For Greenlandic Self-Determination, Not Inter-Imperialist Competition

UPDATE - Danish SAP Demands "Defend Greenland Against USA’s Plunder – Without Illusions About the Realm or the EU"

The accelerating Greenland crisis demands an immediate response. Our regular programming resumes on Friday.

---

Trump’s Arctic aggression demands a socialist response that refuses the false choice between American annexation and European militarization

Two responses to Trump’s threats over Greenland emerged this week. One came from European capitals: troop deployments, military exercises, billions in new defence spending. The other came from the Nordic trade union movement, whose joint statement on January 19 took a different line entirely: “The Nordic trade union movement stands firmly with Greenland. We will continue to support the right of the Greenlandic people to decide their own path and to be treated with respect as equal members of the international community.”

No calls for rearmament. No invocations of NATO solidarity. Just self-determination. The contrast illuminates everything wrong with how European governments have responded to Trump’s imperial bullying, and everything a working-class alternative must insist upon.

The Crisis

Trump has escalated dramatically. Tariffs of 10 percent on goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland starting February 1, rising to 25 percent on June 1, until agreement is reached for what he calls the “Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.” In a message to Norway’s Prime Minister, he linked this campaign to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, stating he “no longer feels an obligation to think purely of Peace.”

The Greenlandic people have answered clearly. Thousands marched in Nuuk: a large proportion of the island’s 56,000 population, with banners reading “Yankee go home” and “Greenland is already great.” A 2025 poll showed 84 percent of Greenlanders support independence from Denmark, but when asked to choose between the United States and Denmark, 85 percent preferred Denmark. Only 6 percent wanted American rule. Former Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede’s response was unequivocal: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale.”

The European response has been military deployment. Denmark’s defence spending rose 80 percent in 2025, reaching €9.1 billion. Operation Arctic Endurance has put hundreds of elite combat troops on Greenlandic soil, with General Peter Boysen announcing he is “ready to defend Greenland.” Germany is establishing military bases in the Baltic states for the first time since fascism. France is building bases in Romania.

The Danish Left Debate

A sharp intervention published on the website of the Danish SAP (Socialist Workers’ Policy, the Fourth International’s Danish section) cuts through the fog of “solidarity” rhetoric. Klaus Krogsbæk, a veteran of the Danish trade union movement and activist with Ban Nuclear Weapons, has published a pointed critique of Per Clausen from Enhedslisten (the Red-Green Alliance).

Clausen’s position sounds superficially left-wing: oppose an EU army, defend national sovereignty, preserve democratic control over military decisions. Krogsbæk’s response is devastating precisely because he refuses the terms of debate Clausen has established.

The problem is not Clausen’s conclusion but his premise. Once you accept that military force is a legitimate political tool, that defence is an institutional necessity, that armament requires only proper management, then the argument between EU army and national army becomes merely technical. You are no longer challenging militarism; you are debating its optimal organizational form.

This debate has a longer history within Enhedslisten. At the party’s last conference, which dealt extensively with defence questions, the SAP criticized the Alliance for “not having a defence policy radically different from that of the parliamentary mainstream” and therefore aligning with bourgeois parties. The conference approved a new defence and security policy supporting arms to Ukraine and “the strengthening of territorial defence of Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands,” while rejecting general military strengthening and granting military powers to the EU.

Bjarke Friborg, an Enhedslisten member who is also part of the SAP tendency, acknowledged the tension: “Regarding the SAP, the group has mainly warned the Red-Green Alliance against any illusions about reforming NATO or the EU.” The party insists this distinguishes them from other parliamentary parties. But does it? When the practical effect is to provide left cover for Denmark’s 80 percent increase in military spending, the distinction becomes harder to sustain.

Trine Pertou Mach, Enhedslisten’s foreign affairs spokesperson, offered a more radical position in Al Jazeera on January 18. “Our concern as a party is in no way over the future of continued ‘Danish rule’ in Greenland,” she wrote. “The 57,000 Greenlanders have an obvious right to self-determination, and we support their right to shape their own future and decide their alliances.” She called for strategic autonomy from the US, including “a consistent policy of not procuring American arms,” and urged “all progressive forces in Europe and around the world to unite and mobilise in a joint struggle for the right to self-determination and against the US’s and other major powers’ imperial and neocolonial ambitions.”

This is closer to a working-class position. But it still leaves unaddressed the question Krogsbæk poses: why should military force be the answer to Europe’s political problems at all?

The Greenlandic Context

Understanding Greenland requires understanding its political landscape. Inuit Ataqatigiit, the democratic socialist party that led the government until March 2025, was founded in 1976 out of the youth radicalism sweeping Denmark in that decade. The party successfully campaigned in 1982 for Greenland to leave the European Economic Community, protecting local fisheries and asserting national autonomy against supranational integration. Its roots lie in the struggle for indigenous rights and socialist economics.

