Greenland is not for sale, but the global order might be

Kurniawan Arif Maspul

Sometimes foreign policy speaks not through treaties or tanks, but through theatre. When Donald Trump revived the idea of acquiring Greenland in early 2026—this time with hints of coercion rather than commerce—the point was never the island itself. Greenland became a language; a signal, carefully crude, aimed well beyond Copenhagen.

The claim was familiar: if Washington did not act, China or Russia would. The logic was thinner than the ice sheets it invoked. Denmark already hosts extensive US military access under a 1951 defence agreement. No Chinese flotilla prowls Nuuk’s harbour. No Russian brigade threatens Ilulissat. Even Atlantic Council analysts noted the absence of any concrete intelligence to justify the urgency. And yet the gambit landed, because credibility—not feasibility—was the currency.

Gallup polling in January 2026 showed approval of US leadership among NATO publics at just 21 per cent, a collapse mirroring the nadir of Trump’s first term. European leaders warned openly that a forced change of sovereignty in Greenland would fracture NATO itself. Germany and France quietly reinforced Denmark’s Arctic posture, not against Moscow or Beijing, but against uncertainty emanating from Washington.

This is what makes Greenland consequential, not as territory, but as a stress test of trust.

For decades, the post-war order rested on a shared fiction: that power was constrained by rules, and that even great powers would clothe interest in law. That fiction is now threadbare. Ukraine exposed the fragility of borders. Gaza has laid bare the conditionality of civilian protection. Greenland joins this sequence as a case study in signalling—how power announces itself when norms begin to loosen.

From Beijing, the message is not subtle. If sovereignty is negotiable when framed as security, then the grammar of inevitability travels easily. Taiwan’s centrality to global semiconductor supply—through TSMC’s dominance of advanced chips—already places it at the heart of strategic anxiety. No serious strategist believes an American invasion of China is conceivable. Nuclear deterrence, economic interdependence and sheer scale foreclose that path. What remains is signalling elsewhere: in alliances, in trade, in geography.

Greenland speaks into that space. It suggests that borders are firm until they are rhetorically softened. That expansion need not arrive by force to unsettle. That acquisition can be discussed as prudence.

Moscow hears a parallel message. Russia’s war in Ukraine was framed domestically as a historical correction rather than aggression. When Washington toys publicly with territorial acquisition—however implausible—it weakens the moral asymmetry on which sanctions and condemnation depend. The language differs. The implication does not.

Trump’s defenders frame this as realism restored. RAND strategist Raphael Cohen has described the second Trump presidency as a live experiment in unvarnished power politics: interest over institution, leverage over legitimacy. In this reading, Greenland is not recklessness but a reminder. A declaration that the United States still thinks in maps.

Yet realism, properly understood, values reputation as much as reach. Power exercised without restraint invites balancing. Power exercised without predictability corrodes alliances. This is the lesson Europe appears to be absorbing. When Danish leaders warned that Greenland would never be sold, they were not merely defending sovereignty; they were defending a premise—that allies are not bargaining chips.

For middle powers across both the Global North and South, the implications cut deeper and travel further than alliance politics alone. Countries such as Australia, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Brazil have built their security and prosperity not on territorial reach but on predictability: rules that hold, sea lanes that remain open, and institutions that prevent power from becoming precedent. When leading states begin to treat norms as optional signals rather than binding commitments, the damage radiates unevenly.

In the North, it fractures alliances and corrodes trust, pushing partners toward hedging strategies and strategic autonomy. In the South, where memories of imposed order remain vivid, it confirms long-held suspicions that international law protects the powerful first. Abstentions at the UN, widening non-alignment, and the quiet recalibration of partnerships—India balancing between blocs, ASEAN insisting on neutrality, African and Latin American states resisting moral alignment—are not accidents. They are adaptations to a system perceived as selective.

This shift carries emotional weight as well as strategic consequence. When borders appear rhetorically negotiable and sovereignty is framed as conditional, smaller and mid-sized states internalise a harsher lesson: security no longer flows from participation alone, but from leverage. Trade routes become bargaining chips. Institutions thin as confidence drains. Strategic ambiguity, once a stabilising buffer, hardens into risk, compelling states to insure themselves through diversification, hedging, and silence rather than solidarity. The result is a quieter, colder world—less governed by shared restraint than by parallel calculations of survival.

In such an environment, the Global South does not rush toward revisionism, nor does the Global North automatically defend the old order; instead, both drift into cautious distance, watching how power is exercised, and drawing conclusions that will shape alignments long after the rhetoric fades.

There is also a deeper contradiction at work. Washington continues to insist—correctly—that Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory violates international law. It urges restraint in the South China Sea. It speaks of a rules-based order. Yet the casual revival of nineteenth-century acquisition rhetoric erodes the very distinction on which those arguments depend. One cannot defend borders by entertaining their purchase.

This tension is not lost on the Global South. Surveys cited by the European Council on Foreign Relations show a widening perception gap: international law is seen less as a universal constraint and more as a selective instrument. Gaza has become the moral reference point of this judgment. Greenland becomes the strategic one.

None of this requires believing that Trump intended to seize the island. Political theatre, by definition, need not be enacted to be effective. What matters is reception. Signals are consumed, interpreted, and repurposed.

China does not need to believe Greenland will change hands to learn from the gesture. Russia does not need to expect American troops in Nuuk to conclude norm elasticity. The lesson transmitted is subtler and more dangerous: that the language of inevitability is once again acceptable.

There is a final irony here. Trump’s defenders argue that transactional diplomacy avoids war. That deals are preferable to destruction. That influence exercised through pressure is cleaner than force. Perhaps. But diplomacy stripped of trust is merely coercion deferred. And coercion, once normalised, rarely remains polite.

Greenland is not for sale. But confidence in the global order may be.

The challenge now is not to mock the gambit, nor to overreact to it, but to recognise what it reveals. A system drifting from rule to signal. From institution to improvisation. From shared restraint to personalised power.

History suggests such transitions are rarely stable. The task for allies and middle powers alike is to decide whether to reinforce the fiction that held the system together—or to prepare for a world in which geography speaks louder than law.

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