I never thought I’d wake up one day and feel the need to publicly take a position on Greenland.
And yet here we are – living in an era where the President of the United States can casually float the idea of acquiring another people’s homeland, and a surprising number of grown adults respond by nodding thoughtfully, as if he’s discussing a sensible kitchen renovation.
So let me get this out of the way early:
I stand with Greenland.
Not because it’s fashionable.
Not because it’s trending.
But because the suggestion that a modern country might be bought, claimed, or “secured” by another one should have died sometime around the invention of international law.
Greenland is not a vacant block of ice waiting for a developer with a sharpie and a flag. It is not a strategic trinket to be admired on a map. It is not a frozen extension cord that can be plugged into someone else’s idea of greatness.
It is a place where people live.
And yet, once again, we’ve been treated to that familiar Trumpian tone – the one where complexity is brushed aside in favour of confidence, and sovereignty is discussed the way one might talk about acquiring a golf course.
It’s never invasion, of course. It’s always a deal.
There’s something oddly revealing about the language. Greenland isn’t discussed in terms of its people, its culture, or its right to choose its future. It’s talked about in terms of minerals, shipping lanes, military advantage – as if the locals are an inconvenient detail that can be dealt with later, preferably off-camera.
This is how empire has always spoken. With a smile. With certainty. And with the reassuring promise that it’s all for everyone’s own good.
Greenland already sits in a delicate place politically. It is slowly, deliberately working out its relationship with Denmark and its own future. That process is careful, thoughtful, and – crucially – none of Donald Trump’s business.
Nor is it the business of commentators who suddenly discovered Greenland on a map the moment someone powerful mentioned it.
Standing with Greenland doesn’t require outrage. It just requires memory.
We’ve seen what happens when powerful men talk about other people’s land as an opportunity rather than a home. It never ends with the locals feeling particularly grateful.
So no – Greenland is not for sale.
It is not a prize.
It is not a punchline.
If Greenland wants partnerships, it can choose them.
If it wants independence, it can pursue it.
If it wants to be left alone, that should be an acceptable answer.
The real absurdity isn’t that people are pushing back against this idea.
It’s that, in 2026, anyone thought it was an idea worth floating at all.
So yes. I stand with Greenland.
Against the casual imperialism.
Against the real-estate approach to foreign policy.
Against the notion that confidence can substitute for consent.
Greenland doesn’t need to be bought.
It doesn’t need to be claimed.
And it certainly doesn’t need to be “made great again.”
It just needs to be left to decide its own future – like every other place that prefers sovereignty over slogans.
Also by Roswell:
Keep Independent Journalism Alive – Support The AIMN
Dear Reader,
Since 2013, The Australian Independent Media Network has been a fearless voice for truth, giving public interest journalists a platform to hold power to account. From expert analysis on national and global events to uncovering issues that matter to you, we’re here because of your support.
Running an independent site isn’t cheap, and rising costs mean we need you now more than ever. Your donation – big or small – keeps our servers humming, our writers digging, and our stories free for all.
Join our community of truth-seekers. Donate via PayPal or credit card via the button below, or bank transfer [BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969] and help us keep shining a light.
With gratitude, The AIMN Team
I stand with Palestine, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, Columbia and Greenland.
Hopefully, one thing that the USA’s flippant moves to steal Greenland, together with Mexico, Cuba and Columbia, may end up doing is undermining their ‘Western colonialist’, imperialist narrative that Venezuela was about removing a ‘bad’ leader from a ‘failed’ state.
I never thought I’d see the day that a nation would openly brag about committing genocide, its soldiers would publish online evidence of their heinous acts and gloat, its citizens protest to protect a supposed ‘right’ of their soldiers to rape and torture people they’ve kidnapped, and that Australians would persecute other Australians for calling for an end to the genocide, and that Labor leaders would pass laws stripping us of freedom to speak out against it, but there you have it.
“International law” what’s that?
Concerned journalists should be reviewing history to find comparisons between American hegemony and other expansionist empires. Take for example the acquisition of European provinces, regions, countries by NAZI Germany 1933 – 1945. All illegal by international standards of the day and little opposition by the other major powers (United Kingdom and France) until it was too late.
1933–1937: Consolidation inside Germany
Abolition of federal states’ autonomy; withdrawal from League of Nations
1935 Saarland
• 13 January 1935 – Saar Basin, occupied by allies as a League of Nations mandate post WW1
• Type: Annexation (plebiscite)
• From: League of Nations (French control)
• Result: Returned to Germany after referendum
1938 Austria
• 12 March 1938 – Austria
• Type: Annexation (Anschluss)
• Result: Austria incorporated into the German Reich
Czechoslovakia (partial)
• October 1938 – Sudetenland
• Type: Annexation
• From: Czechoslovakia
• Basis: Munich Agreement (UK PM Chamberlain’s statement “peace in our time”)
1939 Czechoslovakia (remainder)
• 15 March 1939
• Bohemia and Moravia – German Protectorate
• Slovakia – German client state
• Carpatho-Ukraine – occupied, ceded to Hungary
Lithuania
• 23 March 1939 – Memel Territory (Klaipėda)
• Type: Annexation
• From: Lithuania
Poland (beginning of WWII)
• 1 September 1939
• Western & central Poland – Occupied
• Annexed regions:
• Danzig (Gdańsk)
• Warthegau
• Upper Silesia
• General Government: Central Poland under German administration
1940 Denmark
• 9 April 1940 – Denmark invaded
• Type: Occupation
• Status: Nominal sovereignty until 1943
Norway
• 9 April 1940 – Norway
• Type: Occupation
• Client regime: Quisling government
Western Europe
• May–June 1940
• Luxembourg – Occupied (later annexed de facto)
• Netherlands – Occupied
• Belgium – Occupied
• France (northern & western) – Occupied
• Alsace-Lorraine – De facto annexed to Germany
1941 Balkans
• April 1941
• Yugoslavia – Occupied and partitioned
• Serbia under German military occupation
• Greece – Partially occupied (with Italy & Bulgaria)
Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa)
• From 22 June 1941
• Baltic States Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia – Occupied
• Belarus – Occupied
• Ukraine – Occupied (Reichskommissariat Ukraine)
• Western Russia – (Reichskommissariat Ostland)
1942 Maximum Territorial Extent
• German control extended over:
• Most of continental Europe
• Large parts of the western Soviet Union
• North Africa (temporary military control)
Expansion stalled and began reversing late 1942
1943 Italy
• September 1943
• Northern & central Italy – Occupied after Italian armistice
• Italian Social Republic – German client state
1944 Hungary
• 19 March 1944 – Hungary
• Type: Occupation
• Reason: Prevent Hungarian withdrawal from Axis
1945 Collapse of German Control
• January–May 1945
See how it happens when populations are passive through ignorance?
