Greenland and the Old Language of Power
Every few decades, history tests whether we have learned anything from ourselves.
The recent talk of the United States “going after” Greenland — whether framed as purchase, strategic necessity, or global security — is one of those moments. Not because it is likely, but because of what it reveals. Beneath the policy language is an old assumption: that power grants entitlement, and that land can be understood primarily as an asset rather than a home.
That assumption has a name. It is colonialism.
Colonialism is not defined only by troops or flags. It begins earlier, in imagination. It starts when a nation looks at another people’s land and asks what it can gain, rather than who already belongs there. It thrives on abstraction — ice sheets instead of communities, resources instead of relationships, strategy instead of consent.
America knows this pattern well.
Long before the United States projected power abroad, it practiced colonialism at home. Indigenous nations were displaced not because treaties failed, but because they were never meant to be honored. Expansion was framed as destiny, possession as progress, and removal as necessity. The country grew, but at the cost of erasing sovereignty, cultures, and lives — wounds that remain open today.
When the U.S. did look outward, the story repeated. Territories were absorbed for ports, trade routes, and security interests. Consent was often partial, coerced, or ignored entirely. These moves were defended as pragmatic or benevolent, yet they left behind unresolved identities, economic extraction, and political limbo that still shape millions of lives.
History has already tested this logic across the world. Empires promised order and left fracture. They promised civilization and left generations of trauma. They promised stability and departed in confusion. Even where colonial rule formally ended, the aftershocks remained — distorted borders, economic dependence, unresolved identity. Colonialism rarely fails loudly at first. It fails slowly, quietly, and then all at once.
Greenland is not empty. It is not a bargaining chip. It is home to people with their own history, governance, and relationship to the land — a relationship forged over centuries of survival in one of the world’s harshest environments. To speak of it primarily as a strategic prize is to repeat the same error that has echoed across continents and generations.
The deeper question isn’t whether the United States could pursue Greenland.
It’s whether we are willing, at this point in history, to abandon the reflex that power equals permission.
Colonialism has failed everywhere it has been tried. Not immediately — but inevitably. It leaves behind trauma, instability, and regret, while convincing each new generation that it is acting rationally, even responsibly.
The challenge before us is not geopolitical cleverness. It is moral maturity.
To choose restraint over possession.
To choose relationship over control.
To recognize that true security does not come from owning more land, but from learning — finally — how to live without taking what was never ours.
