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The Hill's New Editorial Standard: 'Whatever the Cost' Is Close Enough to 'Journalism'
John Mac Ghlionn recently argued that the United States should acquire Greenland “whatever the cost,” invoking various historical precedents to support his case. After carefully reviewing his arguments and comparing them against the actual historical record, I find that each analogy he attempts to draw collapses on contact with basic facts. This is not a case of reasonable disagreement about policy. It is a case of an author manufacturing false equivalences to reach a preordained conclusion.
Let me walk through each claim systematically, because the pattern is revealing. Ghlionn does not provide facts to support his argument. He asserts analogies, lets the inflammatory language do the work, and assumes his readers will not check his work. I checked his work.
The US Already Has a Military Presence on Greenland
The most immediate problem with Ghlionn’s argument is that it ignores the obvious. The United States already operates a major military installation on Greenland. Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base, has been operational since 1951 under a defense agreement between the United States and Denmark (Wikipedia, 2025). The base, renamed in 2023 to recognize Greenlandic cultural heritage, is the northernmost installation of the U.S. Armed Forces, located approximately 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle (Wikipedia, 2025). Approximately 150 United States guardians currently serve there, down from peak Cold War levels of around 6,000 personnel (Wikipedia, 2025).
The base hosts the 12th Space Warning Squadron, which operates a Ballistic Missile Early Warning System designed to detect and track ICBMs launched against North America (Wikipedia, 2025). The airfield handles more than 3,000 U.S. and international flights per year (Wikipedia, 2025). The strategic capabilities Ghlionn claims we need from owning Greenland are already available to us through the existing defense arrangement.
Let me repeat this because it seems to have escaped Ghlionn’s notice. We already have the military base. The United States already has the strategic access. The question is whether we need to annex a sovereign territory and its 57,000 indigenous people to maintain capabilities we already possess through peaceful cooperation with a NATO ally. Ghlionn never explains why the current arrangement, which has worked for 74 years, is insufficient. He simply assumes that possessing the deed matters more than having the practical capabilities, which tells you something about where his priorities lie.
The Louisiana Purchase Is Not a Valid Analogy
Ghlionn apparently invokes the Louisiana Purchase as precedent, but this comparison demonstrates either profound ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation of history. When the United States purchased approximately 828,000 square miles from France in 1803, that territory was not a sovereign nation (Wikipedia, 2025). France had only just regained control from Spain via the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800, and effective French administration was essentially theoretical across most of the territory (Wikipedia, 2025).
As historian Robert Lee has documented, France only controlled a small fraction of the Louisiana territory, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans. “Effectively, for the majority of the area, the United States bought the preemptive right to obtain Indian lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers” (Lee, 2017). The purchase was a transaction between two colonial powers treating indigenous lands as property to be exchanged between themselves. The people who actually lived on that land had no seat at the table, not because international law forbade it, but because 19th-century colonialism did not recognize their sovereignty.
Greenland, by contrast, is not ungoverned wilderness awaiting colonial claim. It is a self-governing territory with its own parliament, the Inatsisartut, and extensive executive powers transferred from Copenhagen under the 2009 Self-Government Act (Danish Prime Minister’s Office, 2025; Jakobsen, 2024). The Greenlandic people have clear political agency and have repeatedly expressed opposition to becoming part of the United States. Using the Louisiana Purchase to justify annexing Greenland treats 21st-century international relations as though the colonial era never ended.
As legal scholars have noted, contemporary international law renders such analogies obsolete. “International legal doctrine still often refers to discovery, occupation, conquest, cession and annexation as modes of acquiring territory. These modes are largely anachronistic. They are incompatible with the UN Charter-era rules on the use of force and self-determination” (EJIL Talk, 2025). Ghlionn is essentially arguing that the rules governing international relations should revert to a framework that was already problematic in 1803 and has been legally obsolete since 1945.
The Okinawa Analogy Proves the Opposite of His Point
Ghlionn’s reference to Okinawa is perhaps the most dishonest of his analogies, because it proves the opposite of his argument. The United States occupied Okinawa following the bloodiest campaign of the Pacific War, when American forces literally conquered the island from Imperial Japan in 1945 (Scientific American, 2013). The U.S. military government lasted until 1972, when sovereignty was formally returned to Japan (New York Times, 1972; EBSCO Research Starters).
