Greenland and Modern Interventions: The US is Playing for the World’s Board

Jack Ó’hAimhirgin

Cash-for-territory schemes are making a comeback amongst imperialists. It could not be more obvious to tell what will come if they do not get their way. Desperately, this comes in the form of threats against Greenland (known also through its indigenous name as Kalaallit Nunaat), a colony of Denmark. Regardless of what exceptions or opt-outs have been made from 1979 onwards, Denmark still bears a high complicity with American militarised interests in Greenland. Their 2025 Arctic Defence Agreement effectively turned the colony, ×26 larger than Ireland, into a base of F35s, patrol ships, and institutions such as the Arctic Command out of Greenland’s capital, Nuuk.

These NATO assets on Greenland may be spearheaded by the US, but Copenhagen has not been happier to oblige as Greenland’s gatekeepers.

The US has encircled Greenland historically with nuclear projects, despite Denmark’s commitments against nuclear practices entirely. Since 1951, they have also shared the exploits of Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule, near the North Pole. With all this in mind, you might consider the Danish ruling class naïve at best and utterly brainless otherwise for them not to think the US would take its liberties, even decades on.

So why the sudden Arctic frenzy? The US sets its eyes on Greenland but its imperialist playbook spans continents. In Nigeria, sectarian unrest and bombing pushes regime change rhetoric as the neighbouring Alliance of Sahel States grows in opposite interests towards Russian capital. Venezuela went under fire early in 2026, only for the US to cripple it into securing $2bn worth of oil and spike global energy prices through terror- all while the price of a barrel comes to an all-time low. Iran has seen civil unrest, with reactionary elements supported by the US in the hope that this coordinated operation draws the Islamic Republic into its own demise.

Intervention has been clothed as salvation, and imperialist-sympathisers and privileged layers of national diaspora are getting behind the American behemoth to their hearts content. Seduced by short-term patronage,  long-term right to self-determination then goes by the wayside. Territory is once again being redivided by imperialism. 

Denmark boasts this very relation with Greenland, just with its historical colonial baggage. The independence of the Kalaallit, Iit, and Inughuit people then becomes wholly undermined, when it is absolutely theirs alone to decide.

So, if this pattern was not clear already, Greenland holds an estimated 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of its natural gas, alongside rare earth minerals crucial for (dual-use) technology and weapons. By claiming Greenland is “vulnerable” to Russia and China, the US is adulterating a security crisis to justify seizing these resources and dominating the strategic Northern Sea Route. A naked power grab disguised as defence, showing that when profit and positioning are at stake, what do you make of your capitalist allies anyway? 

That being said, we should utterly reject the “threat” framed to be posed on Denmark- rather, as Lenin argued in imperialist tendencies, “[N]ot only have capitalists something to fight about now, but they cannot help fighting if they want to preserve capitalism- for with a forcible redivision of colonies the new imperialist countries cannot obtain the privileges enjoyed by the older (and weaker) imperialist powers”. Capitalist powers cannot coexist, as the system’s very survival lingers on constant expansion and monopoly over resources. Denmark, an imperialist power itself, built its wealth through colonial plunder, and powers across recent history like the US do not peacefully enter the market, but rather they seek to claim, by force, the bounties held by “older” powers. 

Greenland is a case of Louisiana (subsumed from France), the Philippines (captured from Spain’s grasp)- and the territory itself has been under the US’ radar for acquisition for quite some time. 

Setting its sights on Kannersuit Mineral base including uranium, the US made initial approaches to take over in 1867 (around the time Alaska was bought),  again in 1910, and after Greenlandic “Home Rule” was installed from 1916, yet another offer in 1946 with the same excuses it used to build a bloc against the revolutionary advances of socialism wrought by the Soviet Union.

It is no wonder, then, that the US looks to insult its “allies” by suggesting it pays Greenland’s 60.000 residents $100,000 each, to succumb to US military force should an invasion arise. This wager was an obstacle to be circumvented or overridden. So, naturally, threats have intensified. At the World Economic Forum, a vulgar expression for capitalist market strategy in Davos, Switzerland, Trump warned Denmark “we will remember” a refusal and that US forces would be “unstoppable.” The Danish Foreign Minister admitted they did “very little” to alter Washington’s position in their engagements. 

There is no negotiation here anyway, only a delivery of an ultimatum.

Further to that, Trump has now tied the demand to a proposed $175-billion “Golden Dome” anti-missile system. Weaponising the dollar has come into effect, promising tariffs to force Denmark-EU submission. Sectors of finance capital are colliding. Of course, Greenland is being framed in securitisation, essential for “world protection” against Eurasian competitors in the Russian Federation and China. 

Denmark’s AkademikerPension fund (worth $25 billion) is moving to dump $100 million in US Treasuries, explicitly citing Trump’s annexation threats as a key rationale. “Premier” of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has taken online to whine “No more pressure. No more insinuations. No more fantasies of annexation.” The Nuuk-based Inuit Circumpolar Council reframed the entire confrontation, stating the U.S. threat offers “a clear picture of how the US administration views the people of Greenland…and Indigenous peoples”. This struggle, we must not forget, is a continuation of colonial dispossession. Every instance here is a limp unravelling of what little Denmark stands against the US- but will the EU come to its rescue?

Greenland shows this process in motion, the “redivision” is now so blatant that it is causing friction within the dominant imperial bloc itself. To corner, then steamroll Arctic resources and militarise the region against China and Russia, the US puts into question what use NATO truly holds. Whatever colonial appendage comes from this, Europe will see the vision- either they will fold to US pressure or if adverse to it, will be whipped economically to follow suit. 

This struggle, however, is not distant. A partitioned Ireland that benefits from NATO militarisation in the north, is an expressed, mutual alignment of interests between that of British and Irish capital. The very same can be said about absorbing the south of Ireland into an EU war economy. The beneficiaries are as much representatives of the Irish bourgeoisie as they are European. The profits from factories in Belfast to fuelling stations in Clare, and all the dual-use production in between, is overreaching so dramatically that it is making new fracture lines. The Irish ruling class executes a conscious, political choice to be of utility to a multitude of irreconcilable projects that imperialists fall headfirst into in seek of profit.

The fight against militarism is a single, global class war, with Empire’s greatest vulnerability being its own insatiable appetite.

This convergence of events validates that the scientific outlook of any Marxist cannot be defined by camps. What is being called “multipolarity” under capitalism cannot reform or defeat US hegemony, nor can we anticipate it laying any groundwork for socialist revolution. There can be no guarantees, and to paraphrase Amílcar Cabral, communists cannot “claim easy victories”. Capital, either side of inter-imperialist conflict, will still launch an acceleration of austerity, repression, and militarisation, demanding the working class everywhere pay the price and line up behind “their” national bourgeoisie for coming conflicts.

Let the Empires be their own gravediggers. We must commit, as communists, to laying the foundations to Anti-Militarism. The path ahead is not stable, but a radical exacerbation of the crisis, making the task of independent, internationalist working-class organisation more urgent than ever.