Amid US President Trump’s looming take-over of Greenland and attempted coercion of Western allies to agree to this, Western liberal international lawyers and commentators are busy reaffirming Danish sovereignty over the territory. However, an anti-colonial international law intervention during this time of inter-imperial rivalry is not to stand with Denmark, but to stand on the side of the right to Greenlandic self-determination.
Recent Developments on Greenland and International Law
Following US President Trump’s tariff threats to European states who do not support his acquiring of Greenland, a seemingly bold joint statement was made by European allies that they stand ‘in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland’. Danes have taken to the streets, marching through Copenhagen with ‘Hands Off Greenland!’ placards. International Law professor Marc Weller recently indignantly stated on the question of who owns Greenland?: ‘The Danish claim is unimpeachable’.
But, is the affirmation of Danish claims the appropriate way to defend the Greenlandic people against a take-over? For sure, Trump should be deterred, not supported, in taking over Greenland, either by acquiring it or by invading it. Both of those alternatives are illegal under international law. Trump, of course, has already made clear that he is not interested in what international law says, and by extension presumably what international lawyers say. But supporting Denmark on behalf of international law is to invoke imperial international law and to support an inter-imperial rivalry, rather than to support the people of Greenland. At stake here is not so much whether Trump will listen (likely not), but in which way international law is invoked in a time of territorial expansion and renewed imperialism. International law, of course, as we know from the rich literature on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) has a history of supporting and legitimating imperialism. We stand once more at a renewed crossroads for international law, where how it is invoked sets the tone for its future as an imperial international law or as an anti-colonial one.
Who Does Greenland belong to?
Marc Weller’s assessment that Greenland belongs to Denmark curiously contradicts what Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said back in 2019, when Trump first expressed his desire to acquire Greenland for the US. At that time, Frederiksen stated ‘Greenland belongs to Greenland’. Under international law, though, the answer is fairly straightforward: Greenland has devolved powers in the sense of internal self-determination, but does not have the right to external self-determination, despite a longstanding political movement for independence, which means it is not an independent state. It does indeed belong to Denmark.
The colonisation of Greenland by Denmark occurred through the determination of one man and missionary, Hans Egede, who arrived in 1721 and ‘founded’ the capital Nuuk as a colonial harbour settlement. In the harbour, a statue of Egede, the ‘Apostle of Greenland’, faces the wind on a small hill. The Danish stateincreasingly expanded its influence over the territory over the course of the next two centuries. When I visited Nuuk in October 2025, there were still traces of the paint used for the word ‘DECOLONIZE’ on the Egede statue, painted on by protestors amid the global 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. The oppression of the Indigenous Inuit is straight out of the colonial playbook: Forced monopoly trade with the coloniser leading to a loss of inter-generational knowledge of adapting to the environment; the dismissal of its language as ‘uncivilised’ and the re-education of children in the coloniser’s language; the so-called ‘Little Danes’ experiment, which involved taking Inuit children from their families and their assimilation into Danish society for the purpose of creating a Danish-speaking elite to return to Greenland; the stereotyping of Indigenous Inuit peoples as prone to alcohol-dependency and laziness; the forced sterilisation of Inuit women as late as the 1970s. Much of this still needs to be fully uncovered through a reckoning of the Danish with their colonial past, despite the granting of Home Rule in 1979 and finally Self-Rule in 2009. The Greenland National Museum and Archives in Nuuk, well worth a visit, takes no prisoners:
‘Colonization created new social and class distinctions. Ethnic distinctions were introduced where the colonizers came as a master race to lead and administrate as an upper class, and the Greenlanders were kept in a sealing industry that ensured raw materials for the export-oriented monopoly trade.’
Since so-called Self-Rule, Denmark retains control over security and defence, monetary policy, and external relations. Security, of course, is an expansive basis of governance. That is not to say that there is a united independence movement in Greenland. There are several parties, with varied ideas for its relationship with Denmark, from commonwealth models to fully fledged independence.
