Fwd: Buying Greenland Isn't Crazy-It's Dangerous
Chandana Liyanapatabendy
Buying Greenland Isn’t Crazy—It’s Dangerous
How power is quietly rewriting the rules of international law
by Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne
January 7, 2026
7 mins read
Iceberg in the ocean, Greenland [Photo: FreePik]
The dramatic capture of Nicolás Maduro, whatever its final legal and political characterization may prove to be, has once again exposed the uneasy intersection between power, legality, and strategic narrative in contemporary international relations. It was against this backdrop of muscular assertion, thinly veiled as enforcement of international norms, that President Donald Trump’s renewed remarks on Greenland resurfaced—remarks framed not as imperial aspiration, but as matters of United States security, hemispheric stability, and Arctic necessity. The juxtaposition was telling. In both instances, the language of law appeared alongside the vocabulary of inevitability, as though strategic compulsion might soften, or even suspend, the constraints of sovereignty. For international lawyers, this moment is less about the personalities involved than about the signal it sends: that territory, security, and influence are once again being discussed in transactional terms, even as the international legal order continues to insist—at least in principle—that power must submit to law rather than the reverse.
The suggestion, periodically revived in political discourse, that the United States might annex or otherwise acquire Greenland, whether by purchase, persuasion, or strategic necessity, invites a reconsideration of some of the most foundational principles of public international law, but it also forces an encounter with geopolitical reality as it is lived rather than as it is idealized. History presses heavily on this discussion. References are quickly made to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the acquisition of Florida, the annexation of Texas, the incorporation of California, the cession of Puerto Rico and Guam after the Spanish American War, and the purchase of Alaska from Russia. These events are often invoked as if they form a continuous and legally coherent narrative legitimizing territorial expansion by agreement, opportunism, or force. Yet international law has not remained static. It has evolved from a permissive and loosely ordered space into a system that aspires to regulate power through rules, institutions, and shared expectations. The legality of annexing Greenland today cannot be assessed by nostalgia for empire alone, nor can it be judged in isolation from the strategic anxieties that increasingly shape Arctic politics.
Has Precedent Been Established?
At one level, international law has long recognized certain modes of territorial acquisition. Classical doctrine spoke comfortably of occupation, prescription, cession, accretion, and conquest. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were not abstractions but lived realities of state practice. The Louisiana Purchase was concluded by treaty between sovereigns at a time when territory was openly tradable. Alaska was transferred by sale from Russia to the United States with little regard for the wishes of its inhabitants. Texas was annexed following a period of contested independence. California and other territories changed hands through war and treaty. Puerto Rico and Guam were ceded as the spoils of conflict. These transactions were largely untroubled by sustained legal protest at the time, reflecting an international system in which sovereignty was conceived primarily as the prerogative of imperial powers, and where the voices of local populations were, at best, peripheral.
Those who argue today that Greenland could be acquired by the United States often rely on this historical record. They suggest that if territorial acquisition by treaty or purchase was lawful then, it could be lawful now, provided the formalities are observed. They may add that international law has often shown itself to be pragmatic, validating effective control once political reality has settled. The principle of effectiveness has, after all, played a significant role in the recognition of states and governments. From this realist standpoint, law is seen not as a barrier to power, but as a language through which power is later rationalized. In the Arctic, where melting ice is opening new sea routes, exposing critical minerals, and heightening military interest, strategic imperatives are no longer hypothetical. Greenland’s location, straddling North Atlantic and Arctic security architectures, makes it an object of attention not only for the United States but also for Russia and China.
Such arguments resonate in a world that is visibly drifting away from the optimism of the immediate post-Cold War era. They reflect a growing skepticism about whether international law can meaningfully restrain major powers when core interests are perceived to be at stake. The United States, it is said, already exercises significant military and economic influence in Greenland through existing arrangements. Formal annexation would merely consolidate what is already a strategic reality. International law, in this telling, eventually accommodates facts on the ground, even if it initially resists them.
What About International Law?
Yet this is precisely where the counter-argument, grounded in contemporary public international law, becomes compelling. The adoption of the United Nations Charter marked a constitutional moment in the international legal order. Article 2(4) prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Sovereignty ceased to be merely an attribute of power and became a legal entitlement protected by collective norms. The acquisition of territory by force, once tolerated and even celebrated, was transformed into a violation of peremptory law. Even territorial change by agreement is now examined through a different ethical and legal lens, one that is acutely sensitive to coercion, inequality, and structural pressure.
