What's Manifest Destiny And Why It's Being Linked To Trump's Renewed Interest In Greenland

Last Updated:January 21, 2026, 17:08 IST

Amid rising tensions over Greenland and unease in Canada, analysts are revisiting a 19th-century idea once used to justify America’s continental expansion.

The new US map posted by Donald Trump.

A year after US President Donald Trump revived the 19th-century doctrine of ‘Manifest Destiny’ in his January 2025 inauguration speech, a concept once associated with America’s continental conquest is resurfacing in Washington’s language about Greenland, Canada and the wider Arctic.

As the region becomes a new theatre of global competition, an ideology many assumed was confined to history has re-entered contemporary policy debates in unusual and consequential ways.

Greenland has faced political pressure not seen since the early Cold War, Canada is reassessing its Arctic sovereignty, and European allies have voiced rare warnings about territorial integrity inside NATO. To understand why two northern territories are being discussed in this manner, it is essential to unpack the doctrine Trump invoked one year ago and the ambitions it once fuelled across North America.

Why Are Greenland And Canada Back In Focus?

Since last year, senior US officials have stopped talking about the Arctic in terms of partnership and begun talking about it in terms of possession. The shift was visible as early as February–March, when the White House sent an uninvited delegation led by Vice President JD Vance to Greenland — a visit local authorities rejected, signalling they did not want Washington’s overtures.

Instead of treating the rebuff as diplomatic resistance, Trump escalated. By late 2025, he declared: “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%." The statement was not framed as negotiation but as inevitability, a tone that alarmed Copenhagen and raised the question of whether Washington was anchoring policy in something other than strategic logic.

The tone sharpened further in January this year, when White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Trump’s top aide Stephen Miller argued on CNN that Greenland “should have" belonged to the US and insisted, “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland." These remarks, followed by Louisiana governor Jeff Landry asserting the administration’s goal of “solidifying the Western Hemisphere … and Greenland is in the Western Hemisphere", pushed the issue into outright ideological territory.

Canada was pulled into the conversation for similar reasons. Trump has previously called the US–Canada boundary an “artificial" border and has floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state. In early 2025, then–prime minister Justin Trudeau responded that there “isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell" of such an idea ever materialising. But Canadian anxieties deepened by late 2025, when former officials Bob Rae and Jean Charest warned that Trump may have Canada “back in his crosshairs", especially amid renewed US challenges to Canadian Arctic sovereignty and the Northwest Passage.

This rhetorical shift has unsettled allies because it invokes ideas not associated with modern strategic policymaking. To understand it, we must turn to an older doctrine that shaped the very formation of the United States: Manifest Destiny.

What Exactly Is Manifest Destiny?

Manifest Destiny emerged in the 1840s as a belief that the US was destined — by history, by providence and by the supposed superiority of its political system — to expand across North America. Coined by journalist John L. O’Sullivan in 1845, the term justified territorial acquisition as both inevitable and morally righteous. It blended religious language, racial hierarchy and geopolitical ambition into a single, powerful narrative.

Under President James K. Polk, Manifest Destiny drove America’s most rapid expansion. Between 1845 and 1849, the US annexed Texas, acquired California and the Southwest following war with Mexico, and negotiated control of Oregon. The country reached the Pacific within a generation. This transformation came with enormous costs for Indigenous nations, who were displaced or destroyed by warfare, forced removal and the advance of settler populations.

Although the doctrine is popularly remembered as a westward push, its reach was broader. It included visions of the US absorbing British North America (modern Canada) and extending influence into the Arctic. This northern dimension is crucial for understanding why Canada and Greenland are reappearing in American rhetoric more than a century later.

How Canada And Greenland Fit Into 19th-Century Expansionist Thinking?

By the mid-19th century, American statesmen were actively speculating about the eventual political unification of the continent. Economic anxiety in Canada, especially after the repeal of Britain’s Corn Laws in the 1840s, even triggered calls among Montreal businessmen for political union with the United States. William Seward, who would later become Secretary of State and oversee the Alaska Purchase, believed that Canada “would ultimately" enter the American federation if Washington simply waited for history to take its course.