Existing US claims over Greenlandic Territory
So what about existing US presence in Greenland? The US has had a military presence in Greenland for decades. With intensification of the political climate between the US and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and technological advances enabling the exploration of remote spaces, the US decided to set up a military and research unit of epic proportions on the Northwest coast of Greenland in the 1950s. It was essentially an episode of landgrabbing. The Thule base (in 2023 renamed to its Inuit name of Pituffik), was built into and onto the ice. From the 1950s, the US government arranged for the transportation of equipment and men, dug tunnels, built runways with no agreement either with the Inuit or the Danes. The US military built the base without permission ‘because it assumed that Copenhagen was in no place to refuse’.[1] The US were correct of course in this assumption. Copenhagen complied with all US demands, even forcing the removal and dispossession of the local Inuit.
Greenlanders have been subject to both Danish claims and US military’s claims on its land for some time. The most recent demands of Trump to make deals with Denmark are the latest in a long line of inter-imperial deals.
International Law legitimating Danish Colonialism
International law has played a central role in the legitimation of Danish colonialism. Most clearly in 1933, when a dispute occurred over Greenlandic territory between Denmark and Norway. This dispute was brought to the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), the predecessor of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Denmark claimed to have had sovereignty over all of Greenland because it had established trade monopolies and had granted concessions. Norway wished to claim sovereignty over parts of Eastern Greenland. It did so by stating that the area was terra nullius. However, the PCIJ upheld Danish sovereignty over all of Greenland. The threshold for recognition of sovereignty by the highest international court of the time was low: Sovereignty over Greenland was recognised because Denmark had the intention and will to act as sovereign, and displayed evidence of such authority (trade treaties regarding the whole territory, and settlement of some of it). No consideration was given to what the Greenlandic Inuit wanted. When Denmark joined the UN in 1945, it listed Greenland as a non-self-governing territory under Part XI of the UN Charter, and was therefore under international law formalised as a colony.
International Law’s Anti-Colonial Intervention
An anti-colonial intervention on behalf of international law must therefore recognise both Danish and US claims over Greenland to be imperial in nature. For sure, Denmark is much smaller than the US, it is a Nordic country, and we like Nordic countries for their history of social democracy and excellent interior design. But, it has a colonial history that international law has masked and legitimised. If international lawyers wish to make a decolonial intervention, then they must highlight the Greenlandic right to self-determination as the right of a colonised people to full (not semi) independence.
When I attended the Polar Law Symposium in October 2025 in Greenland’s capital Nuuk, I was deeply impressed by one of the keynote speakers. Dr Sara Olsvig, Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and former leader of Inuit Ataqatigiit, the democratic socialist, pro-independence political party in Greenland. Her keynote speech was titled ‘There is no such thing as a better colonizer’. In a mic-drop moment following an articulate description of the systemic injustices experienced by Indigenous peoples in and beyond Greenland and the competing interests of the governing of the energy transition, Olsvig said: ‘We have already been colonised, we do not need to be colonised again’.
An anti-colonial international law intervention means standing with Greenland, not with Denmark. Danish claims are not unimpeachable; they are contestable through the right to self-determination.
[1] Gretchen Heefner, Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments (Chicago University Press 2025).
I find it strange that Schwobel-Patel claims Greenland “does not have the right to external self-determination” but doesn’t even acknowledge, much less analyse, the 2009 Act on Greenland Self-Government, which explicitly recognises that right. Chapter 8 of the 2009 Act, entitled “Greenland’s Access to Independence,” provides that the “[d]ecision regarding Greenland’s independence shall be taken by the people of Greenland” and that “[i]ndependence for Greenland shall imply that Greenland assumes sovereignty over the Greenland territory.” I think it is legitimate to criticise the multi-step process in the 2009 Act, which ultimately requires Denmark’s consent to independence. But a fair assessment of Greenland’s “colonial” status must at least address Chapter 8.