The doctrine of intertemporal law reinforces this shift. Acts must be judged by the law in force at the time they are performed. The legality of the Louisiana Purchase or the Alaska transaction cannot be transposed into the twenty-first century as precedent. To do so would be to ignore the deliberate evolution of international law away from imperial practices. What was once lawful is not necessarily lawful now, and what was once acceptable is no longer legitimate.
Greenland’s legal and political status further complicates any attempt at analogy. It is not terra nullius. Nor is it a colony in the classical sense. It is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, with its own elected institutions, cultural identity, and an explicit legal pathway toward independence if its people so choose. Modern international law regards such people not as objects of diplomacy but as subjects endowed with rights. Any attempt to treat Greenland as a transferable asset between states would collide directly with this understanding.
The principle of self-determination lies at the heart of this transformation. Once dismissed as a rhetorical flourish, it has matured into a normative entitlement that shapes the legality of territorial arrangements. While self-determination does not automatically confer a right to secession or annexation, it does impose a duty to respect the freely expressed will of a people. A referendum conducted under conditions of economic dependency, security anxiety, or geopolitical pressure would be viewed with suspicion. International law has become increasingly attentive to the subtle forms of coercion that may operate beneath the appearance of consent.
Geopolitical Reality
At the same time, it would be intellectually dishonest to ignore geopolitical reality. International law does not exist in a vacuum. The Arctic is emerging as a theatre of strategic competition, and Greenland occupies a pivotal position in that theatre. The United States perceives its security interests in the region as increasingly urgent. Denmark, while committed to the Charter order, is also a NATO ally navigating alliance politics. Greenland itself seeks economic development and greater autonomy in a harsh environment with limited options. These realities shape choices in ways that legal doctrine alone cannot capture.
The deeper question, therefore, is not simply whether annexation could be dressed in legal form, but whether it would be legitimate within the spirit of the international legal order. Even if a pathway were engineered through consent, treaty, and procedural regularity, annexation would sit uneasily with the post-1945 aspiration to restrain territorial acquisition as a tool of statecraft. Normalizing such practices risks eroding a norm that, however imperfectly observed, has contributed to relative stability.
Historical analogies to California, Texas, or Alaska ultimately falter because they overlook this normative transformation. Those territories were absorbed into a world that accepted expansion as destiny and power as justification. Greenland exists in a world that professes the equality of states and the dignity of peoples. The absence of protest in earlier eras does not convert those acts into precedent for a legal order that has consciously repudiated their premises.
Yet international law must also confront its own fragility. Powerful states continue to test its limits, and effectiveness remains an unspoken arbiter. Should a future Greenlandic polity, acting with genuine autonomy, seek integration with another state, international law would be compelled to respond with nuance rather than dogma. Law cannot erase political choice; it can only insist that such choice be authentic and consistent with broader stability.
My Take
In this tension between realism and normativity lies the true significance of the Greenland debate. It is not merely about territory. It is about whether sovereignty, self-determination, and territorial integrity retain substantive meaning in an era of renewed great-power competition, or whether they are destined to become rhetorical ornaments masking transactional politics.
My writings have consistently returned to the idea that law must discipline power if order is to endure. In aviation, I have argued, particularly in the context of civil aviation, that safety is not simply regulatory compliance but a moral obligation owed to humanity. The same reasoning applies to territorial integrity. From this perspective, annexation would represent not progress but regression, signaling a willingness to treat land as commodity and people as strategic variables.
At the same time, my arguments resist naïve moralism. I acknowledge that international law develops in dialogue with political reality, and that norms are often forged under pressure. Were the people of Greenland to exercise self-determination in a manner that is unequivocal, uncoerced, and internationally credible, law would be obliged to listen. Consent, however, is not a procedural box to be ticked; it is an ethical condition.
Ultimately, legality divorced from legitimacy is unstable. An annexation that destabilizes regional order, undermines confidence in the Charter system, or encourages territorial revisionism elsewhere would impose costs that law cannot ignore. International law, in this vision, is a system of mutual restraint, where the true test of civilization lies in the restraint exercised by the powerful.
Invoking historical acquisitions may be rhetorically convenient, but it fails the deeper test. Those acts belonged to a different moral and legal universe. To rely on them today is to misunderstand both intertemporal law and the purpose of the Charter system.
In choosing restraint over acquisition, the international community would affirm that sovereignty is not for sale, that a nation i.e. the people are not transferable assets, and that the strength of the legal order lies not in what it permits the powerful to do, but in what it persuades them not to do. Whether that persuasion will endure in an age of Arctic competition remains uncertain, but the answer will shape not only Greenland’s future, but the credibility of international law itself.
Dr. Ruwantissa Abeyratne DCL, PhD, LL.M, LLB, FRAeS, FCILT
Senior Associate, Aviation Law and Policy
Aviation Strategies International
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