President Donald Trump’s renewed bid to acquire Kalaallit Nunaat, also known as Greenland, is not adequately explained by the immediate benefits that possession of this country would give to the United States. Instead, this crisis is better explained in terms of the Trump administration’s political project, which seeks to reinvent the United States’ identity as a great power in an emerging post-rules-based international order. During his Davos speech, US President Donald Trump reaffirmed his desire to acquire Kalaallit Nunaat, citing that the US is a “great power, much greater than people even understand”. Trump also underscored that the US needed Greenland because it is a “part of North America, on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere,” which is a “core national security interest of the United States of America”. Trump reaffirmed the same security logic that was presented several months earlier, in the Trump administration’s November 2025 National Security Strategy which proclaimed the entire Western Hemisphere as the US sphere of influence under a “‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” (White House 2025, 5). Just several weeks later, the Trump administration intervened in Venezuela. The Trump administration’s sphere of influence discourse is not an epiphenomenon but the driver of the US’ newfound expansionism in the Arctic.

This article will first examine Greenland’s importance for the US in the context of the country’s colonial past and evolving political status. Then, it will argue that narrowly instrumental materialist explanations about security, resources, and China/Russia influence are unsatisfying. Instead, it will advance an interpretation of Trump’s Greenland campaign as a project of sphere‑of‑influence building and domestic legitimacy, drawing on IR literature on international status and state mythmaking. Finally, it will consider what the developing saga around Greenland means for Greenland’s future and for the future of the international order.

Greenland’s colonial legacy and the United States

Kalaallit Nunaat, or Greenland, is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark located on the world’s largest island with an area of ca. 2.2 million km² (836,330 sq mi). The crisis unfolding around Greenland is inseparable from its colonial past and present. Through the colonial gaze, the island’s value lies in its territory and its resources: its vastness, sparseness, and strategic location between the North American and European continents. It overlooks the fact that the country is home to 57,000 Greenlanders, the majority of whom are Indigenous Inuit. Paleo-Inuit populations were the first humans to arrive in Greenland around 2500 BCE, while the ancestors of the modern Inuit came to the island in the 13th century. Like the rest of the Arctic, Greenland was colonized by a European power; in this case, Denmark established control in the 18th century.

The US designs on Greenland are not new. As part of the North American continent, Greenland falls under the Monroe Doctrine, an American principle first declared in 1823 that stated the US would not tolerate European powers establishing new colonies in the Western Hemisphere. It was only at the end of the 19th century that the Monroe Doctrine was reinterpreted as an expansionist and exclusionist principle “used to justify American interventionism and ultimately empire”, paving the way for the recognition of the US as a great power (Murray 2019, 147). The original 1823 formulation did not envisage the Arctic explicitly. In the 19th century, US Secretary of State Seward, who negotiated the Alaska Purchase in 1867, dreamt of annexing Greenland and Iceland to the young American empire and began negotiations to purchase them from Denmark. A State Department report concluded in 1868 that the US “should purchase Iceland and Greenland, but especially the latter” for “the political and commercial” reasons. Back then, as today, the need to acquire Greenland was motivated by a hostile external great power: the United Kingdom.

The United States continued to entertain an idea of colonizing parts of Greenland under the principle of effective occupation, but finally recognized Danish sovereignty over Greenland in 1916 after the United States purchased the Danish West Indies (the Virgin Islands). Just days after Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, U.S. senators considered the idea of purchasing the island again, with more radical voices advocating outright annexation—but the idea that the United States would illegally use military force to expand its borders into an already occupied Denmark was out of the question. Instead, the United States, with the permission of Danish Minister Kauffmann, occupied the island protectively, while recognizing it as “a Danish colony”. The US relinquished control of Greenland following the liberation of Denmark, but American bases remained on the island per the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement, as the island effectively remained a part of the US and North American security architecture through NATO.

The acquisition of Greenland is not about narrow material interests

The US’ renewed claim to Greenland is an attempt to re-establish a sphere of influence rather than a conventional territorial grab for military bases or resources. Trump’s “‘Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” calls for “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” and seeks to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets”. This comes in sharp contrast with the previous US policy, which actively sought to counter Russian designs on a sphere of influence in Eurasia (Ferguson and Hast 2018). This change is not simply rhetorical; it is a normative claim that the US has a right to exclusive influence in the Western Hemisphere. As Hedley Bull (2002) argued, spheres of influence are recognized not just as a matter of fact, but also as a matter of right: the fact that other countries recognize a sphere of influence does not mean that they accept it as legitimate. It was the US policy not to recognize other countries’ spheres of influence, nor to declare its own sphere of influence explicitly. Before the first Trump administration (2017-2021), the US calmly observed Chinese investments in Panama and even helped broker China’s admission as the Arctic Council observer state in 2013. In response to the start of the Russian war against Ukraine in 2014, President Obama stated that “the days of empire and spheres of influence are over” and that “bigger nations must not be allowed to bully the small or impose their will at the barrel of a gun”. This changed already in 2019, when Trump for the first time proposed to purchase Greenland from Denmark in a “large real estate deal”, arguing that “strategically, for the United States, it would be nice”.

First, the acquisition of Greenland in the way proposed by President Trump is not necessary to enhance the security of the United States. Despite Donald Trump’s assurances that the US needs ownership of Greenland “for strategic national security and international security”, Greenland’s defense is not currently a military concern. Greenland’s location is indeed strategically important, but the US does not stand to gain anything new by acquiring ownership of the country. Greenland is important for the US to monitor space and air activities (potential missile........

© E-International