Reconstructing a Suppressed Debate
This is a debate over America’s policy to liberate the Arctic from the last vestiges of colonialism, first in Danish-ruled Greenland, the vast island nation on the northeastern flank of Arctic North America with a population of 57,000, and potentially in the Canadian Arctic, where Ottawa maintains a tenuous sovereign grip on the archipelago spanning the Northwest Passage between mainland North America and the North Pole.
But this debate has not taken place. It has instead been suppressed. Yet it remains necessary. My efforts to foster such an exchange on America’s proposed liberation of Greenland did not generate a substantive intellectual debate over competing visions for a secure Arctic. They provoked a hostile response—often personal and ideological—rather than civil and analytical.
Public expressions of opinion may reflect longstanding political and social pressures, and do not necessarily capture the full range of views present within Greenlandic society.
Below is my effort to reconstruct this debate, engaging directly with critical commentary alongside my responses that have not previously been published.
On February 17, 2026, the network lead of the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN), P. Whitney Lackenbauer, and his colleague Samantha Hossack published a Strategic Perspectives article examining my analysis of U.S. policy toward Greenland (“Justifying Annexation: Barry Scott Zellen and the United States’ Annexation of Greenland,” NAADSN, February 17, 2026). The article situates my work within a broader critique of American Arctic policy under President Trump, alongside perspectives from Canada and Denmark/Greenland.
Lackenbauer and Hossack cite 24 of my works from the past five years. This represents a broader engagement than Lackenbauer’s earlier NAADSN Quick Impact article (P. Whitney Lackenbauer, “Seeking to Legitimize American Conquest? A Response to Barry Scott Zellen,” NAADSN, January 19, 2026). However, their interpretation remains selective and, at times, reductive, simplifying key elements of my argument and limiting the accuracy of their critique. Moreover, these 24 cited works represent just one-sixth of the 149 articles I published during this period.
In response, I reconstruct this exchange point by point. In the absence of a direct debate, this article presents their published arguments alongside my responses. The result is a structured dialogue, based on their text and my previously unpublished replies, excerpts of which are presented in the following two-part series.
Clarifying the Scope of the Argument
Hossack & Lackenbauer: Over the past five years, Barry Zellen has developed a complex narrative that seeks to justify the annexation of Greenland by the United States. While Washington’s interest in acquiring Greenland as a United States territory was a non-issue during the Biden presidency, Zellen sought to diligently lay the intellectual groundwork to justify a United States takeover of the island, using military and strategic vulnerabilities, resource development, “hearts and minds” anti-colonial rhetoric, and historical interest to frame United States expansionism as a contemporary “white man’s burden” that should be welcomed by Greenlanders and Europeans alike.
My analysis instead emphasizes the gap between perceived and actual capabilities.
Zellen: This is a sweeping generalization without supporting references and it mischaracterizes my work during the Biden years, which—like most scholarship and commentary on the Arctic—moved beyond Trump’s 2019 Greenland proposal to other issues. The claim that my work sought to “lay the intellectual groundwork” for a U.S. takeover by invoking military vulnerability, resource development, and anti-colonial rhetoric reflects a misreading of both the scope and intent of my research. Even a basic synthesis of my publications would suggest a more differentiated set of arguments and priorities.
Hossack & Lackenbauer: Although we have not attempted to measure the effectiveness of this messaging, his decision to publish elements of this narrative in Northern Canadian newspapers – including the Hay River Hub and the Yellowknifer – leads us to infer that he seeks to create an undercurrent of pro-annexation messaging that can legitimize the United States’ Greenland ambitions in the minds of Northerners, seeking to destabilize Arctic communities across North America and advance a “Donroe Doctrine” asserting the purported American right to control the continent.
Zellen: This interpretation reflects a broader tendency within Arctic studies to frame dissenting perspectives as ideological or destabilizing. The suggestion that my work seeks to influence or “destabilize” northern communities overstates both its intent and its impact. Northern audiences are neither passive nor easily influenced, and such claims risk underestimating their agency.
