Greenland isn’t a mall, and the current president doesn’t get a loyalty discount.

Greenland continues to return to the center of America’s strategic imagination. Most recently, President Donald Trump again cast the island as vital to U.S. national security—and, in remarks read by many as deliberately elastic, seemed to leave open the prospect of using economic or even military leverage to secure greater control. Those comments land in an Arctic transformed: warming seas, newly navigable routes, and a scramble among great powers to project presence at the top of the world. Greenland’s story is inseparable from that broader contest, but it is also rooted in a long, fraught history of colonial rule, Danish stewardship, and a modern quest for self-rule.

If talk of “acquiring” Greenland sounds novel, it isn’t. In the nineteenth century, Secretary of State William H. Seward—fresh off the Alaska purchase—considered adding both Greenland and Iceland to the American map. In the decades since, U.S. officials have regularly revisited the idea, with justifications morphing to fit the moment: prospective mineral wealth; hemispheric defense during the First World War; the Rainbow 4 planning assumptions of the Second; and, in the Cold War, a formalized military presence under the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement. The aims ranged from protecting sea lanes and the Panama Canal to preventing hostile powers from turning the Arctic into a launchpad. The thread running through these efforts is constant: location confers leverage.

That logic is sharper now. Russia is rebuilding polar military capacity and planting flags—literal and figurative—across the High North. China, calling itself a “near-Arctic state,” has expanded its presence through scientific stations, shipping routes along the Northern Sea Route, and mining proposals aimed at securing critical minerals. Against that backdrop, U.S. planners view Greenland as both the forward edge of North American early-warning systems and a storehouse of rare earths essential to electronics, satellites, and defense technologies. Strategy and geology intersect on the ice.

Public fascination last spiked in 2019, when President Trump floated the idea of purchasing Greenland, prompting swift rebukes from Nuuk and Copenhagen and puzzled looks from other Arctic capitals. But the fixation stretches back much further. As early as 1868, American policymakers began exploring ways to incorporate Greenland into their sphere of influence. In 1946, Washington reportedly offered Denmark $100 million for the island—an overture Copenhagen declined, even as it later accepted a substantial American presence. Thule Air Base, established in the 1950s, remains a cornerstone of U.S. missile-warning and space-surveillance networks, a reminder that Greenland already sits inside the American security architecture.

For Denmark, however, Greenland is not a bargaining chip but an integral part of the Kingdom. The relationship dates back to the era of Norse settlements and the protracted legal disputes with Norway over eastern Greenland. In modern times, Greenland’s status shifted to that of a Danish province in 1953. Copenhagen retains the lead on foreign affairs and defense for the realm and routinely repeats the mantra that “Greenland is not for sale.” Domestic politics help explain the insistence. Sovereignty in the Arctic carries outsized symbolic weight in Denmark, and any hint of back-room dealing over a third of the Kingdom’s landmass would be politically radioactive.

Greenland, for its part, has steadily widened the circle of its autonomy. The 2009 Self-Rule Act expanded home rule across social and economic spheres, while recognizing Greenlanders as a people under international law—a crucial marker of self-determination—even as defense and foreign policy remained under Danish control. Political leaders in Nuuk balance two imperatives: resisting external pressure that could erode their culture and autonomy, and welcoming diversified investment that might reduce their dependence on Copenhagen. The result is a cautious openness—Greenland seeks partners, not patrons.

Others are watching closely. Russian officials have accused President Trump of entertaining a forced transfer that would flout international law. China, meanwhile, has pushed to deepen economic ties—especially in mining—sharpening worries in Washington and Copenhagen about Beijing’s influence at the Arctic’s doorway. The island, in other words, has become a proxy arena for great-power competition, a place where infrastructure, investment, and influence are offered with strategic strings attached.

International law, however, places high walls around annexation. Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights enshrines the right of all peoples to self-determination—the ability to “freely determine” their political status. Arctic governance norms and domestic legal frameworks likewise give pride of place to Indigenous voices, guaranteeing communities the ability to shape their social, political, and economic futures. Above all looms the United Nations Charter: Article 2(4) prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. For a NATO ally to force the issue in Greenland would not only collide with those foundational rules, but it would also reverberate across the alliance.

