Prologue: Trump’s Long-Standing Interest in Greenland#

Few people paid due attention when, in 2019, Donald Trump first stated that Greenland should be part of the States. True, when surfaced, the proposal arouse some criticism, with the Greenlandic Prime Minister stating that “Greenland is not for sale” while still expressing openness towards US investments; but, even in Denmark and in Greenland, way more people treated the proposal as a blunder if not a joke. The former Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen just dismissed the idea as “an April Fool’s Day joke”; the then-newly elected Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen even declined to comment. The rest of the world either considered these statements just as one of Trump’s many quintessential brands or—more often—just ignored them.

Trump’s claims were mostly forgotten after the 2020 elections, when many people thought that Trumpism was just a temporary phase; but just after his re-election The Donald announced a takeover campaign which included the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada.

Many explanations were given to these claims: the Italian geopolitical journal Limes (one of the few public outlets which took Trump seriously), for instance, talked about a “Fortress America”; Reuters, on the other hand, stated that Trump wants to be remembered as a new William McKinley, the President who annexed the Hawaii and acquired some of the few remaining Spanish colonies such as the Philippines and Puerto Rico. But, while legacy is important for the President of a country which lives in a historical reality, and which gives a great importance to non-material factors such as power and glory, this new American expansionism is also motivated by economic and geostrategic concerns. It should be remarked that, while Trump has subsequently ruled out the use of force against Canada, and the current disputes around the Panama Canal are currently focused on the sale of some Chinese-held ports in the Canal Zone (although a future military action should not be excluded), The Donald has never ruled out the option to invade Greenland.

This second time, Trump’s claims have caused way more vocal reactions. In a highly symbolic move, the King of Denmark Frederik X changed the Royal Coat of Arms to give more prominence to Greenland, represented by a polar bear. Pretty much every single Danish politician has been vocal at refusing the perspective of selling the island, with a member of the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party—incidentally, a party whose political positions are similar to those of Trump’s on many issues and, therefore, the proof that there cannot be a “souverainist international”—attacking Trump with profanities in the EU parliament. Relations became even tenser after a spying row in August 2025, with Denmark denouncing an alleged US operation to influence Greenlandic public opinion. But, given also the relative lack of great news on the topic during the latest months, (perhaps) few people have taken Trump’s statements seriously.

At least, not before the 3rd January.

Why Venezuela Is a Prelude to Greenland#

On 3rd January 2026, with a swift operation, the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was captured by the US army. This action, dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve, follows months of embargo, attacks against alleged drug traffickers and years of sanctions and regime change attempts, from the 2002 coup attempt to the 2019 institutional crisis. The future of Venezuela is still bleak and subject to many uncertainties, and it’s not clear whether Washington will ultimately be able to bring back Venezuela into its orbit and get the desired concessions. But, from a military point, the US’s capture of Maduro has been a success.

The attack against Venezuela follows the publication of the latest National Security Strategy (henceforth NSS) in November 2025. This represents a major U-turn from the policies carried out after the end of the Cold War: Russia is no longer mentioned as an adversary, but a country with which Washington needs to re-establish strategic stability, China is described as an economic competitor, but not as an enemy, and as a whole the mere concept of a need for an American global leadership is put into question, with the ideologies that underpinned the liberal international order, from free trade to uncheckered migration, being described as ultimately damaging for the American people.

This, nevertheless, would not mean isolationism or non-interventionism, but a shift to a more transactional attitude and a retrenchment to the Western Hemisphere, through the implementation of the Monroe Doctrine to prevent non-hemispheric competitors to acquire new footholds in the American continent and rollback existing ones. The ultimate aims are to get access to key natural resources, reindustrialize the country and—last but not least—reassert US primacy on the continent.

The last one is probably the most important part of the document, which the New York Post has dubbed “the Donroe Doctrine” but which should be rather called “the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” (as the document itself does), along the line of the early-1900’s Roosevelt Corollary.

As put by an American defense expert, after all, the Monroe Doctrine is “a doctrine for all polarities”: while its initial scope was to prevent the European powers from taking advantage of the newly-independent Latin American states, its principles proved to be pretty flexible to the changes of geopolitical challengers and challenges, and we should not be surprised if the most notable applications of the Doctrine (and of its corollaries) did not take place in the multipolar world of the early-19th century, but in the bipolar one of the Cold War. The implementation of the Monroe Doctrine in the American Arctic is apparently the main news; but we should not overlook the fact that Canada has been a British dominion for most of its history, achieving its full legal independence only in 1982, and the non-interference in the Canadian affairs was fully coherent with the Monroe Doctrine. Likewise, as we explained on a previous analysis, the US’s interest in Greenland is way older than Trump.

At this point, it should appear clear that the US’s military actions in Venezuela have little to do with the liberal imperialism which drove, for instance, the 2003 Invasion of Iraq; but still, many Western leaders felt a sense of relief. Although they had to face accusations of double standards, since Trump’s attack got relatively little condemnation compared to other similar actions and someone even supported them somehow (the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for instance, stated, “We regarded Maduro as an illegitimate president and we shed no tears about the end of his regime”), Trump’s blatant act of force against an ally of Russia and China’s on the American continent has aroused the hope for a return of the White House to the role of guarantor of the Western-led liberal world order against the so-called “revisionist powers”. Few of them understood that Trump’s demonstration of force in Venezuela could have been the prelude of something bigger; but, with time passing, the signs became clearer. And they are not only related to the last NSS.