While it is true that NAADSN’s publications have contributed to limiting my access to certain regional outlets, it is not accurate to characterize my work as advocating destabilization or advancing a “Donroe Doctrine.” My focus has been on examining Arctic governance, sovereignty, and Indigenous-state relations within evolving geopolitical conditions.
I do not seek to advance U.S. policy positions. Where relevant, I refer to them as articulated in official documents, such as the National Security Strategy, but my work remains analytical rather than advocative. My research has consistently emphasized the importance of Indigenous empowerment and the development of stable institutional relationships in the Arctic.
More broadly, my contributions should be understood in the context of a long-standing engagement with Arctic issues, including work on governance, Indigenous rights, and environmental security. My recent publications, including Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation and a Contested World (2024), have critically examined the increasing militarization of Arctic policy following the war in Ukraine and argued for renewed attention to cooperative frameworks.
Finally, while Hossack and Lackenbauer reference the “Donroe Doctrine” through their own work, they do not engage directly with my writings on the subject. A more complete assessment would consider those sources alongside their interpretation.
National Security and Historical Context
Hossack & Lackenbauer: Much of Zellen’s argumentation is grounded in purported national security concerns and various experiences of colonial trauma that have not been effectively redressed by colonial governments.
Zellen: Regarding “purported” national security concerns, my work has consistently questioned prevailing assumptions in Arctic security analysis. In particular, I have challenged claims of a significant Chinese threat in the Arctic (such as I do in my January 11, 2026 Politics and Rights Review article, “How Obsession with China Warps U.S. Arctic Policy,” as well as assertions that Russia poses an imminent offensive risk in the region.
My analysis instead emphasizes the gap between perceived and actual capabilities. Russia, for instance, has faced constraints in maintaining and defending its own Arctic infrastructure, while recent developments—including drone strikes on Arctic air bases—highlight vulnerabilities rather than expansionist capacity. Similarly, claims regarding extensive Chinese and Russian activity near Greenland are often overstated.
More broadly, my work has critically examined threat inflation in Arctic security debates, especially where it narrows analytical frameworks and prioritizes state-centric perspectives over the Arctic’s established traditions of multilateral and cooperative governance.
Hossack & Lackenbauer: What is most conspicuous, however, is Zellen’s abject disregard and denial of the United States’ own failings in addressing, let alone acknowledging, its history of colonial violence.
Zellen: This interpretation does not reflect the scope of my earlier work. My research has examined the United States’ historical experience with colonial governance, including efforts to reform earlier institutional models through legislation such as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA, 1971) and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA, 1980), which addressed key limitations related to subsistence and Indigenous rights.
I have also engaged with the broader historical context of North American development, including U.S.–Canadian cooperation in the Arctic. As discussed in my article “War in the Fog: Historical Memory, the Fog of War, and Unforgetting the Aleutians War” (Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Fall 2021), the joint U.S.-Canadian campaign in the Aleutians reflects a longer history of strategic coordination in the region. Similarly, the purchase of Alaska from Russia formed part of a gradual, if uneven, process of political transformation across the North American Arctic.
More broadly, I have examined these developments in comparative perspective, particularly in relation to Canadian land claims frameworks and co-management systems. These themes are developed in works such as “Decentralized Despotism and World Order for an Increasingly Tribalized World,” in Brandon L. Christensen (ed.), Global Federalism: Liberty and Security in an Anarchical World, Volume 2: Exit – Secession, Non-Westphalian Sovereignties, and Interstate Federalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), and “From Knowledge to Power: Co-management, Knowledge Co-production, and the Re-empowerment of Arctic Indigenous Peoples,” The Arctic Institute, June 10, 2025.
Assessing Strategic Claims and Public Opinion
Hossack & Lackenbauer: Furthermore, Zellen ignores how the United States’ interference in the sovereign territory of an ally could undermine its alliance and thus heighten national security risks.
Zellen: I do not ignore this issue. I address this complex problem in several venues, notably History.com, The Hartford Courant, Intersec, and Arctic Today. While many of my works are cited by Hossack and Lackenbauer, they are rarely quoted, which facilitates their mischaracterization of my arguments.