These constraints aren’t airy abstractions. The Arctic Council—a forum for the eight Arctic states and Indigenous permanent participants—operates on the principles of cooperation and consensus. Russia and Canada, among others, have already signaled opposition to any strong-arm approach in Greenland. In courtrooms, precedent also carries significant weight. In 1986, the International Court of Justice held in Nicaragua v. United States that U.S. support for unlawful operations violated international obligations and ordered reparations—a reminder that power does not immunize a great power from legal judgment. The lesson for the Arctic is clear: coercion comes with a legal price.

Recent history offers another, starker warning. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea—and the war that followed—triggered sweeping sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and catastrophic human costs. Any U.S. attempt to exert control over Greenland would almost certainly invite condemnation, alienate allies, and result in a complex web of economic and political penalties that could outweigh any perceived strategic gain. The supposed dividends of dominance may quickly appear as liabilities.

Even a voluntary transfer would be anything but simple. Under Danish constitutional practice, a change of sovereignty would demand approval by both the Folketing and Greenland’s Inatsisartut—scrutiny that would haul into view the profound cultural and geographic complexities at stake. Greenlanders themselves, who in 2009 codified a clear preference for self-rule within the realm rather than absorption by another power, would have to be persuaded that joining the United States would advance their autonomy. That is a high bar. The politics of identity and language, the role of resource revenues, and the distribution of social services would all be on the table.

Denmark’s resistance would be stiff. The island underwrites Copenhagen’s global profile in Arctic affairs, from shipping to climate diplomacy. The European Union—acting indirectly through its alignment with Denmark on northern policy—would also have strategic reasons to oppose any transfer, given Greenland’s bridge position between North America and Europe, its role in emerging shipping lanes, and its deposits of rare earths critical to European industry. Brussels’ calculus is straightforward: losing political influence over Greenland would weaken Europe’s hand in a region central to its energy transition and trade.

History, moreover, isn’t entirely on Washington’s side. Alaska and Hawaii entered the Union after long political processes and complex negotiations. However imperfect, those paths involved consent and compromise rather than outright coercion. The American experience demonstrates that absorption is slow, fraught, and shaped by both cultural and strategic considerations. Those lessons are hard to square with any fast-tracked bid to fold Greenland into a different constitutional order—especially when the people most affected have already signaled their preference for autonomy.

None of this is to deny Greenland’s pull or the reality that the United States will remain deeply engaged there. Thule Air Base remains a cornerstone of North American defense. Joint research, investment in critical-mineral supply chains, and infrastructure projects that respect local priorities all make sense and can be pursued without upending the legal order. There is a difference between being a committed ally and neighbor and being a would-be owner.

Step back, and the Greenland debate is about more than one island. It is a prism through which to read the friction between great-power ambition, international legal guardrails, and the right of peoples to chart their own political futures. Denmark’s long connection to Greenland has, for all its complications, provided a measure of economic and political stability. President Trump’s latest musings reignite an old argument about who gets to decide the Arctic’s fate—and on what terms.

A forcible U.S. annexation would set a dangerous precedent—one that other powers could cite to justify their own land grabs. That path points toward a more anarchic world, where might makes right and global rules are optional. The alternative is harder but sounder: respecting Greenlanders’ choices, adhering to the law, and employing sober diplomacy. The island’s future should be determined in Nuuk, with Copenhagen and Washington paying close attention. Stability and legality in the Arctic are not abstract concepts; they are the essential conditions for sustainable development, Indigenous rights, and credible security cooperation.

The future of Greenland belongs to Greenlanders. That is the through-line running from Seward’s day to today’s headlines, from Cold War basing agreements to modern debates over rare earths and shipping lanes. The United States can and should remain a central partner in the Arctic—investing, cooperating, and deterring—without mistaking partnership for possession. In an era of renewed rivalry, holding that line is not a weakness. It is the point of the rules-based order that the United States helped build, and that it still claims to defend.