By Marcelina Horrillo Husillos, Journalist and Correspondent at The European Financial Review
President Donald Trump said the U.S. will “go as far as we have to go” to get control of Greenland.
However, Greenland is not terra nullius ripe for American colonisation. The island is part of Denmark (a NATO member) and indigenous Greenlanders possess a right of self-determination. Moreover, any use of US military force to take Greenland would be in violation of both the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty on which NATO is founded and the 1945 United Nations Charter.
In recent weeks, Trump also said that the 2.1 million Palestinians should be moved out from Gaza to Arab states like Egypt and Jordan following Israel’s war with Hamas, controversially proposing that the US take control of the Strip and turn it into a Middle Eastern “Riviera.”
Although presented as a supposed gesture of generosity, global public opinion has rightly pointed out that permanently forcing Palestinians to leave Gaza would constitute ethnic cleansing, and the acquisition of Gaza by the US or Israel would amount to annexation. Both actions are profoundly illegal under international law.
International humanitarian law unequivocally prohibits the forced transfer or deportation of populations under occupation. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.” Articles seven and eight of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines forcible transfer as a crime against humanity and a war crime. Moreover, such displacement undermines the foundational norms of international law.
The Declaration on Principles of International Law declares that “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.” Trump’s Greenland and Gaza Statements clashes with the Declaration on Principles of International Law, which declares that “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.” Furthermore, indigenous peoples also have a right to self-determination as part of their collective human rights.
Gaza
The Trump Organization’s growing real estate business interests in the region revived an idea previously touted by both him and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Both Trump and Kushner are clearly keen on the idea of developing Gaza in terms of a real estate project, rather than as a home for the more than 2 million Palestinians who currently live there.
In the last few years, The Trump Organization, the real estate and hospitality conglomerate currently run by Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Junior, have struck several agreements with Saudi Arabian real estate company Dar Global, the international arm of Saudi Arabia’s Dar Al Arkan Real Estate Development Company.
A luxury Trump-branded hotel and golf resort in Oman is in development, while The Trump Organization and Dar Global have announced plans for two Trump Tower projects, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
A previous Trump Tower for Dubai, comprising of a hotel and apartments, was announced in October 2005. However, the project was cancelled in 2011 due to the global financial crisis.
Trump already owns a golf club in Dubai, which was opened in 2017. The Dubai golf club was built in partnership with DAMAC Properties, run by Hussain Sajwani. In January 2025, Sajwani appeared alongside Trump at a press conference where it was announced that DAMAC would invest “at least” $20 billion (€19.39 billion) to build new data centres across the US.
Following World War II, the international community adopted the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which form the cornerstone of international humanitarian law, regulating the laws of war and occupation. Today, 196 states – including the US and Israel – have ratified the Geneva Conventions.
Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits an occupying power from forcibly transferring or removing people from a territory. This is one of the foundations of international law since the creation of the United Nations. Forced displacement is recognized as an unacceptable consequence of wars, and its prohibition is meant to remove any political incentives for an acquisitive power to cleanse part or all of an indigenous population from its homeland.
Hence the US could only take control of Gaza with the consent of the sovereign authority of the territory. Israel can’t cede Gaza to the US. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Gaza is an occupied territory – and that this occupation is illegal under international law.
Greenland
Trump’s interest in Greenland is framed around US security. The island is strategically located in the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom) Gap. The gap gained prominence during the Cold War as an area where Soviet nuclear submarines could operate in the Atlantic Ocean proximate to the US and its NATO partners. Denmark’s limited naval capacity meant these Soviet submarine incursions were uncontested.
Washington has always appreciated the strategic significance of Greenland. It was used during the second world war as a US military staging point due to its relative safety from the European theatre of war and its capacity as a stopover for aircraft to refuel.
Later, during the Cold War, the Thule US Airbase was constructed on its northwest coast, later becoming the Pituffik Space Base.
Trump is particularly concerned about Russian and Chinese ships operating offshore near Greenland in the Arctic Ocean, and with ensuring US access to rare earth minerals on the island.
The island is recognised as Danish territory. Any dispute over a Danish claim to the island was resolved by an international court in 1933, and since that time Denmark has overseen Greenlandic affairs without challenge. Any suggestion Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland is contested has no foundation.
While Denmark has been a colonial power, there has been an active process underway to grant the 57,000 Greenlanders increased autonomy from Copenhagen. Home rule has been granted, a legislature has been created, and a road map exists for self-determination that may eventually see the emergence of an independent Greenland.
All five parties in Greenland‘s parliament have united to reject US President Donald Trump’s calls to take over the strategically important Arctic Island. Seeking to honour the responsibility Copenhagen feels for ushering Greenlanders through this process, Denmark has made clear that Greenland is not for sale.
International Law
International law prohibits annexation for several key reasons, including: use of force; violation of a state’s sovereignty and of a peoples’ right to self-determination; national security concerns, and violations of jus cogens norms—fundamental principles of international law that cannot be overridden.
In addition, the Organization of American States deemed the use of coercive economic measures as an illegal use of force. Article 20 of its Charter notes that “no State may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another State and obtain from its advantages of any kind.”
In 1932, the United States also adopted the Stimson Doctrine, which declared that territorial changes achieved through forceful annexation would not be acknowledged as legitimate. In other words, the United States refused to recognize such actions as lawful territorial claims.
When a state declares annexation on its own, the international community usually doesn’t recognize the act. The annexing state often faces legal consequences like sanctions or global condemnation.
The spectre of Trump’s earlier defiance of international norms looms large, fuelling concerns that legal frameworks may again be swept aside. In his first term, Trump unilaterally recognised Israeli sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, sweeping moves that directly contravened decades of international consensus. Both actions were rejected by the United Nations General Assembly, the Security Council and the International Court of Justice, as well as by a majority of states, which deemed the annexations to be violations of international law. If Trump’s Gaza scheme is anything to go by, he seems utterly unperturbed and ready to flout international law entirely if it suits him.
In what respects to Trump’s plans for Greenland, assuming Denmark agrees, the US can’t simply buy Greenland now. Especially not without the consent of the Greenlanders. Anything else would violate their right to self-determination. You can no longer sell off parts of a state territory. While the right to self-determination under international law is a more recent development, it goes back to the idea of popular sovereignty emerging during the Enlightenment. Accordingly, a monarch could no longer dispose of parts of his territory at will, even if this understanding was initially limited to European territory. The 20th century then saw the development of a general right to self-determination under international law, which is mentioned in the UN Charta and in the first article of both UN Human Rights Covenants. It provided the basis for decolonization during the postwar period. In 2019, the International Court of Justice reaffirmed its validity.
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