The 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty ended the occupation of Japan proper, but Okinawa was “kept under U.S. rule” as a strategic necessity (Kyodo News, 2022). The United States recognized “Japanese residual sovereignty over the islands” even while maintaining administrative control (New York Times, 1972). Okinawa was not voluntarily transferred to the United States. It was conquered in war, occupied for 27 years, and then returned to its sovereign nation.
This is not a model for diplomatic acquisition. It is a textbook example of territorial control born from wartime conquest. If Ghlionn is suggesting that the United States should declare war on Denmark and Greenland to replicate the Okinawa situation, he should say so explicitly. Otherwise, his reference to Okinawa proves that the United States respects the sovereignty of allied nations and eventually returns occupied territory to its rightful owners.
The return of Okinawa in 1972 “marked a final stage in the return of Japanese territory taken by the United States at the” conclusion of World War II (EBSCO Research Starters). The message was clear. Military occupation of allied territory is temporary, and sovereignty is respected. The Okinawa precedent actually undermines Ghlionn’s argument.
Iceland Provides the True Counterexample
A more apt analogy for Ghlionn’s argument would be Iceland, and it is telling that he apparently does not mention it. The United States maintained Naval Air Station Keflavik from 1951 through 2006 under bilateral defense agreements (Wikipedia, Naval Air Station Keflavik; High North News, 2015). At its peak, the base housed approximately 5,700 U.S. personnel (Iceland Review).
Marines arrived in Iceland as early as 1941, with the full knowledge and consent of the Icelandic government (NATO Base Keflavik History). In May 1951, the United States and Iceland signed a bilateral defense agreement allowing for the U.S. military presence (Jóhannesson, 2004). Iceland has no standing army of its own and depends on the United States for defense under this agreement (U.S. Department of State).
Yet at no point did the United States attempt to purchase Iceland, annex the island, or otherwise supplant its sovereignty. Why not? Because Iceland was a sovereign nation and ally, and the United States respected that status while maintaining a military presence for mutual defense. Iceland remains the only NATO member without its own standing army (El País, 2025), yet it has never been absorbed into the United States.
If Ghlionn’s logic were correct, that the presence of American military installations logically compels territorial acquisition, then Iceland would now be the 51st state. It is not. The fact that it is not demonstrates that his underlying logic does not hold even by his own preferred examples. The United States has maintained military bases in allied territory for decades without claiming sovereignty over that territory. Greenland is not different in a way that would justify abandoning this principle.
International Law Matters
Ghlionn apparently considers international law an inconvenience rather than a constraint, but his argument cannot stand without addressing what contemporary international law actually says about territorial acquisition.
Under the UN Charter, the threat or use of force against territorial integrity is prohibited by Article 2(4) (EJIL Talk, 2025). While cession, the transfer of territory by treaty, remains technically possible, such a transfer would be invalid if coerced or if it violated the right of self-determination (EJIL Talk, 2025). As the European Journal of International Law notes, ceding Greenland without popular support in Greenland would constitute a peremptory norm violation regardless of whether Denmark and the United States reached a private agreement.
The 2009 Act on Greenland Self-Government explicitly requires that any path to independence include a referendum and approval from both the Greenlandic and Danish parliaments (Jakobsen, 2024). “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” as Prime Minister Frederiksen correctly observed, and no great power diplomacy can circumvent that fact without violating binding international norms.
Ghlionn might respond that international law is merely a construct enforced by powerful states, and therefore can be ignored. But this argument proves too much. If the rules-based international order is merely a mask for power politics, then China is equally justified in reclaiming Hawaii, which it has actually suggested doing (Hawaiian Kingdom Blog, 2023). Ghlionn cannot have it both ways. He cannot invoke realpolitik to justify U.S. annexation while simultaneously pretending that realpolitik would not equally justify annexation claims by other powers against U.S. territory.
