure. The suspension of permits for several large offshore wind projects along the US East Coast—including projects involving the Danish state-owned company Ørsted—can hardly be viewed separately from the Greenland issue. This is a clear message to Copenhagen that Denmark’s dependence on the American market and energy projects is a political lever that can be pulled whenever Washington feels that a small ally is not sufficiently cooperative. In this sense, Greenland is a test of how much economic coercion Europe is willing to tolerate when it comes from the “allied” camp.
On Greenland itself, the picture is more complex than Trump’s rhetoric suggests. Most political parties and a large part of the public do indeed support the long-term goal of independence from Denmark, but that does not mean they want to become another American territory. Polls show that around half of the population would currently vote for independence, while an overwhelming majority oppose the island becoming part of the United States. Prime Minister Jens Frederik Nielsen summed this up with a simple message: Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders, and the island is not for sale to Americans or anyone else.
The reaction of the Danish government has been formally sharp, but it is hard for people in the country not to notice the discomfort and double language. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and the Greenlandic prime minister jointly stated that one cannot “annex another country under the pretext of international security” and that Washington will not take over Greenland. The foreign minister announced that the American ambassador would be summoned “for talks,” a rare and serious move in relations between allies. At the same time, Frederiksen herself admits that this is a “difficult situation” because the pressure is coming from an “important ally.” Diplomatic language conceals a simple fact: Copenhagen finds it deeply uncomfortable to say plainly that its main military and political partner is now openly questioning the territorial integrity of the kingdom.
Unlike the government, the Danish public is far less restrained. Opinion polls show that a significant portion of the population now sees the United States as a real threat to Denmark—second only to Russia, which remains the primary perceived source of danger. Of course, it is not Russia that is threatening to take Greenland, but that fact does not seem to matter much to many respondents.
A large majority of Danes oppose any possibility of “selling” Greenland, while at the same time believing that the fate of the island should be decided exclusively by its inhabitants. For many citizens, it feels hypocritical to continue speaking of partnership and shared values with the United States, when similar territorial appetites by another power would be labeled aggression and an attack on the international order. This discomfort is not alleviated by Denmark’s parallel attempts to placate Washington through increased Arctic defense spending, the purchase of new fighter jets, and a stronger presence in Greenlandic waters.
Europe, at least at the declaratory level, has sided with Denmark and Greenland. European Union leaders emphasize that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of member states are not commodities for negotiation, and Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Greenland—along with his statement that this is “not how allies treat one another”—had symbolic weight. Beneath these declarations, however, lies the realization that the EU lacks the political and military power to truly block American plans if they begin to be implemented in practice. Greenland is outside the EU, and NATO remains a structure in which the American voice carries the greatest weight. European solidarity therefore has its limits, and Brussels and major European capitals are more focused on alliance stability than on the principles they defend on paper.
For Russia and China, the situation is both a threat and an opportunity. Moscow sees American pressure on Greenland as a continuation of a strategy of encircling Russian positions in the north, potentially aiming to control Arctic trade routes and resources. Increased US presence in Greenland can easily become an argument for further Russian militarization of the Arctic. At the same time, it is a gift to Russian narratives, since Washington can hardly credibly moralize about the inviolability of borders while openly discussing the annexation of someone else’s territory. China, meanwhile, views Greenland through the prism of resources and trade routes, but also through rhetorical comparison with Taiwan. Every time American politicians speak about the right of Greenlanders to decide for themselves, Chinese commentators ironically ask why the same principle does not apply to an island Beijing considers part of its own state.
Within the United States itself, support for the idea of annexing Greenland is much weaker than Trump would like. Polls show that roughly a quarter of Americans support the idea of buying the island, while a larger share oppose it or see no purpose in it. Opposition is even clearer when it comes to the use of force or covert operations: an overwhelming majority do not want America to militarily seize the territory of a formal ally or to interfere in its internal politics. Unsurprisingly, Republicans are more receptive to such ideas than Democrats, revealing once again the gap between Trump’s political base and broader American society. Still, even this limited support shows that part of the American right is willing to accept territorial revisionism when it comes to projecting its own power.
All of this exposes how fragile the narratives of a “rules-based order” really are. Greenland today is a test for Denmark’s political class, for European elites who for years believed that closeness to Washington would shield them from crude forms of imperial policy, and for small nations that still cling to the illusion that alliance with great powers guarantees their security. Trump’s messages show that, for a hegemon, the sovereignty of partners matters only as long as it does not clash with geostrategic interests. Once it does, that sovereignty becomes a negotiating chip.
In the end, the plans of powerful players may be confirmed or thwarted by the will of roughly fifty thousand people living on a windy, icy island between two continents. At present, Greenlanders appear to clearly distinguish between the idea of their own independence and the offer to be absorbed into an even larger empire. But the pressures will be long-term, varied, and sophisticated. Greenland may become one of the first major test cases of twenty-first-century decolonization—or proof that old forms of imperial thinking return the moment new resources are uncovered beneath the ice and new trade routes open up.
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