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As threats by the United States to take over Greenland mount, Denmark is in panic mode. More Danish soldiers have been deployed to the island while European allies have sent small contingents in a symbolic show of support.
The language of sovereignty, self-determination and international law has suddenly become urgent. Danish politicians are speaking of principles, borders and the dangers of great power politics.
What is striking is not that Denmark is panicking but that it appears surprised.
Greenland is strategic. It always has been. Its location, resources and military value make it a desired prize in an increasingly competitive global order. The renewed American interest in the island is neither an anomaly nor a momentary excess of rhetoric. It is the logical expression of an imperial worldview – one that prioritises power, access and control over the formalities of international norms.
What makes the Greenland case uncomfortable for Denmark is not merely the threat itself. It is the mirror it holds up.
For decades, Denmark has been a reliable partner in advancing that very same imperial worldview elsewhere. It aligned itself closely with the US, not only diplomatically but also militarily. Denmark participated in wars that reshaped entire regions under the banner of security, values and alliance loyalty. Now as the same imperial logic is being applied to Danish territory, the abstractions of geopolitics suddenly become tangible.
This is the irony Denmark must confront.
The concern over Greenland rests on arguments Denmark knows well. That sovereignty matters. That territories are not commodities. That international law cannot be selectively applied. Yet these principles were notably absent from Denmark’s considerations when it joined the invasion of Iraq, a war launched without a legal mandate and justified by spurious claims that quickly collapsed.
These arguments were also diluted in Afghanistan, where two decades of war ended not in stability but in exhaustion and the return to the status quo. They disappeared almost entirely in Libya, where Danish aircraft played a decisive role in toppling its leader Muammar Gaddafi. What followed was a shattered state defined by militias, chaos and human trafficking.
In Syria, Denmark’s involvement, both direct and indirect, formed part of a broader Western intervention. A popular uprising was transformed into a prolonged proxy war with catastrophic consequences for civilians and regional stability.
Each of these interventions was framed as necessary. Each was presented as a moral obligation. Each was defended as part of a rules-based international order. In practice, each helped erode the very norms Denmark now invokes when Greenland enters the equation.
Palestine makes this contradiction impossible to ignore.
Israel is a close Danish ally, yet as Gaza has been reduced to rubble, Denmark’s political leadership has remained strikingly restrained. While international legal experts, humanitarian organisations and United Nations bodies have warned of genocide, Denmark’s response has been cautious to the point of silence. Calls for accountability have been muted. Moral clarity has been deferred.
At the same time, Danish industry remains entangled in the machinery of war. A Danish defence company continues to supply spare parts for F-35 fighter jets, aircraft that have played a central role in the bombardment of Gaza. When asked whether international arrest obligations would be enforced against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he enter Denmark, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen declined to give a clear answer.
Law is conditional. Principles are flexible. Denmark has long helped normalise a world in which power decides when law applies.
For years, imperial violence was something that happened elsewhere. To other people, in other regions. The consequences were exported. Destabilised states. Mass displacement. Radicalisation. The steady hollowing-out of international institutions. Europe absorbed some of the fallout but largely refused to connect it to its own political choices. Denmark was no exception.
Greenland collapses that distance. Gaza exposes the moral architecture beneath it.
What Denmark is experiencing now is not injustice. It is exposure.
The same arguments once used to justify intervention in the Middle East are now being repurposed closer to home. Strategic necessity. Security concerns. Global competition. These are not new concepts. They are simply being applied in a direction Denmark did not expect.
This moment reveals the limits of moral selectivity. International law cannot be defended only when it is convenient. Sovereignty cannot be sacred in the Arctic and disposable elsewhere. Small states cannot rely on principles they helped undermine and expect them to hold when global power dynamics shift.
For Europe as a whole, the implications are profound. Alignment with empire does not guarantee protection from it. Loyalty does not produce autonomy. A continent that tolerates the erosion of law abroad will eventually face its absence at home.
Greenland is not just a territorial concern. It is a reckoning.
The irony is complete. The question is whether Denmark and Europe will finally choose to learn from it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