Ghlionn Offers No Facts, Only Assertions
Throughout his argument, Ghlionn does not provide facts to support his claims. He offers inflammatory headlines, rhetorical flourishes, and assumed conclusions. He does not explain why the existing defense arrangement with Denmark is insufficient. He does not address why the people of Greenland, who have clearly expressed opposition to U.S. annexation, should be disregarded. He does not engage with international law at all. He does not explain why analogies to the Louisiana Purchase or Okinawa, which prove the opposite of his point, are relevant.
This is not serious policy analysis. It is imperial fan fiction dressed up in the language of geopolitical realism. The historical analogies are wrong, the legal framework is ignored, and the strategic logic is circular. Ghlionn’s argument amounts to. “America is powerful, therefore America should take what it wants.” This is not a principle that serves American interests, because it is a principle that equally justifies other nations taking what they want from America.
The underlying reality is that the United States already has the strategic access it needs through Pituffik Space Base. The existing arrangement respects the sovereignty of a NATO ally and the self-determination of the Greenlandic people. Abandoning that arrangement in favor of annexation or conquest would shatter alliances, violate international law, and hand propaganda victories to adversaries, all to obtain something we already effectively possess through cooperation rather than coercion.
Ghlionn’s piece is not serious. It is the foreign policy equivalent of fantasy football, fun to write, but disconnected from how the actual game works.
Ghlionn’s foolishness can be read here: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5681672-greenland-power-politics-realism/
References
Danish Prime Minister’s Office. (2025). *Greenland*. https://english.stm.dk/the-prime-ministers-office/the-unity-of-the-realm/greenland/
EJIL: Talk! (2025, February 6). *Greenland and territorial acquisition under international law*. https://www.ejiltalk.org/greenland-and-territorial-acquisition-under-international-law/
El País. (2025, August 2). *Iceland, the only NATO member without an army, seeks to strengthen its security*. https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-08-02/iceland-the-only-nato-member-without-an-army-seeks-to-strengthen-its-security.html
Hawaiian Kingdom Blog. (2023, February 27). *Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledges the illegal annexation of Hawaii*. https://hawaiiankingdom.org/blog/chinese-foreign-ministry-in-its-report-of-february-20-2023-acknowledges-the-illegal-annexation-of-hawaii/
High North News. (2015, September 14). *U.S. military to reopen base in Iceland?* https://www.highnorthnews.com/nb/us-military-reopen-base-iceland
Jakobsen, U. (2024). The development of Greenland’s self-government and path dependency. *Territorial Autonomies*, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2154896X.2024.2342117
Jóhannesson, G. T. (2004). *Iceland and the United States: The development of a defense agreement*. JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26394133
Kyodo News. (2022, May 15). *Okinawa on 50th anniversary of reversion from U.S. rule*. https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/33558
Lee, R. (2017, March 1). *The true cost of the Louisiana Purchase*. Slate. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2017/03/how_much_did_the_louisiana_purchase_actually_cost.html
Lee, R. (2017). Accounting for conquest: The price of the Louisiana Purchase of Indian country. *Journal of American History*, 103(4), 921-942. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw504
NATO Base Keflavik Airport Base History. (2025). https://nat.is/nato-base-keflavik-airport-base-history/
New York Times. (1972, May 15). *Okinawa islands returned by U.S. to Japanese rule; Agnew in Tokyo*. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/15/archives/okinawa-islands-returned-by-us-to-japanese-rule-agnew-in-tokyo.html
Scientific American. (2013, June 19). *Okinawa and the U.S. military, post 1945*. https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/expeditions/okinawa-and-the-u-s-military-post-1945/
The Diplomat. (2022, May 24). *50 years after US occupation, Okinawa continues to resist military bases*. https://thediplomat.com/2022/05/50-years-after-us-occupation-okinawa-continues-to-resist-military-bases/
U.S. Department of State. (2025). *Iceland*. https://2021-2025.state.gov/countries-areas/iceland/
Wikipedia. (2025). *Louisiana Purchase*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase
Wikipedia. (2025). *Naval Air Station Keflavik*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Keflavik
Wikipedia. (2025). *Pituffik Space Base*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituffik_Space_Base
EBSCO Research Starters. (n.d.). *United States hands Okinawa to Japan*. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/united-states-hands-okinawa-japan
Iceland Review. (n.d.). *Keflavik*. https://www.icelandreview.com/news/society/keflavik-pt-1/