Maybe if the media and politicians had been more critical and objective then vulnerable nations could have been better prepared to defend themselves. Otherwise what is the United Nations for?
It’s not entirely Trump either.
Behold Stephen Miller. Senior advisor to Trump in both epochs.
If you haven’t seen his interview with Jake Tapper about Greenland l urge you to watch the following on YouTube. Miller is even more of a madman than Trump and the pathetic excuses they give for behaving like schoolyard bullies boils my blood.
https://youtu.be/m-Ax__vDKlc?si=KFT4KhQTHY7ZMNJ0
Others on this site are articulating my thoughts so much better than I could, but I can’t help but throw this in…like all those other would be emperors, dictators and dickheads of history, this story will end the same way…disaster.
What was that saying about how we learn nothing from history?
One of your best columns, Roswell.
In addition to Mediocrates’ examples of European states under occupation is the sorry history of Japanese imperialism which kicked off around 1868 and finished with its defeat at the close of WWII in 1945 after the USA nuked the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
North-east China, then known as Manchuria, along with other parts of that country, Korea, Taiwan… then known as Formosa, all colonised, and brutally so. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) had an operational credo founded in bushido and were exceptionally harsh and cruel towards their opponents. Chinese citizens in Manchuria were subjected to unimaginable cruelties by virtue of the establishment of Unit 731 which was a bioweapons manufacturing and testing program, and throughout all regions opponents to the occupation of their lands by the Japanese were routinely imprisoned, tortured and murdered.
Business as usual, for the IJA and its civilian counterparts.
In South Korea’s capital, Seoul, is the Seodaemun Prison, built by the Japanese in 1907-08 during Japan’s early phase of Korean colonisation. Korean dissidents were routinely tortured and murdered within its walls. Today the prison serves as a museum; many of the cells, along with torture methods and apparatus are depicted, along with dioramas of prisoners being ‘punished.’ Korean primary schools routinely visit, teachers with a troop of ~30 six-year olds walk through as the teachers explain the barbarity of the Japanese to the kiddies; important lessons for these young minds.
Examples of Japanese cruelty are legion, both in their colonial history and in combat during the wars. The seige of Nanjing is the outstanding atrocity, but there are myriad others. For Australians unfortunate enough to be captured in the fall of Malaya & Singapore, many suffered the additional horror of being employed on the construction of the so-called Thai-Burma Railroad. Many died. Tens, or more likely hundreds, of thousands of Asian coolies also.
Japan is, today, singular in its failure to accurately depict its barbarous behaviour throught the period in question, ~1900-1945. All other Asian countries impacted by Japanese imperialism have made a point of teaching their citizens the history and outcomes of Japanese occupation, but within Japan the history books are filled with blank pages and the voices are majorly silent.
It just makes you shake your head and wonder how the hell the Trumpist cretins in the US think they are going to get away with this.
Thank you, June. Nice to hear.
I stand with Greenland. I stand with Venezuela. I stand with Interfada, the mythical internal US opposition to the TACO Trumpery rogue regime.
An excellent article, thank you.
I chose to exit Facebook when my post describing TACO; ”If his lips are moving he is probably lying” caused a ”contrary to community standards” notice from FB PLUS a demand for a police style mug shot plus mug reel. Remember the use of Austrian census data to round up Jewish persons during the 1933-1945 German post-Anusless(sp?) period?
Now I have about eight hours a day for important things.
Cocky, I think the word you’re after is Antifa, not [sic] Interfada, or Intifada, that Arabic word describing Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation. Antifa is a coinage derived from anti-fascist, and as you correctly observe it is not a formal organisation but more a nationwide movement of Americans who are moved to protest the current ugliness of Trump’s government policies.
Congratulations on breaking free from the great hypnosis known as Facebook. See (if you care to) if you can get a copy of Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a rugged tale of the shameless pursuit of billions of USD by Zuckerberg, detailing as it does his complete indifference to the harm that his money-making machine has caused globally. It’s a toxic tale, timely and cautionary in regards to the cesspits that are social media sites in general.
Thank you, NEC. I’m glad you liked it.
at bridge the conservatives felt that america needs greenland for strategic reasons but no more talking or listening when I said russia needs ukraine for the same reason.
Picking uo from Kerri, a bit like Nixon and Kissinger?
I think some have grasped the pattern and the raw sewage that passes for thinking. IE, Mediocrates.
Hear, hear. Well put article, thanks Roswell,
and excellent comments.
I never thought I’d see this happen.