JANUARY 11 — There is nothing perverse in the internal logic of Donald Trump when he speaks openly about acquiring Greenland. To Trump, Greenland is not first and foremost a society, a culture, or a people with historical rights. 

It is a strategic object — a massive piece of geography whose value is rising rapidly in an era of climate change, military competition, and technological rivalry.

When Trump remarked that he “likes maps,” he was not expressing a hobbyist’s fascination with geography. 

He was articulating a worldview in which territory is power, and power must be owned, controlled, or denied to rivals. 

In such a mindset, moral discomfort, alliance sensitivities, and post-war diplomatic norms are secondary considerations. What matters is whether a piece of land enhances American leverage — militarily, economically, or strategically.

From this perspective, Greenland appears less like an eccentric obsession and more like a prototype. Greenland anchors the northern flank of North America. 

It hosts early-warning radar systems critical to US missile defence, sits astride the shortest air and missile trajectories between Russia and the United States, and overlooks the Arctic routes that are becoming navigable as polar ice melts. 

With global warming, the Northern Sea Route and transpolar shipping lanes are reducing transit times between Europe and East Asia from weeks to days. 

Greenland, sitting between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, becomes an unsinkable aircraft carrier in slow motion.

Beyond military geography, Greenland also holds vast deposits of rare earth minerals, uranium, hydrocarbons, and an extraordinary share of the world’s freshwater outside Antarctica. 

In an era of supply-chain insecurity and resource nationalism, these attributes turn Greenland into a strategic prize rather than a remote dependency.

That Greenland formally belongs to Denmark barely registers in this calculus. 

Denmark is a small power, militarily dependent on Nato and ultimately on the United States. From a hard-nosed realist standpoint, Copenhagen lacks the capacity to meaningfully resist sustained American pressure. Sovereignty, in other words, becomes negotiable when asymmetry is overwhelming.

Once this logic is accepted, an unsettling question follows naturally: if Greenland is a legitimate object of acquisition, why not Okinawa?

Okinawa is, in many respects, even more strategically valuable than Greenland. 

It sits at the heart of the first island chain, facing China’s eastern seaboard, the Taiwan Strait, and the approaches to the South China Sea. 

It hosts the bulk of US military facilities in Japan, including Kadena Air Base, the largest US air base in Asia, and critical Marine Corps installations. 

From Okinawa, American forces can project power rapidly across North-east and South-east Asia.

Yet Okinawa remains Japanese territory — part of Japan, a treaty ally that has hosted US forces since the end of World War II. 

The US–Japan alliance rests on a delicate balance: Japan accepts a heavy American military presence in exchange for extended deterrence and security guarantees, while the United States formally respects Japanese sovereignty.

Trump has always been ambivalent about this bargain. Alliances, in his rhetoric, are transactional. 

Allies are frequently portrayed as free-riders. Security guarantees are conditional on financial contributions and political compliance. 

In such a worldview, the idea that the United States bears immense strategic responsibility in Asia without owning the territory that enables it can appear irrational.

Herein lies the dangerous parallel. Greenland tests whether territorial acquisition can be openly discussed without taboo. 

Okinawa tests whether alliance norms still impose limits on power.

No serious analyst suggests that Trump plans a literal annexation of Okinawa. 

But the danger lies elsewhere: in the erosion of restraint. Once the principle that allies’ territory is inviolable is weakened in one context, it becomes vulnerable in others. 

Control can deepen without formal annexation — through permanent basing, expanded legal immunities, exclusive operational zones, or pressure on host governments to silence local opposition.

Under the late Abe Shinzo, Japan pursued unprecedented strategic alignment with Washington, expanding defence cooperation and reinterpreting constitutional constraints. 

Even then, Okinawan resistance to US bases remained intense and persistent. Local grievances over land use, environmental damage, and social disruption never disappeared. 

Any perception that Okinawa’s status was drifting from partnership toward appropriation would ignite political backlash not only in Okinawa but across Japan. The repercussions would be manifold. 

First, the credibility of US alliances would suffer a severe blow. If even Japan — Washington’s most reliable ally in Asia — cannot rely on the sanctity of its territory, smaller allies will conclude that alignment with the United States offers protection only so long as interests align.

Second, China and Russia would exploit the contradiction relentlessly. 

Beijing, in particular, would point to Greenland and Okinawa as evidence that American commitment to sovereignty and a “rules-based order” is selective and instrumental. 

The moral asymmetry that underpins US criticism of territorial revisionism elsewhere would erode.

Third, regional stability would weaken. Okinawa is already a focal point of strategic tension. 

Any move perceived as deepening US control beyond alliance norms would harden Chinese threat perceptions and increase the risk of militarised escalation in the Western Pacific.

Ultimately, the real danger is not Greenland itself, nor Okinawa as a literal target. It is the normalisation of a worldview in which power is unconstrained by restraint, and geography is reduced to an asset class. 

In such a world, maps cease to represent a sovereign order painstakingly constructed after 1945. They become inventories of advantage. Greenland is the test case. Okinawa is the cautionary mirror.

If the world accepts that strategic land can be acquired, pressured, or bargained away simply because it is useful, then the distinction between ally and adversary collapses. What remains is a world governed not by rules, but by appetite — and appetite, once indulged, rarely stops at the first acquisition.

*Phar Kim Beng is professor of Asean Studies at the International Islamic University of Malaysia and a director of the Institute of International and Asean Studies.

**This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.