But the March 2025 election dealt Inuit Ataqatigiit a historic defeat. The party and its coalition partner Siumut lost a combined 31 percentage points. The centre-right Demokraatit, advocating a slower approach to independence and more liberal economic policies, emerged as the largest party. Naleraq, which campaigns for faster independence, came second. The election result was interpreted as indicating that solving Greenland’s internal social and economic problems took priority over achieving independence as quickly as possible.

This matters for socialist analysis. The Greenlandic independence movement is not monolithic. It contains forces ranging from democratic socialists to market liberals, from gradualists to those demanding immediate separation. The new Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen of Demokraatit, has repeatedly stated that Greenland chooses Denmark over the United States, but his party’s economic programme differs substantially from the ecosocialist approach of Inuit Ataqatigiit.

Denmark’s colonial legacy casts a long shadow. The Danish government only apologized in 2025 for the forced sterilization of Greenlandic women, a crime that continued for decades. As the SAP statement published in International Viewpoint noted: “Like other colonized peoples, the Inuit of Greenland are left with a hole in the ground where the foundations for centuries of development of their own society and economy could have been laid.”

The Systemic Stakes

The European deployment to Greenland is not simply a scramble for Arctic resources, though that motive is real enough. European leaders understand something that much of the left has failed to grasp: if Trump successfully coerces Denmark into ceding territory, the entire post-1945 international framework collapses. This is not hyperbole. Consider the precedents being set. French Guiana, with its European Space Agency launch facilities and Amazon basin access, becomes vulnerable to American demands. The Dutch Caribbean islands, strategically positioned and economically dependent, face the same logic. British overseas territories, already under pressure with Trump demanding reversal of the Chagos transfer, would be next. The European powers are not in Greenland primarily to plunder it; they are there because Greenland’s loss would demonstrate that NATO membership offers no protection against NATO’s leading power.

The implications extend further. If the United States can seize allied territory through coercion, then Russia’s claims on the former Soviet space acquire new legitimacy. Putin has always argued that sovereignty is negotiable when great powers have interests at stake; Trump is proving him right. China’s position on Taiwan, that this is an internal matter for great powers to settle among themselves, gains credibility when Washington treats Danish territory as negotiable. The “rules-based international order” that European capitals invoke is genuinely threatened, not by Russian revisionism alone but by American revisionism that makes all other revisionism permissible.

This is why European leaders are genuinely alarmed rather than merely posturing. They are defending a system that has structured their power for eighty years. Merz, Macron, Starmer: these are not fools. They recognise that Trump’s alliance with forces seeking to destroy NATO, his coordination with Putin, his contempt for the alliance framework, threatens their entire position in the world.

But socialists should not mistake this defensive panic for progressive politics. The order being defended is itself an imperialist architecture. NATO has functioned since 1949 as an instrument of American hegemony with European subordinate participation. The “rules-based international order” has always had exceptions: Yugoslavia dismembered, Iraq invaded, Libya destroyed, Palestine abandoned. The rules applied to enemies; allies received understanding. Defending that order against Trump is still defending imperialism. It is defending multilateral imperialism, imperialism with procedures and summits and communiqués, against unilateral imperialism, imperialism with tariffs and threats and tweets. The victims of both forms would struggle to distinguish them.

The alternative is not to choose sides between Trump and Brussels. It is not to celebrate the collapse of NATO as though American hegemony’s death automatically benefits working people. It is not to defend European rearmament as though the enemy of our enemy were our friend. The alternative is to build the working-class power that can challenge both: the strikes and boycotts that threaten capital regardless of which flag it flies, the international solidarity that connects Greenlandic workers to Danish workers to American workers, the refusal to let any bourgeoisie claim our loyalty in its conflicts with rival bourgeoisies.

The European powers have countless options for responding to Trump that do not involve militarising the Arctic. Close the American bases in Europe. Cancel the trade agreements. Freeze American assets. Expel American military personnel. These measures remain in the realm of ideas because they would threaten European capital’s own interests: the pharmaceutical profits, the shipping contracts, the financial flows that tie European and American ruling classes together. Danish soldiers and Greenlandic civilians can be risked; Novo Nordisk’s access to American markets cannot. That priority tells us everything we need to know about whose interests this “defence of Greenland” actually serves.

The Atlanticist-Zionist Nexus

The Greenland crisis exposes a structural relationship that the European left must confront directly. British Atlanticism and British complicity in Israel’s genocide are not separate policies that happen to coexist; they are expressions of the same subordination to American imperial interests. Labour is staunchly pro-American and staunchly pro-Israel because one position requires the other. To break with Israel means to break with the United States; to break with the United States means to break with Israel. This is why Starmer’s government has been incapable of meaningful action on either front.

The implications for socialist strategy are significant. Any serious challenge to British foreign policy must target both relationships simultaneously. Campaigns that treat Palestine solidarity and anti-Atlanticism as separate issues misunderstand how imperial power actually functions. The demand to end arms sales to Israel and the demand for independence from American foreign policy are the same demand, expressed in different registers.

