The debate over Greenland cannot be understood in isolation. When the United States frames Greenland as a “national security priority”, it draws on a familiar playbook, one that Europe has seen repeteadly in Latin America, and most clearly in Venezuela. For decades, Venezuela has been treated less as a sovereign country than as a repository of resources. Its oil reserves, among the largest in the world, have been used to justify sanctions, regime-change operations, covert destabilisation and repeated violations of international law.
The logic is brutally consistent: when a country or territory sits on strategically important energy resources and resist alignment, sovereignty becomes conditional, and truth becomes secondary. Control of resources takes precedence over democratic choice.
What has happened in Venezuela is not an anomaly but part of a broader pattern. External interference justified in the name of energy security, geopolitical competition or ideological convenience has repeatedly sidelined international law. Political outcomes are treated as obstacles to be managed rather than expressions of popular will.
What is now happening with Greenland follows the same logic, stripped of euphemism and transposed to the Arctic. The language is different. Venezuela is described as a “rogue state”, while Greenland is framed as a “strategic asset”. But the underlying assumption is identical: that access to fossil fuels, minerals and territory can override self-determination when the stakes are high enough.
Fossil dependence as the engine of coercion
The common denominator between Caracas and Nuuk is not ideology. It is fossil fuel dependence.
Wars are fought to control oil and gas reserves, pipelines and shipping routes. Fossil fuel profits bankroll militaries and prolonged violence. Militaries themselves rank among the world’s largest fossil fuel consumers. Climate breakdown driven by fossil fuels is then managed not through justice or care, but through militarisation and securitisation.
This dynamic is not abstract. It is visible in Venezuela’s history of sanctions and destabilisation. It is also visible in repeated US statements framing Greenland’s resources, shipping lanes and military positioning as matters of national survival. As long as fossil fuels remain central to economic and military power, coercion follows. The geography changes. The logic does not.
Europe’s uncomfortable position
Europe likes to imagine itself as a normative power, defending multilateralism and international law. Yet the EU remains structurally dependent on fossil imports. Roughly 95 percent of crude oil and 85 percent of fossil gas consumed in the EU comes from abroad. Breaking away from Russian supplies has not eliminated this vulnerability. It has simply redirected it, increasingly towards the United States.
That dependence shapes political behaviour. It helps explain why Brussels hesitates when Washington crosses legal and political red lines. It explains why EU institutions were absent when European leaders defended Denmark and Greenland against renewed US claims. It also explains why violations of international law are condemned selectively rather than consistently.
Greenland is not Venezuela. And that is the warning
Greenland is not Venezuela. It is wealthier, far less populous and embedded within the Kingdom of Denmark. It has strong institutions and international visibility. That is precisely why the comparison matters.
If even Greenland can be spoken about in terms of purchase, annexation and coercion, then no territory is immune once it becomes strategically “useful”.
Greenland holds oil, gas and a wide range of critical raw materials. But It also represents a legal and moral test for Europe. There are deposits of rare earth elements alongside graphite, copper, nickel, cobalt, zinc, gold and titanium vanadium systems, many of them only partially explored but already central to electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines and military technologies.
This concentration of materials deemed critical by both the EU and the United States turns Greenland into a strategic prize, creating a clear incentive for Washington to secure influence over future supply. Resource potential therefore does not just shape investment interest but actively feeds geopolitical pressure, reframing territorial autonomy as a problem once it obstructs external demand.
Greenlanders have repeatedly exercised restraint to protect its environment and people . They have resisted uranium extraction. They have banned oil and gas exploration. They have chosen caution over boom-and-bust extraction, informed by lived experience of environmental risk and colonial history.
To treat this resistance as a problem to be “managed” in the name of the energy transition would replicate exactly the logic used against Venezuela: delegitimising political choice when it interferes with external demand.
Europe cannot denounce coercion abroad while tolerating it at home
The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act and its Memorandum of Understanding with Greenland could support a rights-based, Greenland-led pathway. Or they could become instruments through which Europe quietly aligns itself with an extractive race driven by US security priorities and geopolitical competition.
The line between cooperation and pressure is thin. Across the world, militarisation, security rhetoric and industrial urgency are increasingly used to override participation and environmental safeguards. Greenland will not be immune unless Europe sets clear boundaries.
Greenlanders must retain the genuine right to say no. Environmental standards must be uncompromising. Projects must deliver long-term benefits to local communities rather than external shareholders. Militarisation must never be used as justification for bypassing law or consent.
Above all, Greenland must not become Europe’s moral alibi for avoiding the harder task at home.
Breaking the fossil logic
The lesson from Venezuela is not simply that the United States behaves imperially. It is that fossil dependence creates the conditions in which imperial behaviour becomes normalised. As long as external demand keeps rising, societies that resist extraction will face escalating pressure.
Europe cannot claim to stand for sovereignty, international law and self-determination while remaining locked into a system that rewards coercion. Principles that apply only when convenient are not principles. They are branding.
Breaking fossil dependence is not just an environmental imperative. It is a geopolitical one.Without a rapid reduction in material and energy demand, Europe will continue to drift from one dependency to another, forced into silence when allies overstep and complicit when extraction is imposed elsewhere.
Greenlanders saying no to uranium and high-risk mining are not standing in the way of climate action. They are exposing the contrdiction at its heart.A transition built on pressure, militarisation and sacrifice zones is not a transition. It is extraction by another name.
Greenland is not for sale. Neither is Venezuela’s sovereignty. The real question is whether Europe is willing to act as if that matters, even when doing so comes at a political and economic cost.
