Donald Trump

It would alienate allies, impose US rule on an unwilling population, and blatantly violate both US and international law.The plan to impose tariffs on nations opposing the seizure is also illegal and harmful.

Ilya Somin | 1.18.2026 11:00 AM

Donald Trump's plan to seize Greenland has the rare distinction of simultaneously combining grave injustice, massive illegality, and extreme counterproductive stupidity. The same is true of his more recent effort to impose tariffs on eight European countries opposing the plan.

Let's start with first principles. As the Declaration of Independence states, government should be based on the "consent of the governed." No real-world government is fully consensual. But a US conquest would make the government of Greenland less consensual than it is now. Polls indicate some 85% of Greenlanders oppose annexation by the US, while only 6% support it. In the 2025 Greenland election, the overwhelming majority of them voted for parties that support either independence or continued rule by Denmark.

Forcible annexation could perhaps be justified if it were the only way to stop some kind of severe oppression. But there is nothing like that in Greenland. Nor is there any reason think that US rule would be significantly better in terms of protecting various human rights than the current combination of Danish rule and extensive regional autonomy.

In addition to being unjust, US conquest would also obviously be illegal. It would, in fact, be a war of aggression similar to Russia's assault on Ukraine.  The Nuremberg tribunal ruled that starting a war of aggression is "the supreme international crime," and this was one of the main charges on which many of the Nazi defendants were convicted.  Denmark has owned Greenland for centuries and its sovereignty over that territory is universally recognized, including by the US in a 1917 agreement, in which the US accepted the "extension" of Danish control over all of Greenland.

The initiation of war - perhaps even an illegal war - can sometimes be justified for the purpose of removing a brutally oppressive regime. But, again, Danish rule in Greenland is nothing like that.

A war of........

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