This also clarifies what a genuine break with Atlanticism would require. Not simply withdrawing from NATO while maintaining the “special relationship” in other forms. Not symbolic gestures while continuing to follow Washington’s lead on the questions that matter. A genuine break means ending complicity in genocide, closing American bases on British soil, abandoning Trident (which Starmer himself admits “requires us to have a good relationship with the United States”), and developing an independent foreign policy that does not subordinate British workers’ interests to American capital.

The Far Right’s Hollow Patriotism

A recent Canadian poll revealed something instructive: conservative voters would overwhelmingly choose not to resist a hypothetical American invasion, while left-wing voters took the opposite position. The far right, for all its nationalist rhetoric, will not actually defend its own country when the threat comes from above rather than below. They punch down with enthusiasm; they will not punch up.

This pattern illuminates the nature of the far-right threat across the Atlantic world. The movements that wrap themselves in flags and denounce “globalism” are themselves the products of international coordination and oligarchic patronage. The media hype is bought. The social media presence is algorithmically boosted and often botted. American and Russian oligarchs have bankrolled an artificial offensive that historians will one day document in detail.

This does not mean the far right lacks authentic social roots. Support for these movements reflects a genuine vein of racism in British society, one that sections of the left prefer to explain away through references to “economic anxiety” or “dissatisfaction with the status quo.” The racist undercurrent is real, rooted in Britain’s unaddressed imperial history and the irredentist fantasies that arise from it. But the collaboration between ground-level chauvinists and international capital is the defining feature of contemporary fascism: a reaction to capitalist crisis that channels popular anger away from its actual sources and toward scapegoats.

The Greenland crisis reveals this dynamic clearly. Trump’s annexationist threats are not expressions of American popular will; they serve the interests of extractive capital seeking Arctic resources. The European far right’s response, whether enthusiastic collaboration or embarrassed silence, exposes where their actual loyalties lie. When American imperialism targets European territory, the self-proclaimed defenders of Western civilization discover they have nothing to defend.

The Silence of the American Left

One striking feature of the Greenland crisis is the near-total silence from the American workers’ movement. The AFL-CIO, consumed by defensive battles against Trump’s union-busting executive orders and the ICE raids terrorizing immigrant workers, has issued no statement on Greenland. The DSA’s International Committee, which has positioned itself on Ukraine and Palestine, has not addressed Trump’s annexationist threats against a NATO ally.

This silence is itself significant. American workers have an interest in opposing their own government’s imperial adventures. The tariffs Trump has announced will raise costs for American consumers while accomplishing nothing for American workers. The threat of military action against Denmark, a NATO ally, represents an unprecedented assault on the international order that has structured American foreign policy for seventy-five years.

The US labour movement’s current focus on domestic survival is understandable. Unions face a barrage of attacks from the administration: slashing jobs, ripping up contracts, cutting services. The Minneapolis occupation, the ICE raids, the mass firings of federal workers: these demand immediate response. But internationalism cannot be deferred indefinitely. American socialists need to find their voice on Greenland before Trump’s threats become irreversible facts.

A Working-Class Alternative

What would a consistent socialist position look like? Drawing on the Fourth International’s approach to Ukraine, adapted for Greenland’s distinct situation:

Unconditional support for Greenlandic self-determination. The Greenlandic people must decide their own future: not Washington, Copenhagen, Brussels, or NATO. This means supporting independence if Greenlanders choose it, not as a maneuver for American control but as genuine national liberation from Danish colonialism. It also means respecting the complexity of Greenlandic politics: the debate between gradualists and immediatists, between socialist and liberal visions of an independent Greenland, belongs to Greenlanders alone.

Opposition to both American annexation AND European militarization. Trump’s naked imperialism must be condemned. But the answer is not European rearmament that enriches defence contractors while imposing austerity on workers. Following Søren Søndergaard’s framework developed for Ukraine, any legitimate security measures must be “specific, controlled, and socially just,” not general militarization serving imperialist competition.

Funding through expropriation, not austerity. If genuine defensive measures are needed, they must be funded through progressive wealth taxes on the super-rich who have profited from crisis, windfall taxes on energy companies and defence contractors, and expropriation of war profiteers. Denmark’s 80 percent increase in military spending cannot come at the expense of social programs. The Nordic trade union movement’s statement pointedly did not call for rearmament; it called for self-determination. That emphasis matters.

Democratic control against militarism. Any security infrastructure must be under democratic control of workers and communities, with explicit safeguards against militarist culture and permanent war economy. Trade unions and community organizations must maintain constant vigilance against the creep of militarist values. The SAP’s International Viewpoint statement correctly identified indigenous peoples’ organizations and the Greenlandic parliament as the legitimate stewards of Arctic security, not NATO command structures.

Ecosocialist integration. The Arctic scramble is driven by climate catastrophe opening new resource extraction and shipping routes. Socialists must connect defence of Greenlandic sovereignty to ecosocialist politics that challenge the very logic driving imperialist competition for the melting North. Greenland’s resources should be democratically controlled by Greenlanders for sustainable development, not extracted by any imperial power for profit. The ecological stakes are even more catastrophic than the scramble for resources suggests. Sinking an aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine in the "Greenland Pump" could pollute the entire Gulf Stream with consequences beyond comprehension for the whole of humanity: making Greenland a military target is to participate in preparing that crime.