First of all, democracy played a secondary role in the official rhetorics. True, a part of the Latino diaspora had a vested interest in regime change; and this component, made of immigrants and dissidents from countries ruled by left-wing regimes (most notably Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela), not only votes overwhelmingly Republican, but has played a key role in making Florida, previously a swinging state, solidly red. A prominent member of this diaspora is the current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents left Cuba just before the Revolution and who masterminded Trump’s policy towards Venezuela as a whole. Still, it would be incorrect to see Trump’s military actions against Venezuela as a mere tool to appease this diaspora (let alone as a part of a new campaign to “spread democracy”).

As put by David Carment and Danika Brown of the Carleton University of Ottawa, governments and politicians consciously pick “their” diasporas according to their orientation and their priorities: the cases of the Russian and the Ukrainian diasporas in Canada, which we analyzed in the previous article, is clearly emblematic. Therefore, it would be more correct to state that this component of the Latino community in the US is functional to Trump’s strategy rather than saying that the latter has been somehow influenced by the likes of Marco Rubio.

Likewise, there has been no reference to international law. While justifying the US attacks against Venezuela and the capture of Nicolas Maduro from a legal point of view is very hard, even if the accusations moved by Trump proved true, the US administration has made no attempts whatsoever to present the action as “legal”. With the notable exception of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the various US administrations have usually attempted to frame their actions as “legal”, either by interpretation (as it happened for the UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which was used as a legal base to attack Libya), or by trying to present a posteriori the legality of an action, as it happened for the Kosovo Unilateral Declaration of Independence using the “special circumstances” argument. From a rhetorical point of view, this represents a main change with the past. And, during a recent interview, The Donald openly stated that his only limit is “his own morality”, adding that “I don’t need international law”.

Thirdly, there is an issue of modus operandi: Trump often uses these abrupt but still limited military actions as warning shots. In April 2017, for instance, following a missile strike against a Syrian military installation, Trump shifted his attention to North Korea and its nuclear plan, starting a diplomatic crisis and a series of heated exchanges which was settled only after one year. Unlike Syria, where Trump—unlike his predecessors—had no particular interest in regime change, North Korea was far more concerning for The Donald, and this explains why he switched his attention away from Damascus so quickly. True, Venezuela is way more important to the US than Syria, but Trump’s quick switch towards Greenland can be considered as a proof that Maduro’s capture was also a way to demonstrate that he will use force wherever he deems it necessary, Greenland included.

This, of course, does not put an end to the list of the signs which made clear that we are not assisting to a return of the liberal interventionism somehow shared by the ruling class of both main parties during the unipolar phase. Likewise, an analysis of the reasons Trump is so interested in Greenland, both strategic (control of both accesses to the Northwest Passage, first line of defense in case of a war with Russia, China or any other country that may attack the US through the Arctic) and economic (oil, rare earth materials, new navigation routes across the Arctic) should be done separately. But there is little doubt that the logic adopted by Washington to attack Venezuela is an American one (albeit an imperial American one), rather than a Western one. The same, of course, applies for a potential annexation of Greenland; and, since Trump has been very adamant in his intention, the tensions between the two sides of the Atlantic have further grown during the last few days.

Trump’s Actions After Venezuela#

Like a few years ago, when the attack against Syria was followed by an inflammatory rhetoric against North Korea, after Maduro’s capture Trump’s focus has rapidly switched from Venezuela to Greenland (and Iran). True, there are still discussions about the future of Venezuela and about its future relations with Russia, China, Iran and Cuba; but, while the US’s policy on the country seemed to have switched away from regime change, with power still formally in the hands of the Chavistas and the Nobel Peace Prize Maria Corina Machado deemed “lacking the support and respect to rule the country”, Trump ramped up its rhetorics about Greenland, after some months of relative standstill if we exclude the Governor of Louisiana Jeff Landry’s appointment as Special Envoy for Greenland on 22nd December 2025.

The possibility of incorporating Greenland as the 51st US state is actively considered in Washington’s circles. On 12th January, Congressman Randy Fine presented the Greenland Annexation and Statehood Act, which if approved authorizes the President to take any necessary step “to annex or otherwise acquire Greenland as a territory of the United States”, with the possibility of making it a state (an alternative could be a status akin to the one of Guam or Puerto Rico).

The possibility to take over Greenland by military means, and according to some rumours a military action against Greenland is actually being planned. There is also a good degree of rhetorics of the like we saw in the eve of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The Donald has talked several times about “Russian and Chinese vessels circling around Greenland” (a claim subsequently discredited), and he even questioned the legality of Denmark’s possession of Greenland using a logic which can be actually be used against the US themselves, stating that “Denmark’s centuries-long claim to Greenland is not valid simply because Danish settlers arrived on the territory half a millennium ago”. But in a transition towards multipolarity, talks about spheres of influence and ways to prevent third parties from acquiring footholds in a great power’s neighbor acquire new meanings, and Venezuela served as a prelude of what could happen to Greenland.