Indeed, not only do I not ignore this issue, I directly rebut what amounts to a talking point in Danish propaganda aimed primarily at fellow NATO members, Aa I explain in my January 22, 2026 commentary in The Hartford Courant (“Opinion: US relationship with Greenland might not be what you think it is“), “Not defending NATO member states’ remote colonial territories was” long ago “established as a norm for the alliance, not an exception – one that is newly relevant once again. … Denmark says if President Trump annexes Greenland by force, it will mean the end of NATO. Many European allies agree. But this is not a foregone conclusion.” Indeed, this “dispute over Greenland is ultimately a North American dispute, and its logic is rooted firmly in the Monroe Doctrine, which has been guiding American policy off and on since 1823.”
Hossack & Lackenbauer: Cumulatively, his selective narratives are crafted and mobilized to rationalize the idea that the United States has a legitimate claim to Greenland and should be welcomed as an emancipatory force rather than a coercive actor – a narrative that is diametrically opposed to that articulated by the vast majority of Greenlanders.
Zellen: The phrasing “selective narratives are crafted and mobilized to rationalize” is imprecise and tends to frame my argument in a dismissive way.
On the substantive point, I have argued that “the United States has a legitimate claim to Greenland and should be welcomed as an emancipatory force rather than a coercive actor,” particularly in the context of a potential shift in Greenland’s political trajectory and its engagement with the United States.
At the same time, the assertion that this position is “diametrically opposed to that articulated by the vast majority of Greenlanders” is difficult to verify. Public expressions of opinion may reflect longstanding political and social pressures, and do not necessarily capture the full range of views present within Greenlandic society. As in many small and closely connected communities, public consensus can coexist with more complex and less visible forms of disagreement.
Contextualizing Earlier Work on Greenland
Hossack & Lackenbauer: Zellen’s initial justification for Greenlandic annexation appeared in his 2021 writings on Arctic geopolitics (citing my “Geopolitics, Indigenous Peoples, and the Polar Thaw: Sub- and Transnational Fault Lines of the Coming Arctic Cold War,” and “High Stakes in the High North: Alternative Models for Greenland’s Ongoing Constitutional and Political Transformation,” both in Nordicum Mediterraneum: Icelandic e-Journal of the Nordic and Mediterranean 16:2 (2021).)
Zellen: It is not accurate to characterize these 2021 works as an “initial justification for Greenlandic annexation.” Both articles were published in Nordicum-Mediterraneum: Icelandic e-Journal of the Nordic and Mediterranean following my period as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Akureyri during the spring of 2020.
These works emerged from research conducted during that period, as well as from earlier analysis developed in a 2019 commentary in The Globe and Mail, “Donald Trump is thinking of buying Greenland. That’s not necessarily a bad idea,” and subsequent related work.
Their focus is not to justify annexation, but to explore a range of constitutional and political models relevant to Greenland’s aspirations for autonomy and independence. This includes examining institutional alternatives beyond existing frameworks, particularly in light of constraints associated with Denmark’s current governance structure.
Similarly, “Geopolitics, Indigenous Peoples, and the Polar Thaw: Sub- and Transnational Fault Lines of the Coming Arctic Cold War” responds to earlier strategic analyses, including “Three-Way Power Dynamics in the Arctic,” and engages with concepts such as the New Arctic Strategic Triangle Environment (“NASTE”) framework. My purpose is to assess the limitations of simplified geopolitical models and to highlight the complexity of overlapping strategic relationships in the Arctic.
While Hossack and Lackenbauer refer to these publications of mine, their interpretation does not fully reflect my analytical scope. In particular, my articles distinguish between external threat narratives and internal governance dynamics, and they do not advance a singular policy prescription regarding Greenland’s future status.
In addition, the July 2021 issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum was a special issue that I guest edited, including contributions from my students at the University of Akureyri on “IR Theory, the Arctic System, and the Individual Theorist in Perspective,” with a foreword by Iceland’s Senior Arctic Official, Fridrik Jonsson, “Our Home, the Arctic.” These contributions situate the discussion within broader theoretical and institutional debates in Arctic studies.
Note: This article is part of a two-part series. Part II continues the discussion.