Rejecting Campist Logic

We firmly reject the campist logic that would treat European militarization as acceptable merely because it opposes American imperialism. This dangerous reasoning, the mirror image of those who apologize for Russia because it opposes NATO, subordinates the struggles of oppressed peoples to geopolitical calculations of competing powers.

As Ernest Mandel emphasized, inter-imperialist competition will dissolve into inter-imperialist solidarity before vital threats to the total capitalist system. The real enemy for both Washington and Brussels is any genuine working-class alternative. Their conflict over Greenland is a squabble among thieves over the division of spoils, not a struggle between oppression and liberation.

The International Socialist Alternative correctly argues that Greenland should be no one’s colony but an independent socialist state, with ownership and control over its economy and resources, as part of an international socialist federation. The designs of all the main imperialist powers on the Arctic could not be more reactionary. They are maneuvering to take advantage of climate catastrophe: melting Arctic ice opening new waterways and lands for new mines, new profits, and new military endeavours.

A Democratic Alternative to Fascist Logic

The fascist logic that must be rejected operates at multiple scales. At the international level, it treats smaller nations as resources to be exploited by larger ones: Greenland as America’s for the taking, Ukraine as Russia’s sphere of influence, Scotland as England’s strategic depth. At the European level, it subordinates the self-determination of nations to the “national security” interests of their larger neighbours. At the domestic level, it channels the legitimate grievances of working people toward racial scapegoats rather than toward the capitalist system that produces their immiseration.

A democratic alternative must centre the self-determination of all nations regardless of size. This means rejecting the argument that Britain needs Scotland for national security, or that Scotland needs Britain for safety. It means rejecting the argument that Denmark needs Greenland for Arctic access, or that Greenland needs Denmark for protection. It means rejecting the argument that Ukraine belongs in Russia’s sphere of influence, or that European security requires Ukrainian subordination to NATO.

Concretely, this requires demanding that Britain abandons Trident, that France abandons its colonial and neocolonial holdings, that Germany abandons its unconditional support for Israeli apartheid. It requires mainstreaming in Europe a vision of cooperation between nations of all sizes on an equal footing, rather than the hierarchical arrangements that currently prevail. The big countries must learn to cooperate with new nation-states as equals rather than subjugating them to larger neighbours’ interests.

This is not utopian; it is the minimum condition for a stable and democratic Europe. The current arrangements, in which small nations exist at the sufferance of large ones and ultimate security depends on American goodwill, have been exposed as unsustainable. Trump has demonstrated that American protection comes with conditions that can change overnight. The European left must offer an alternative that does not simply replace American hegemony with Franco-German hegemony, but genuinely democratises international relations on the continent.

Scotland’s position in this debate deserves particular attention. The same strategic geography that makes Greenland valuable to Washington applies to Scottish waters and the deep channels of the North Atlantic. An independent Scotland would face the same pressures Greenland faces: demands from Washington for military integration, pressure from European capitals for NATO compliance. The Scottish independence movement must develop answers to these questions now, not after independence is achieved. What would a socialist Scottish defence policy look like? Not Trident, which Starmer admits requires American cooperation. Not NATO membership that subordinates Scottish foreign policy to Washington. But also not the pacifist abstention that leaves the field to militarists. The framework developed here—democratic control, funding through expropriation, ecosocialist integration—applies to Scotland as much as Greenland.

---

A Note on Self-Determination and Small Nations

A comrade raises a legitimate question: is there a size limit on self-determination? Greenland has only 56,000 inhabitants. Can such a small population sustain an independent polity? The comparison to the Falklands/Malvinas, with its 3,000 settlers, is instructive, but the cases differ fundamentally.

The Marxist position on self-determination is not an abstract principle applicable uniformly to any population claiming it. Lenin was clear: the right to self-determination is a tactical, revolutionary demand against imperialism, designed to foster trust and solidarity between the proletariat of oppressor and oppressed nations. It applies to oppressed nations, not to settler populations whose “self-determination” would ratify colonial conquest.

The Falklands population are British settlers implanted by colonial expansion, displacing Argentine territorial claims. Their “self-determination” argument functioned to justify British imperialism during the 1982 war. The population has no pre-colonial indigenous claim; they are the human infrastructure of a colonial outpost. To grant them veto power over the islands’ status is to make colonialism self-legitimating.

Greenland is the inverse. The Greenlandic Inuit are an indigenous people who have inhabited the island for centuries, long predating Danish colonization. Denmark’s relationship to Greenland has been explicitly colonial: the forced sterilization of Inuit women, the extraction of resources (the cryolite that built American air power was taken from Greenland), the imposition of Danish language and culture. Greenlandic self-determination is a demand against this colonial relationship, not a ratification of it.

The practical question of whether 56,000 people can sustain an independent state has been answered elsewhere. Pacific island nations demonstrate that small populations can maintain sovereignty: Palau has 18,000 people, Tuvalu 12,000, Nauru 10,000, the Marshall Islands 42,000. These states often maintain security arrangements with larger powers; Iceland, with 370,000 people and no military, has been a NATO member since 1949. An independent Greenland could make similar arrangements, though socialists would argue these should be determined democratically by Greenlanders themselves, not imposed by Washington or Brussels.

