Opinion: Greenland is not the story, Trump’s power without restraint is

When is an ally no longer an ally? When does a friend stop being a friend? And at what point does a country once treated with earned respect begin to rely more on that reputation, assuming past credibility excuses present actions.

The questions sitting on the crowns and heads of European leader’s people are heavy. They sit uncomfortably with recent discussions about Venezuela, and renewed ones on Greenland, not because they represent sudden departures, but because they expose how familiar power can drift into entitlement when its left unchallenged.

The United States talking about taking Greenland is not new. It was brought up openly during Donald Trump’s first presidency, nine years ago, revived repeatedly in interviews and campaign rhetoric, and has lingered ever since as a kind of MAGA thought experiment that never quite went away.

What is new is not the threat itself, but the context in which it now sits, alongside actions that suggest the US is increasingly comfortable acting outside the legal order it once championed.

Greenland has been discussed in Washington for decades. Its importance is obvious: Arctic shipping lanes, rare earth minerals, missile defence infrastructure, and proximity to the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, the US maintained military installations there with Danish consent, because when asked to leave the US refused. The difference today is not interest, but tone. The shift from friendly partnership to casual references of force reflects a deeper erosion of restraint.

International law is clear on the basics. Greenland is an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, with extensive home rule and a recognised right to self-determination. Under the United Nations Founding Charter, the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of another state is prohibited except in self-defence or with explicit Security Council authorisation. There is no legal ambiguity here. A unilateral takeover, whether framed as “security necessity” or “strategic inevitability,” would constitute a breach of international law. It is the same legal principle that renders Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illegal.

What makes Greenland significant is not that it might be taken, but that the idea can now be voiced with little political cost. This normalisation matters. It suggests a world in which legal limits are no longer enforced, only weighed against convenience.

This is where Venezuela becomes relevant, not as a comparable case, but as a signal. In early 2026, the US carried out a military operation in Caracas that removed Venezuela’s president and transported him to the US to face charges. Washington framed the operation as law enforcement.

Others called it what international law would recognise it as: an extraterritorial seizure carried out through military force, without consent, without a warrant recognised by the state involved, and without UN authorisation. In short, Illegal.

The legal architecture the US helped construct after 1945 draws a sharp line between policing and warfare, between extradition and abduction. That line was crossed in Venezuela. And once that old Rubicon is crossed, it becomes harder to argue that territorial integrity elsewhere is truly inviolable.

Seen together, Greenland and Venezuela illustrate a consistent posture rather than isolated excesses. The US increasingly treats international law as optional for itself and binding for others. Paraphrasing Orwell’s Animal Farm, “nations may be declared equal, yet some are permitted to be more equal than others”. This is not unprecedented in history, but it is stark coming from the system’s principal architect.

Supporters of a harder line argue that international law has always been selectively enforced. That is true, but selective enforcement is not the same as open disregard. The former preserves the fiction of order; the latter completely dissolves it. History offers warnings, from the collapse of the Concert of Europe to the failure of the League of Nations. Systems rarely fall apart all at once. They erode when powerful actors stop pretending the rules apply to them.

There is also a dangerous precedent being set. If strategic importance justifies territorial ambition, why should that logic stop with Greenland? When states grow comfortable exerting dominance over one territory, the temptation to extend that reach elsewhere inevitably follows.

For small states and semi-autonomous regions, the implications are obvious. Their security depends less on treaties and more on whether they are useful, inconvenient, or ignored by stronger powers.

For allies, particularly within NATO, the implications are subtler but no less serious. An alliance built on collective defence assumes members will not threaten one another’s territorial integrity. Even rhetorical erosion of that principle corrodes trust.

The Greenland debate is often framed as absurd, unserious, or symbolic. That framing misses the point. Symbols matter in international politics because they reveal what is possible. When the language of acquisition and force becomes casual, the guardrails are already failing. If NATO once relied on Greenland to counter the Soviet Union at its height, it is worth asking why the same logic now demands unilateral control to counter a far weaker Russia or imagined Chinese naval power in Arctic waters thousands of kilometres from home.

The real question is not whether the United States will take Greenland. It is whether the global order can survive a world in which its most powerful defender no longer feels bound to defend the rules themselves, and whether the alternatives emerging in a multipolar world offer anything better.