Trump, Greenland and the Reaction in the Nordic Countries
Prof. Glenn Diesen at the Valdai Discussion Club
[25 February 2026] The US has had a longstanding interest in acquiring Greenland. After the purchase of Alaska in 1867, US Secretary of State William Seward proposed purchasing Greenland from Denmark. In 1910, the US yet again suggested acquiring Greenland through a land swap with Denmark, in return for offering the Philippine islands of Mindanao and Palawan. The appeal was Greenland’s strategic position in the North Atlantic and its resource potential. During the Second World War, the US took temporary control over Greenland as Denmark was under German occupation, and the 1941 Denmark-US agreement was framed by Washington as a defence of the Western hemisphere and thus in the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine. After returning control of Greenland to Denmark, the US offered to buy Greenland again in 1946 in the context of the Cold War. The Arctic became a key strategic region due to the Soviet adversary, yet the US eventually accepted the base agreement in 1951 instead of pursuing annexation.
Greenland in the Multipolar World | Trump’s brazen efforts to annex Greenland make sense under the multipolar distribution of power that ended the unipolar moment. Under the bipolar era of balancing the Soviet Union and the unipolar era of establishing collective hegemony through NATO expansionism, the US and European interests were closely aligned. In a multipolar distribution of power, the US will pivot away from Europe and their interests will become increasingly divergent.


