The deeper point is that self-determination is not primarily about administrative capacity but about the relationship between peoples and imperial powers. Greenland has a functioning parliament, established political parties across the spectrum from democratic socialist to liberal, a history of exercising autonomy (it left the European Economic Community in 1985), and a population that overwhelmingly supports eventual independence. The question is not whether Greenland can be independent but on what terms and under whose direction.

What socialists must oppose is the transformation of Greenlandic independence into a mechanism for American control, which is precisely Trump’s game. His regime has sent operatives to Greenland to exploit or fabricate disagreements with Denmark, promoting independence as a path to American domination rather than genuine self-determination. An independent Greenland under a Compact of Free Association with the United States, as some in Washington propose, would exchange Danish colonial oversight for American imperial control. That is not liberation.

The task for internationalists is to support Greenlandic self-determination while building solidarity with the forces within the independence movement, particularly the democratic socialist currents rooted in Inuit Ataqatigiit’s tradition, who can advance a working-class programme for genuine independence: democratic control of Arctic resources, ecosocialist development, and freedom from all imperial powers, American and European alike.

---

Building International Solidarity

The natural allies of Greenlandic workers are not Merz, Macron, or Starmer but workers in Denmark, across Europe, and in the United States who face the same enemies: militarism, austerity, and capitalist crisis. The Nordic trade union statement points the way: solidarity with Greenland’s right to self-determination, not with NATO’s right to determine Greenland’s future.

Concretely, this means building direct solidarity links between European trade unions and Greenlandic workers and communities, supporting their independent organizing rather than subordinating them to either American or European geopolitical interests. It means campaigning against the militarization of the Arctic by any power, demanding that resources be directed toward climate adaptation, sustainable development, and social needs rather than military competition. It means opposing austerity measures justified by increased military spending, demanding that defence contractors and war profiteers rather than workers bear the costs of any legitimate security measures. And it means supporting the Greenlandic independence movement’s right to determine its own future, while building connections with socialist and labour forces within that movement who can advance a working-class programme for an independent Greenland.

The question Krogsbæk poses must be kept open. Not as a nice principled introduction to be forgotten when practical politics begins. In the practical, precisely there, the question must remain open: why should military force be the answer? Once the premise is accepted, the shift follows almost by itself. The disagreement moves from content to form, from the question of what militarization does to society’s priorities to the question of where decisions should be anchored.

Conclusion

The Greenland crisis will pass in one form or another. The underlying dynamics will not. Inter-imperialist competition for Arctic resources, driven by the very climate catastrophe capitalism has created, will intensify. European rearmament, whether under NATO, EU, or national auspices, will accelerate. The far right will continue to pose as defenders of national sovereignty while collaborating with international capital and foreign oligarchs. The left will face repeated pressure to choose between forms of militarism rather than challenging militarism itself, between forms of imperialism rather than challenging imperialism itself.

The choice is not between supporting NATO or supporting Trump. It is not between European militarization and American annexation. It is not between Atlanticism and isolation. The choice is between building an independent working-class alternative that can defend the rights of oppressed peoples while advancing the struggle for socialism, or allowing the initiative to remain with competing imperialist blocs and their far-right auxiliaries.

The liberation of Greenland, like the liberation of Ukraine, like the liberation of Palestine, like the liberation of Scotland, is inseparable from the broader struggle against imperialism, capitalism, ecological catastrophe, and the far-right offensive that threatens workers and oppressed peoples everywhere. These are not separate causes to be supported in isolation; they are fronts in a single struggle against a system that subordinates human needs to profit and treats nations as resources to be extracted.

The Nordic trade union movement’s statement points the way: solidarity with the right of peoples to decide their own path. Not solidarity with NATO. Not solidarity with the EU. Not solidarity with any imperial power. Solidarity with workers and oppressed peoples, against all those who would determine their futures for them.

---

Postscript: SAP Executive Committee Statement, January 26, 2026

Postscript: SAP Executive Committee Statement, January 26, 2026

As this article was being prepared for publication, the SAP’s Executive Committee released an official statement that develops and sharpens the analysis presented here. Åge Skovrind, editor of the SAP’s magazine, has given detailed editorial guidance on this translation, but Red Mole Substack takes final responsibility for it.

---

Defend Greenland Against USA’s Plunder – Without Illusions About the Kingdom of Denmark or the EU

Statement of the SAP Executive Committee, January 26, 2026

The Trump regime continues its relentless offensive for an imperialist American takeover of Greenland. All means have been deployed: political, economic, and even military threats. In this situation, the Greenlandic self-government, and a united Inatsisartut, have quite understandably chosen to seek shelter in a tactical alliance with the former colonial power (Denmark), the EU, and the European NATO countries.

At best, this alliance may stop Trump’s plans for a formal takeover of power over Greenland here and now. But neither the rulers in Denmark nor the EU are reliable champions of the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination – quite the contrary!

