When historian Barbara W. Tuchman chronicled the cascading series of escalations that resulted in the calamity of World War I, she brilliantly (and famously) described it as a “March of Folly” in which a series of disconnected but ill-timed events cascaded into a systemic collapse the consumed a generation of young men and devastated the heart of Europe.
Her premise held true for future generations and gave birth to escalation theory during the Cold War, when nuclear weapons made future marches of folly far more lethal and potentially extinction-inducing.
While diplomatic tensions in the Arctic remain a far cry from this order of destructive magnitude, events in Greenland since national elections were held on March 11 routed the ruling coalition of Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) and Siumut, whose fortunes dimmed (IA won 37.4 per cent of the vote in 2021 for a surprise first-place finish, dropping to 21.4 per cent in 2025 for a third-place finish and losing five of its 12 parliamentary seats, while Siumut, which fell to IA in 2021, went from its strong second-place showing of 30.1 per cent to just 14.7 per cent in 2025, losing six of its 10 seats).
Their electoral collapse was mirrored by the rise of two opposition parties, surprising not only most pundits but their own party chairmen. Demokraatit, a pro-business centrist-right party, rocketed to first place with 29.9 per cent of the vote and gaining seven additional seats in the Greenlandic parliament for a total now of 10, up from its fourth-place finish in 2021 with 9.3 per cent of the vote when it won only three seats, tripling its prior tally.
The more stridently pro-independence party Naleraq rose from its third-place 2021 showing with 12.3 per cent of the vote to its strong 2025 second-place finish with 24.5 per cent of the vote, winning eight seats compared to the four it won in 2021. Fifth-place finisher Attasut won 7.4 per cent of this year’s vote, retaining its two parliamentary seats.
Just as the tectonic 2024 American election signalled a profound political realignment and retreat to a more nationalistic isolationism for America, Greenland’s election amidst these most turbulent of times and mounting concerns over the intensifying interest in Greenland expressed by U.S. President Donald J. Trump signals as significant a vote for change and a rejection of the status quo, voting out of leadership both IA (at the helm since 2021) and Siumut, which had won previously in what Americans can rightly perceive as a resounding vote of no confidence in their ability to guide Greenland through the current diplomatic tempest.
But political elites in Nuuk have tried valiantly to interpret election results in favourable terms. After all, they reason, Naleraq didn’t take first place, and Demokraatit (which did take first) didn’t win an outright majority, so a coalition would once again be formed – indicating to some a reassuring but illusory sense of continuity, and not the change that voters have actually embraced.
This hunger for electoral change cannot be denied, as it is reflected in the electoral outcome. It’s just change of a Greenlandic (and inherently parliamentary) sort, not like that experienced in American elections, where its two-party system produces a sense of administration whiplash when there’s a party turnover in contrast to parliamentary systems, when a minority government is formed with a coalition.
Indeed, Greenland’s tilt to the right has not been fully reflected in the coalition negotiations that followed the March election among the parties elected to parliament, which have 45 days to complete, on how to balance the contending interests of speedy independence favoured only by Naleraq with a more gradual and union-prolonging approach (as favoured by all Greenland’s other parties, left or right in addition to the Danish government in Copenhagen), or to reflect the stunning electoral success of both Demokraatit and Naleraq as compared to the steep losses inflicted by voters upon the previously dominant parties.
Instead of victorious Demokraatit joining forces with runner-up Naleraq with their combined 54.4 per cent of the vote, and welcoming the new era of change Greenlanders voted for so decisively, Demokraatit instead formed its coalition with all of the other parties except Naleraq, which withdrew from coalition negotiations to become the sole opposition party. While this new super-coalition represents over 75 per cent of the electorate, it also ignores the will of the nearly 25 per cent of voters who elevated Naleraq to its second-place finish in the 2025 national poll, thus empowering in the next government the election’s most dramatic electoral decliners while effectively disenfranchising one of its most successful gainers.
Intriguingly, mapping Greenland’s 2025 election results by regional municipality shows a very clear regional fault line with northwest Greenland (the region that Robert Peary once anticipated would be colonized by America, and was thus widely called Pearyland) becoming Naleraq country (including, from north to south, Avannaata, Qeqertalik, and Qeqqata) while Greenland’s southwest and southeast has become Demokraatit territory (including Sermersooq and Kujalleq).
And yet, Demokraatit’s chairman ultimately included members of all parties except for Naleraq in his governing coalition, effectively turning his back on Greenland’s northwest – planting a seed, potentially, for the future Balkanization of Greenland in the event international tensions rise.
High tensions at a high latitude
With America’s intensifying interest in Greenland now part of the political conversation in Greenland, tensions are high in a region famous for long having “high latitude, low tension,” so high the ingredients seem present for unintended escalation and a potential cascade that could destabilize the entire region with its own Arctic “march of folly.”
Just two days after Greenland’s national elections were held, Trump fatefully met with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and while reiterating his recognition of Greenland’s strategic importance in a warming Arctic, once again mentioned his expectation that Greenland would eventually be annexed by the United States, a sentiment he had expressed before, most famously during his address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on March 4, just one week before Greenland’s 2025 election.
As the alliance leader of NATO, the U.S. has long been counted on for the defence of democracy across Europe, so it ruffled many an alliance partner’s feathers to hear Trump talk openly - and longingly - of conquering the territory of a fellow alliance member, in particular during talks with the alliance’s secretary-general. That this was just two days after the election, and 43 days before the coalition itself must be determined, Greenland can understandably be concerned. The timing is indeed awful.
But as the American electorate has long known, Trump is prone to hyperbole, and his casual use and misuse of language has become an accepted fact of life, enervating advocates of free expression with every faux-pas that he makes. Indeed, since Trump’s seemingly unlikely rise from reality TV star and real estate mogul to American president (mirroring the very same trajectory to power of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who got his start as a television comedian playing a president), political speech in America has transformed from woke political correctness (and a progressive tyranny that hid behind it) to a democratically uncouth revival in uncensored political discourse.
But Greenlanders are more European in their political culture than America despite their inhabiting the northeastern flank of North America and, as such, are more “woke” and politically correct than the recently unleashed Americans. Greenlanders are quite sensitive to such frequent presidential use of the word “annex” in conjunction with the words “America” and “Greenland” after over 80 years of strategic partnership and military protection.
