US could invade Greenland under national emergency, warns Jeffrey Sachs

New Delhi,UPDATED: Jan 5, 2026 01:37 IST

Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs has warned that the United States is dismantling international law in real time, citing the capture of Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro as a signal of how far Washington is now prepared to go — and cautioning that Greenland could be next.

“The US is deliberately out to rip up any semblance or shred of international law,” Sachs said during a discussion with Professor Glenn Diesen, warning that global rules are being sidelined by raw power. Diesen is a professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and hosts the Greater Eurasia podcast.

Sachs remarks followed the US military operation in Venezuela, in which American forces captured Maduro after large-scale strikes. The Operation Absolute Resolve was announced by President Donald Trump, marking one of the most dramatic US interventions in the region in decades.

He said Europe should not assume such actions would remain confined to Latin America. Turning to Greenland, Sachs warned that Washington could soon invoke security grounds to justify occupying the strategically located territory.

“I don’t know how Europe will feel when the United States invades Greenland,” Sachs said. “But don’t be surprised when it happens.”

He argued that Trump has repeatedly voiced such intentions in public. “Trump has announced it, he has announced it again and again, and it’s very, very likely to happen,” Sachs said. “One day, Trump will say, ‘We have a national emergency,’ and Greenland will be occupied.”

Sachs predicted that Europe’s response would likely be muted. “Then probably Europe will say, ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you, US. It could’ve been worse.’ This is how things are right now,” he said, adding pointedly: “Principles? Who needs them?”

Only after Europe adjusts, Sachs suggested, would the broader implications become clear. Speaking in a separate interview with Chinese broadcaster CGTN, he said the United States has become a war machine and accused Washington of single-handedly ripping up the UN Charter, which he described as the lifeline meant to prevent a repeat of the catastrophic wars of the 20th century.

Trump’s December 2025 appointment of Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland for security purposes revived his long-standing interest in the territory, first revealed in 2019 when he floated the idea of buying it outright. Leaders in Greenland and Denmark again rejected any suggestion of annexation and summoned the US ambassador for clarification.

WHY GREENLAND MATTERS TO US SECURITY

The US President's interest in Greenland is rooted in hard security calculations. The island sits astride the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom gap, a strategic corridor that gained prominence during the Cold War. It was a zone where Soviet nuclear submarines could move into the Atlantic close to the US and its Nato allies, largely uncontested due to Denmark’s limited naval reach.

The US has long viewed Greenland as critical to its defence posture, using it as a military staging ground during the Second World War and later establishing the Thule Air Base on its northwest coast — now known as Pituffik Space Base. More recently, Trump has focused on growing Russian and Chinese naval activity in the Arctic waters off Greenland.

Sachs has linked the Maduro operation and Greenland rhetoric to a longer history of American unilateralism. He has previously said that the US has been involved in more than 70 regime-change operations since 1945, pointing to the 2003 Iraq invasion and the 2011 Libya intervention as examples carried out without UN authorisation.

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