The massive popular support for the demonstrations against Trump’s conquest plans has very clearly focused on the Greenlanders’ right to self-determination. Hurrah for that! And even the Prime Minister has in recent months – side by side with the Self-Government’s leaders – chosen this focus. But there is absolutely no reason to trust the Danish government and the other alliance partners or to paint their motives in rosy colours.

As we described in a commentary about a year ago, Denmark’s relationship to Greenland continues to be characterised and driven by imperialist interests – first and foremost the interest in preserving Denmark’s geopolitical significance. This remains true despite the limited self-government that the Greenlanders have managed to win.

The helpful EU partners have also occasionally revealed the EU’s undoubtedly deeply felt interest in the resources in the Greenlandic subsoil – as well as the country’s strategically important location regarding the defence of Europe.

Distance from the Hypocrisy

For real friends of Greenlandic independence – and not least for the Greenlanders themselves – it has been a challenge to listen when a united political public in Denmark in these weeks praises the Greenlanders’ right to decide over their country, the rights of indigenous peoples, etc. Exactly as if this is and always has been the foundation of the “Rigsfællesskab” (the Realm), as it is so beautifully called. The hypocrisy appears massive when this fairy tale is compared with Danish-Greenlandic colonial history. And with the continued Danish imperialist dominance, even after the self-government arrangement.

It also cries out to heaven when Denmark, England, France, the Netherlands, and others now stand guard over respect for “an international legal order.” And claim that “we in the West” have protected this since World War II. For example, many of the same countries – not least Denmark – have been eager participants in the “coalition of the willing” that (with the USA at the helm) without legal scruples violated precisely that territorial integrity and national sovereignty in Afghanistan – and for many of them later also in Iraq!

Should the left – out of respect for the tactical alliance against the USA – completely conceal this hypocrisy? Should we pretend that we completely share this view of the “Rigsfællesskab” – and of our “EU friends”? This is overwhelmingly what Enhedslisten has chosen.

And this is a mistake!

Firstly, because we then suddenly come to appear as Eurocentric hypocrites ourselves, who close our eyes to the West’s (including Europe’s and Denmark’s) colonialism and imperialism, both historically and in the present. This will obviously and with good reason complicate our solidarity-based, internationalist cooperation across borders. And likewise, it will burden our relationship with Greenlanders and other ethnic minorities in Denmark as well as Greenland, who are already painfully aware of precisely this hypocrisy.

No Rosy Pictures of Denmark and EU

Secondly, we must lay the tracks for the continued struggle for the Greenlanders’ real right to self-determination. A struggle that – regardless of whether Trump and the USA perhaps give up a formal takeover, indeed even regardless of Trump and the USA altogether – will be necessary.

Unless Trump fully succeeds with the conquest and at the same time also completely breaks the economic and military imperialist alliance across the Atlantic – the Danish government and the EU will play a decisive role in how the future will look for the Greenlanders’ self-determination – both regarding military rearmament and the exploitation of Greenland’s subsoil.

And for that reason alone, it would be reprehensible to contribute to illusions that the Greenlanders can trust the rulers in Denmark and the EU. For there is hardly any doubt that these parties’ goal will be to find a solution that primarily serves their own imperialist interests in the Greenlandic subsoil and military control of the Arctic. Not the interests of the Greenlandic self-government, which has been very reluctant about both the arms race in the Arctic and environmentally harmful mining.

No to Arms Race in the Arctic

The rearmament of the Arctic is a threat to both the Greenlanders’ security and world peace and must be stopped!

It perhaps sounded very sensible to send some (more) Danish soldiers to “stand symbolic guard over Greenland against a military US takeover” – if the Greenlandic self-government, even the left-wing party IA, wanted it.

They clearly did – and apparently everyone is also enthusiastic that it will now be a quite large contingent of European NATO troops coming to Greenland and the surrounding waters. Enhedslisten’s enthusiasm was due to the massive “European solidarity about Greenland’s sovereignty.” This angle was also strongly emphasised by many journalists.

BUT: The large troop deployment is officially exclusively highlighted as something completely different from protection of Greenland against the USA, namely as protection of Greenland, NATO, and to a great extent also the USA against Russia and China. That is, as an attempt to demonstrate what Denmark and others have already said, namely that the Realm willingly fulfils all of Trump’s dreams of insane rearmament – so therefore he doesn’t need to take Greenland at all!

The action serves both purposes – and is thus a clever chess move if one wants to convince the USA that, on the one hand, a military takeover will be very difficult and costly – and on the other hand, that the USA’s wildest dreams of rearmament of Greenland and the Arctic will be fulfilled with joy and enthusiasm by Denmark with support from the other European NATO countries.

Here, however, the chain jumps off for a party like Enhedslisten. Or rather: It should have.

We are fiercely opposed to the imperialist blocs’ rearmament for war against each other. Therefore, we also fight for a demilitarised Arctic, for mutual disarmament – and thus against the obvious boost in the arms race that the just-launched NATO escalation around Greenland is also very much an expression of.

