The Geopolitical Scramble for 'Unclaimed' Territories
FIRST INSTANCE: The 'Purchase' of Sovereignty The notion of purchasing territories from other nations, especially those with indigenous populations, is not new. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, largely ignoring Indigenous land rights in the transaction. This set a precedent for viewing land as a commodity transferable between colonial powers, rather than as
sovereign ancestral territories, a pattern that profoundly shaped US-Indigenous relations for decades (US Dept. of State, 1867). REPETITIONS: Greenland's Recurring Suitors The US interest in Greenland resurfaced prominently during and after World War II. In 1941, the US established a protectorate over Greenland following the Nazi occupation of Denmark, building air bases that remained foundational
to Cold War defense strategies. Post-war, in 1946, the US government formally offered Denmark $100 million for Greenland, an offer Copenhagen rejected. This was not framed as a diplomatic negotiation with a sovereign people, but a transaction between two states over a third's territory. This attempt, though unsuccessful, underscored a consistent US strategic interest (Defense Technical Information
Center, 1948). A more recent iteration occurred in August 2019, when then-President Donald Trump publicly mulled purchasing Greenland from Denmark, calling it a 'large real estate deal.' This proposition, widely derided at the time, was a direct echo of the 1946 offer, demonstrating the persistence of a 19th-century mindset of territorial acquisition in 21st-century diplomacy. The underlying