Denmark, of course, has not been indifferent to this rhetorical ramp-up. Its Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has stated that a US attack on Greenland would imply “the end of NATO”, and on 13th January 2026, during a press conference with Mette Frederiksen herself, the Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen stated stated, “We prefer Denmark over the US”. At the same time, all five parties represented in the Inatsisartut (the Greenlandic Parliament) stated in a joint communiqué that the future of the island must be decided only by its people, rejecting any potential adhesion to the United States. But what is most remarkable is that it was not only Denmark, but many major European countries reacted negatively to Trump’s renewed claims. The British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the EU have even threatened the US with sanctions, which would probably affect its technology sector.

The Monroe Doctrine in Action#

Why were most systemic European leaders so vocal against Trump? Throughout its almost-two-century-long existence, the Monroe Doctrine and its corollaries have been used by the US to justify territorial acquisitions, invasions, coups, foreign meddling and hybrid operations.¹ Many of these actions caused protests among the Western public, and occasionally its governments; but it was still something between a Western country and non-Western ones. At the same time, many of these actions could still be justified as ways to advance Western aims, and therefore public debate focused also about whether this was a proper way to advance them, as it happens in the wake of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. But since Denmark is also a Western country, a possible US annexation of Greenland can only be justified as a way to advance American aims; and this is especially unpalatable for many Western leaders.

It should be said that not all non-American Western politicians are so blatantly against Trump. Mark Rutte, for instance, has declined to take an open stance about Greenland, pointing instead to the fact that Trump has made NATO countries spend more on defense. Similar, the Italian government’s position is much vaguer than the one of France, Germany or Britain. Even Greenland is not united as a single block against Trump as someone could expect: the leader of the Naleraq, the island’s second largest party, has indeed invited the Greenlandic government to enter direct talks with Washington, bypassing Copenhagen, adding that an independent Greenland could enter a “free association” with the States (the reference is probably to the Compact of Free Association between the US on the one hand and Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands on the other). But the tensions are still very high, and they have recently ramped up with the decision of some European country to send a contingent—although very small—to deter Trump to make an outright invasion.

Is this enough to deter Trump? While a war for Greenland is unlikely, also because no European country is ready to fight the States, this creates a very dangerous situation where the US and the small Danish and European contingent can be involved in a standoff with the American troops should Trump decide to go for a military action. And, regardless of whether one side decides to back off—most likely the European one—or there will be some skirmishes, the transatlantic axis will be likely broken, perhaps for a long time, and the West will start to move into an uncharted territory.

It’s possible that this will wipe out the residual opposition to the European countries’ rearmament plans and that there will be a drive towards a European political union, possibly with a single army. This unified Europe will somehow distance itself from Washington; and, although the EU bureaucracy and many European leaders are way more hawkish towards the Kremlin than Trump, it’s even possible to envision an attempt to reach out to Russia to relaunch the synergy between Russian raw materials and European—especially German—industry.

This, nevertheless, is a highly undesirable outcome for Washington, which has still plenty of leverage it can apply to prevent this from happening. Like in both World Wars, the US have no interest to see someone establishing continental hegemony in Europe, no matter if it’s a single country or a European superstate; and, at this point, the EU and the main European countries—starting from Germany—become not only economic competitors, but also geopolitical ones. Washington, then, may rely on the countries with strong Eurosceptic leanings or which are wary of a German- (or French-) dominated Europe. Italy, Austria, Hungary and Poland are mentioned as the countries Washington should work with in order to contain the EU core countries. It should not be forgotten that many US-made weapons sold to European countries can be remotely controlled by the Pentagon.

It’s still possible there is no US military action in Greenland and that Washington will try to takeover Greenland using peaceful means. Without a territorial conquest, the likelihood of Greenland becoming a US state drops dramatically; but Trump may still attempt to “conquer” Greenland’s people by promoting the benefits of a possible adhesion to the US, possibly with the promise of making up for the loss of subsidies from Denmark (which amount to around $1 billion per year, including both direct and indirect helps such as funds for the local police), or even opt for a milder version of a takeover by promoting Greenland independence followed by an association treaty. Economic benefits, in this case, are the key.

While most Greenlanders want independence, the loss of Danish subsides still prevents them to actually ask for it, although they are entitled to do so since 2009. If Greenland were to achieve independence, therefore, it’s likely that some agreement behind the scenes with the US has already been reached, and it’s not surprising if the most pro-American one in the Inatsisartut, the Naleraq, is also the most vocal to ask for independence.

Meanwhile, the standoff is ongoing through legal means. Trump has already announced 10% duties against Denmark and the countries which sent soldiers to Greenland, to be canceled only after an agreement to transfer the island to the States is signed and to be increased at 25% on 1st June otherwise. It’s very difficult to understand how this standoff will end up, but a few things can be stated for sure: Venezuela has (also) been a testing ground for Greenland, and the dispute on Greenland is both a sign of the ongoing transition towards multipolarity and a trigger of great changes in trans-Atlantic relations and in European order.