Not a Defence of Either the Greenlanders or World Peace

Denmark’s, NATO’s, and the USA’s joint rearmament plans around Greenland have very little to do with the defence of Greenland – and absolutely nothing with the protection of the Greenlandic population. For example, surveillance and combat of Russian submarines in the waters around Greenland, which can prevent the Russian submarines from getting close to threatening the USA, and the construction of a missile shield over Greenland (”Golden Dome”), which is to protect the USA against Russian missiles, are in no way “defensive defence” of the Realm. This rearmament in the Arctic will rather make Greenland and the Greenlanders a certain first war target.

What does it mean for world peace if the “Golden Dome” actually succeeds in securing the currently absolutely most aggressive imperialist power, the USA, against getting anything back in the head if they start World War III? Then the danger increases that a president like Trump in an armed conflict with Russia/China might take the chance and throw the world into a nuclear war. And Trump as recently as last week highlighted precisely “Golden Dome” as the USA’s “national security interest” that necessitates the conquest of Greenland.

Respect the Greenlanders’ Respect for Nature

The Greenlandic self-government has – despite economic pressure – on several occasions dug in its heels when greedy companies of various nationalities had plans for environmentally harmful extraction of raw materials in the Greenlandic subsoil. And there is hardly any doubt that one of the more rational arguments for Trump’s desire to get an overarching formal authority over Greenland precisely concerns eventually clearing all obstacles – e.g. environmental legislation – out of the way for American companies’ exploitation of Greenland’s raw materials. Therefore, one can also fear that part of a negotiated solution may contain concessions to such wishes. Regardless of whether Trump has already discussed this with NATO’s Secretary General or not... And one can fear that Denmark/EU will be more concerned with also getting a share of the cake themselves than with securing the Greenlanders’ veto right.

In this connection, it is not even enough that the Greenlanders’ right to decide environmental legislation, etc., is preserved. Greenland must also secure its economy so that economic pressure does not force it to sell off nature protection.

A real Greenlandic self-government requires economic independence. At the moment, the economy is a major barrier to the Self-Government taking over new tasks. A first demand must be that the block grant is increased – and made unconditional, so that it also goes to an independent Greenland. An obvious further demand is a Danish “colonial-era compensation” that will enable the Self-Government to invest heavily in sustainable, publicly owned and controlled business development that can create a stable economic foundation for a self-financed, independent Greenland.

The Struggle Does Not End

Right now, it is about creating as strong a front as possible against Trump’s threats, for respect for Greenland’s borders and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination.

And it is of course entirely up to the Greenlanders to decide what they will ultimately accept here and now to achieve a negotiated solution, in a situation where they face overwhelming threats from the USA – and false promises from all sides.

But this does not mean that we, including Enhedslisten, should cheer a “solution” that from the outset cements imperialist interests – neither the USA’s nor Denmark’s and the EU’s.

Enhedslisten should, from the start, be clear about the problems with a “successful negotiated solution,” a “deal” with Trump, that does not touch the Realm’s sovereignty but involves a catastrophic Arctic rearmament, increased opportunities for imperialist plunder of Greenland’s natural resources, and de facto binding of Greenland in the so-called Rigsfællesskab.

The struggle for real Greenlandic independence and against environmental disasters and insane rearmament continues – under slightly different conditions, but regardless of the outcome of the ongoing arm wrestling. There will be a need to hold on to the impressive popular support behind the Greenlanders’ demand for self-determination – and for the further demands that can make self-determination real. Our most important task is to build popular, anti-imperialist solidarity and gather support for these demands in Denmark – and in the other imperialist countries.

Demands:

• Stop USA’s imperialist plunder – Defend Greenland’s right to independence

• Terminate the base agreement with the USA

• Stop Denmark’s – and Europe’s – weapons purchases from the USA

• EU economic sanctions against the USA

• Denmark must secure Greenland’s economic possibilities for independence

• Increased and unconditional continued block grant, and colonial compensation that the country can use for sustainable investments in an independent economy

• No to plunder and environmental destruction, no to imperialism via contracts

• The Greenlanders must be secured full democratic control over the country’s subsoil

• No to rearmament in the Arctic

• The Greenlanders must have the right to limit/reject all military installations in their country and waters

Socialist Workers’ Policy Executive Committee, January 26, 2026

---

Editorial Note

This statement from the SAP Executive Committee represents the most developed position from the Danish Fourth International section on the Greenland crisis to date. It goes beyond the Krogsbæk article’s critique of militarisation to directly criticise Enhedslisten’s failure to distance itself from Danish and European hypocrisy, and it advances concrete transitional demands including colonial reparations, termination of the US base agreement, and EU sanctions against the United States. It should be read alongside their statement last year, available from International Viewpoint.

The demand that Greenlanders “have the right to limit/reject all military installations in their country and waters” directly challenges not only Trump’s ambitions but also the NATO escalation that Enhedslisten has supported.

