Aurora borealis lights up the night sky over residential houses in Nuuk, Greenland, on Friday, January 23. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images
Analysis by Brett H. McGurk, Jan. 25, 2026 CNN
In 416 BC, the city-state of Athens was in a prolonged conflict with Sparta, its archrival. For years, Athens had enjoyed comparative advantage over Sparta, particularly alliances and mutual defense pacts with smaller city-states known as the Delian League. By 416 BC, the Delian League had been in place for nearly 70 years, roughly the same as NATO, the modern equivalent of a prolonged and successful mutual defense alliance.
That was also the year that Athens came to view the Mediterranean island of Melos as vital for its strategic position. Melos had no military of its own, but it sat geographically at the intersection of maritime routes that helped both protect and project Athenian power. The island had long claimed neutrality, but for Athens, that would no longer suffice.
When an Athenian delegation demanded that Melos become a part of Athens, the Melians refused and appealed to Athenian traditions of logic and justice to work out a compromise. The Athenians responded with a famous line about power: “You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only a question between equals in power — while the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
Gain an island, lose an empire
Athens seized Melos, an exercise of brute force that was contrary to its traditions and what had built its consent-based alliances over decades. Shortly thereafter, these alliances frayed as Athens relied on coercion over persuasion to maintain them. Within a decade, Athens was defeated, and its empire collapsed.
19th Century illustration depicting the volcanic Greek island of Melos in the Aegean Sea. Dated 1860 Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
This account of Melos and the fall of the Athenian empire is recounted by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. His “Melian Dialogue” describes the interaction between the island and the Athenians, together with the famous line about global power politics. The timeless lesson, however, is not about brute force alone — but rather the risks of using brute force at the expense of alliances.
Trump’s ‘Greenlandian’ dialogue
In a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, President Donald Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller took a page from Thucydides when he described the White House’s logic of acquiring Greenland:
“You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
Miller was correct that power and its projection remain an irreducible component of global affairs. He was also correct that the United States today remains the most powerful state in the world when measured by its military strength, economic resiliency, and entrepreneurial system that drives global innovations.
But that was also true of Athens, and like Sparta was for Athens back then, China is not far behind the United States today. That’s where Miller’s “iron laws of the world” fall well short: They fail to recognize that the lasting formula for maintaining and sustaining global power over time is through mutually beneficial alliances, not brute strength and coercion.
Greenland as Melos
Now, let’s apply all of this to what just happened with Greenland. Trump is not the first to recognize that Greenland, like Melos for Athens, is strategic ground for US defense
William Seward, Secretary of State for Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, after successfully negotiating to purchase Alaska from Russia for 2 cents per acre, set his sights on Greenland. By 1868, Seward’s negotiations with Denmark to buy the island made some progress, with an offer of $5.5 million in gold reportedly on the table, but they stalled as Congress showed no interest, and post-Civil War America had larger problems.
In 1946, President Harry S. Truman offered Denmark $100 million in gold for Greenland, driven by its strategic location at the start of the Cold War. Truman’s military command had unanimously urged the White House to acquire the territory given its proximity to Russia, and Moscow’s designs on the arctic region.
The HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen ship of the Danish Navy patrols on January 20, near Nuuk, Greenland. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Denmark turned down Truman’s offer, but it agreed to negotiate a military pact that gave Washington open-ended access and basing rights to the entirety the island. This treaty — the Defense of Greenland Agreement — was ratified by Congress in 1951. At the height of the Cold War, the United States had dozens of military bases and positions in Greenland. Today, there is only one — but that’s by choice. The 1951 treaty is in full effect.
This historical experience with Greenland would make Thucydides proud. America got all it wanted — and ultimately defeated the Soviet Union — through alliance building and power projection through consensus, not brute force and coercion.
The timeless lesson for Trump
Trump is right to identify Greenland as a strategic priority for the United States. In fact, the island matters even more today than in Truman’s time. As polar ice melts and new sea lanes open, the Arctic region is not a buffer but a strategic arena. Russia has invested massively in ice breaking ships to forge and control access routes. China, despite having no territorial access to the region, has declared itself a “near arctic state” and aims to build a “Polar Silk Road” together with Russia to rebalance global trading patterns.
Looking ahead, the Arctic region may soon be central to global commerce. Its Northern Sea Route from East Asia to Europe is 5,000 miles shorter (and fourteen days shorter in transit time) as compared to traditional routes through the Suez Canal. Greenland’s size and central location offset some advantages enjoyed by Russia over the United States in the region, and it provides an Arctic foothold that Beijing can never hope to match.
The US on its own, however, cannot effectively compete with Russia in a contested Arctic region. Russia’s Arctic coastline stretches 15,000 miles. That’s over ten times the size of America’s, limited to Alaska. Russia has a fleet of 50 icebreaking ships, including some that are nuclear powered. The United States has three, which are non-nuclear powered.
That all changes so long as the United States remains aligned with NATO. Together with the United States, NATO includes eight allies with arctic access — Canada, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden. Combined, they have over 100,000 miles of Arctic coast — over five times Russia’s — and a fleet of ice breakers that begins to match Russia’s. All of this territory and the projection outward is linked through mutual defense agreements.
America’s strength and power in the Arctic region, like Athens in the Mediterranean, comes not from one remote island, Greenland, but rather from its web of consent-based alliances. Accordingly, any policy that would effectively risk jettisoning NATO to acquire Greenland for perceived advantage over Russia or China in the Arctic region or globally would be the height of folly.
A welcome off-ramp — for now
This week in Davos, Trump appeared to retreat from his insistence on acquiring Greenland through use of force or purchase — relying instead on the treaty Truman worked out that offers the United States everything it could possibly need on the island. Details of what Trump has called an “infinite” and “unlimited” deal are still unclear, but both of those adjectives aptly describe the Defense of Greenland Agreement of 1951. Trump may not get all he wanted, but America already has what it needs through consensual alliances built over decades — America’s true superpower that China or Russia can never match.
Locals stand on a snowy shoreline at dusk in Nuuk, Greenland, on January 21. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images
The open question is what might have been squandered in this exercise. Confidence and trust with allies are earned over decades but can be lost in weeks. Let’s hope the twists over this past week result in a strengthened alliance — and a strengthened Greenland — and can begin to mend the frayed seems of trust within NATO. Because as Thucydides teaches, while any great power can seize a patch of land, only lasting powers sustain their friends.
CVD 