After acquiring Alaska in 1867, Seward’s circle turned its attention further north. One of his allies, Robert J. Walker, commissioned a detailed report proposing the purchase of Greenland and Iceland from Denmark. The report argued not only that Greenland possessed valuable fisheries, minerals and coal, but that its acquisition would “greatly increase [Canada’s] inducements, peacefully and cheerfully, to become a part of the American Union."

In other words, Greenland was seen as a stepping stone to absorbing British North America. The idea did not advance, but it alarmed Britain. On 1 July 1867, the same year as the Alaska deal, Britain created the Dominion of Canada, uniting its colonies into a political entity partly to deter American expansionism. Canada’s confederation, in this sense, can be viewed as a strategic response to the logic of Manifest Destiny.

Greenland, however, remained an “unfinished agenda item". After the Second World War, the US made a secret offer to buy the island from Denmark, but the proposal was rejected. Washington maintained military bases on Greenland during the Cold War but did not pursue territorial acquisition further. The idea lay dormant until Trump brought Manifest Destiny back into political speech in 2025.

Why Did Manifest Destiny Reappear In 2025?

During his second inauguration on 20 January 2025, Trump pledged that the US would “expand our territory" and pursue its “Manifest Destiny into the stars". The phrasing was unusual in modern American politics. For most of the 20th and early 21st centuries, US foreign policy centred on alliances, global influence and economic leadership, not territorial growth.

Yet the invocation resonated among Trump’s supporters. Figures across the MAGA movement reframed the doctrine as “Manifest Destiny 2.0". They argued that the US, as heir to Western civilisational power, had a natural right to consolidate dominance across the Western Hemisphere, particularly in strategic or resource-rich territories such as Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia and Greenland.

On NBC News, Former Trump strategist turned MAGA influencer Steve Bannon described it as “Manifest Destiny 2.0." Commentators such as Matt Walsh argued that “expansion is the American way", while Mike Cernovich, on a podcast appearance, spoke of pursuing “the orderly governance of the world via American imperialism."

Why Is Greenland Central To This New Debate?

Greenland sits at the intersection of strategic utility, resource potential and historical symbolism. Militarily, the island has long anchored America’s early-warning and space-surveillance architecture in the Arctic. Its deposits of rare earths, and its position beside the western entrance of the Northwest Passage, have become even more significant as great-power competition intensifies and polar ice continues to recede.

But these factors alone do not explain why Greenland has become the emotional core of today’s expansionist rhetoric. Denmark already allows deep defence cooperation, and Washington could easily increase its Arctic footprint through negotiation rather than ownership. What elevates Greenland in contemporary American discourse is its resemblance to the territories that once shaped the United States’ continental rise — vast, sparsely populated, rich in resources and located on the edge of a strategic frontier.

During the nineteenth century, Greenland periodically appeared in American territorial thinking as the northern counterpart to the Louisiana and Alaska acquisitions — a final, elusive piece of a larger geographic arc. That idea has resurfaced today.

This is why recent statements about entitlement to the island have drawn global scrutiny.

How Are NATO And Europe Responding?

The revival of Manifest Destiny has created one of the most unusual intra-NATO dynamics in decades. Denmark, responsible for Greenland’s foreign affairs, has flatly rejected any suggestion of US acquisition. European allies have reiterated fundamental norms of sovereignty and territorial integrity, warning that such principles cannot be suspended between allies.

The reaction has also extended beyond NATO. In January, the United States faced a rare rebuke at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, followed the next day by warnings from major European governments that they would “not stop defending" the principles of sovereignty and territorial inviolability in response to Washington’s Greenland rhetoric.

Conclusion

Whether Manifest Destiny remains a symbolic banner or evolves into a more assertive shaping force will influence Arctic geopolitics, NATO cohesion and North American stability in the years ahead.

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