Greenland is not just a territorial concern. It is a reckoning

As threats by the United States to instrumentality implicit Greenland mount, Denmark is successful panic mode. More Danish soldiers person been deployed to the land portion European allies person sent tiny contingents successful a symbolic amusement of support.

The connection of sovereignty, self-determination and planetary instrumentality has abruptly go urgent. Danish politicians are speaking of principles, borders and the dangers of large powerfulness politics.

What is striking is not that Denmark is panicking but that it appears surprised.

Greenland is strategic. It ever has been. Its location, resources and subject worth marque it a desired prize successful an progressively competitory planetary order. The renewed American involvement successful the land is neither an anomaly nor a momentary excess of rhetoric. It is the logical look of an imperial worldview – 1 that prioritises power, entree and power implicit the formalities of planetary norms.

What makes the Greenland lawsuit uncomfortable for Denmark is not simply the menace itself. It is the reflector it holds up.

For decades, Denmark has been a reliable spouse successful advancing that precise aforesaid imperial worldview elsewhere. It aligned itself intimately with the US, not lone diplomatically but besides militarily. Denmark participated successful wars that reshaped full regions nether the banner of security, values and confederation loyalty. Now arsenic the aforesaid imperial logic is being applied to Danish territory, the abstractions of geopolitics abruptly go tangible.

This is the irony Denmark indispensable confront.

The interest implicit Greenland rests connected arguments Denmark knows well. That sovereignty matters. That territories are not commodities. That planetary instrumentality cannot beryllium selectively applied. Yet these principles were notably absent from Denmark’s considerations erstwhile it joined the penetration of Iraq, a warfare launched without a ineligible mandate and justified by spurious claims that rapidly collapsed.

These arguments were besides diluted successful Afghanistan, wherever 2 decades of warfare ended not successful stableness but successful exhaustion and the instrumentality to the presumption quo. They disappeared astir wholly successful Libya, wherever Danish craft played a decisive relation successful toppling its person Muammar Gaddafi. What followed was a shattered authorities defined by militias, chaos and quality trafficking.

In Syria, Denmark’s involvement, some nonstop and indirect, formed portion of a broader Western intervention. A fashionable uprising was transformed into a prolonged proxy warfare with catastrophic consequences for civilians and determination stability.

Each of these interventions was framed arsenic necessary. Each was presented arsenic a motivation obligation. Each was defended arsenic portion of a rules-based planetary order. In practice, each helped erode the precise norms Denmark present invokes erstwhile Greenland enters the equation.

Palestine makes this contradiction intolerable to ignore.

Israel is simply a adjacent Danish ally, yet arsenic Gaza has been reduced to rubble, Denmark’s governmental enactment has remained strikingly restrained. While planetary ineligible experts, humanitarian organisations and United Nations bodies person warned of genocide, Denmark’s effect has been cautious to the constituent of silence. Calls for accountability person been muted. Moral clarity has been deferred.

At the aforesaid time, Danish manufacture remains entangled successful the machinery of war. A Danish defence institution continues to proviso spare parts for F-35 combatant jets, craft that person played a cardinal relation successful the bombardment of Gaza. When asked whether planetary apprehension obligations would beryllium enforced against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should helium participate Denmark, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen declined to springiness a wide answer.

Law is conditional. Principles are flexible. Denmark has agelong helped normalise a satellite successful which powerfulness decides erstwhile instrumentality applies.

For years, imperial unit was thing that happened elsewhere. To different people, successful different regions. The consequences were exported. Destabilised states. Mass displacement. Radicalisation. The dependable hollowing-out of planetary institutions. Europe absorbed immoderate of the fallout but mostly refused to link it to its ain governmental choices. Denmark was nary exception.

Greenland collapses that distance. Gaza exposes the motivation architecture beneath it.

What Denmark is experiencing present is not injustice. It is exposure.

The aforesaid arguments erstwhile utilized to warrant involution successful the Middle East are present being repurposed person to home. Strategic necessity. Security concerns. Global competition. These are not caller concepts. They are simply being applied successful a absorption Denmark did not expect.

This infinitesimal reveals the limits of motivation selectivity. International instrumentality cannot beryllium defended lone erstwhile it is convenient. Sovereignty cannot beryllium ineffable successful the Arctic and disposable elsewhere. Small states cannot trust connected principles they helped undermine and expect them to clasp erstwhile planetary powerfulness dynamics shift.

For Europe arsenic a whole, the implications are profound. Alignment with empire does not warrant extortion from it. Loyalty does not nutrient autonomy. A continent that tolerates the erosion of instrumentality overseas volition yet look its lack astatine home.

Greenland is not conscionable a territorial concern. It is simply a reckoning.

The irony is complete. The question is whether Denmark and Europe volition yet take to larn from it.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.