The statement’s insistence that “the struggle does not end” regardless of how the immediate crisis is resolved points toward the longer-term tasks: building anti-imperialist solidarity across borders while exposing the imperialist interests of all the powers, American and European alike, currently competing for control of the Arctic.

Translator’s note on terminology: The Danish term “Rigsfællesskabet” (literally “the Realm Community” or “Community of the Realm”) refers to the constitutional arrangement linking Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands. We have translated this as “the Realm” in most instances, with “Kingdom of Denmark” used in the title for clarity to international readers. The term carries significant political weight: it presents the relationship as a partnership of equals, masking what SAP correctly identifies as continued Danish imperialist dominance.

---

Appendix: “When the Left Manages the Security State”

The following article by Klaus Krogsbæk appeared on Socialistisk Information, the website of the SAP (Socialist Workers’ Policy), Danish section of the Fourth International, on January 17, 2026. Translation from Danish.

Debate: EU Army or National Defence?

When the left’s criticism becomes a choice between two forms of militarism. A reply to Per Clausen from the Danish Unity Party.

Per Clausen, the Danish Unity Party [Enhedslisten], wrote on January 12th on X:

“It is not surprising that there are forces in the EU that are trying to exploit the current situation to revive the discussion about an EU army. That does not change the fact that it is an incredibly bad idea. Defence and decisions about participation in military actions must still be a national matter and it is far more sensible to build on the existing military cooperation between European countries that respect national sovereignty than to focus on building a new structure in the EU that does not respect this.”

There is much in this text that at first glance sounds like a left-wing warning against militarisation. But that is precisely why it is also worth reading carefully. Because the problem is not that Per Clausen criticises an EU army. The problem is what the criticism is based on and what it leaves unchallenged.

The Military as a Necessity

Clausen’s text does not reject militarism as a political response. It only rejects one particular form of organisation of military power. Defence as an institution, military actions as a political tool, and armament as a necessity are taken for granted. The disagreement is reduced to whether decisions should be made nationally or supranationally.

This eliminates the crucial question: Why should military force be the answer to Europe’s political problems at all?

Once the military is accepted as a legitimate necessity, the question of EU army versus national army becomes a technical management problem – not a political showdown with the logic of war.

Sovereignty as a False Protection

The argument about national sovereignty is presented as a bulwark against the worst militarism. But historically, it is precisely sovereign nation-states that have waged wars, built military blocs, colonised and armed themselves in competition with each other. National sovereignty is not the opposite of imperialism – it is its prerequisite.

Preferring national defence over EU defence therefore does not mean less militarisation, but more parallel military apparatuses, more armaments, and stronger pressure on each individual state to take responsibility for its own military capacity.

European history gives no reason to believe that national control makes military power more defensive, more democratic, or more peaceful.

When the Left Manages the Security State

The most problematic thing is not the intention behind the text, but its political function. When the Unity Party says no to an EU army, but yes to national defence and military cooperation, the party ends up co-managing the security policy framework rather than challenging it.

War and armaments are made into something that can be managed properly, if only the decisions are made in the right place. This shifts the role of the left from fundamental criticism to responsible participation in an order where military force has already been made necessary.

This is precisely how militarism is normalised: not through raw war enthusiasm, but through sober, well-meaning arguments about sovereignty, responsibility, and realism.

The Question That Must Be Kept

A consistent left-wing critique should not simply begin with a different question than Per Clausen. It should maintain it. Because the crucial thing is not first and foremost who has control over the military, but why the military is repeatedly made the solution.

That question is not a nice principled introduction that you can put in first and then forget when you get to the “practical.” It is precisely in the practical that it must be kept open. For security policy has a built-in tendency to close the debate: it presents its priorities as necessities and turns politics into administration. You can discuss the organisation – not the premise.

Once the premise is accepted, the shift follows almost by itself. The disagreement moves from content to form: from the question of what militarisation does to society’s priorities to the question of where decisions should be anchored. Then the opposition to an EU army becomes a discussion within the same security policy framework – not about militarisation, but about its most appropriate form of governance.

What is crucial is the direction that emerges overall: that defence and security are treated as the inevitable starting point, while the role of the left wing will be to make the framework more acceptable – more democratic, more nationally anchored, more socially mitigated.

This can happen without an obvious change of course and without malicious intent. But the function is clear: Militarisation is normalised because it is no longer challenged at its root. It becomes something to be regulated – not something to be fundamentally questioned. And when the premise is not challenged in the general public, militarisation becomes not a choice but a habit.

---

Klaus Krogsbæk (born 1957) is a former consultant in the LO trade union movement and active in Ban Nuclear Weapons. He is a long-standing member of the Social Democratic Party and also a member of the German SPD.

Original Danish text available at Socialistisk Information: socinf.dk

Note on the author: Krogsbæk’s position within the Danish Social Democrats rather than Enhedslisten itself makes his critique particularly pointed. He writes not as a revolutionary denouncing reformists but as someone within the broader labour movement warning that the left is losing its capacity to challenge the fundamental premises of the security state. His involvement with Ban Nuclear Weapons connects this critique to the broader peace movement’s concerns about the normalization of military solutions to political problems.