March 5, 2025

The Danish Communist Party issued the following statement on Greenland (still a de facto Danish possession) in late February, 2025

Greenland and the Greenlandic people have been brutally thrown into the political scene.

Trump’s repeated statements that the U.S. wants to control and own Greenland — by military means if necessary — come at a time of great upheaval in the imperialist system. These statements are part of U.S. imperialism’s desperate attempt to maintain its declining political and economic power. They are an expression of pure imperialist superpower politics against the Greenlandic people.

That Trump is prepared to start an imperialist war is an unprecedented provocation. It is a war of conquest and plunder to control Greenland in an attempt to create a Fortress USA from Greenland and Canada across Mexico to Panama.

Denmark, the U.S. and the other Western imperialist countries and their NATO alliance have a common interest in keeping Greenland in an iron grip. This is due mainly to two factors:

First, Greenland’s geographical position and its relation to military and security policy. A militarised and rearmed Greenland is intended to be an advanced base against both Russia and China. Likewise, control of the sea routes to the north, the Northeast Passage [in the Arctic Sea], is becoming increasingly important as climate change takes hold.

Second, Greenland’s resource-rich subsurface, especially the existence of rare and strategic earths and minerals. Trump wants U.S. companies, many of which have invested heavily in his reelection, to have unfettered access to the Greenlandic mineral deposit resources. Besides the prospect of superprofits, keeping China far away from Greenland is a strategic goal for both the U.S. and Denmark governments.

For both the U.S. and Denmark, control over Greenland is important, although the methods and agreements may differ. For the U.S., Greenland and the Greenlandic people are a simple commodity that can be bought and sold at will. For Denmark, Greenland plays a different role.

Greenland’s status as a colony and semi-colony under Denmark has for decades given the Danish government and bourgeoisie an importance and influence in international politics that goes far beyond Denmark’s actual size and location. The annual Danish subsidy of just over 4 billion Danish kroner [$558 million USD] to Greenland is a cheap price for Denmark to buy international influence. Without Danish sovereignty over Greenland, Denmark will be reduced to a small, insignificant kingdom that is unlikely to become a member of the U.N. Security Council again.

The Trump administration and the Make America Great Again movement are now cynically raising the demand for Greenlandic independence to become effective when Danish colonialism and imperialism ends. And this without respect for Greenland’s right to self-determination and national sovereignty.

The 57,000 inhabitants of Greenland are recognised under international law as a people in their own right. They therefore have the right to determine their own future. It is not determined in the U.S. or Denmark.

The fundamental issue is therefore the recognition of Greenland’s right to an independent statehood and that this is determined and decided by the sovereign Greenlandic people.

In the run-up to the election to Greenland’s parliament, Inatsisartut, on March 11, 2025, the pressure on the Greenlandic population and Greenlandic politicians is massive. The election of the 31 members of Inatsisartut will define the process for enforcing national self-determination.

And the future of Greenland is not only important for the Greenlandic people. It also matters to the Inuit peoples of the Arctic region. It matters for the fragile balance of nature in the Arctic and the danger of overexploitation of it and the region’s resources below and above the water and land surface.

To keep the imperialist powers out of the Arctic, it is crucial that Greenland succeeds in strengthening its self-determination, economic independence and international alliances based on equality and mutual respect.

As Danish communists and anti-imperialists, we have a special obligation to support the wishes and struggle of the Greenlandic people for self-determination and national sovereignty and to put an end to centuries of Danish colonial domination. The right to self-determination also includes the right to independence and secession.

The Danish Communist Party calls on all anti-imperialists and democrats to not only reject and fight U.S. imperialism’s threats of war and conquest but also to support Greenland’s showdown with the Danish colonial power. How Greenland will organize its society, with whom it will collaborate, which alliances it chooses to enter into to be able to enforce its self-determination in reality and in practice — all this is determined solely in Nuuk [Greenland’s capital].