Greenland and the New Settler Colonialism: Network-State Geopolitics
When Trump administration officials say that the US fixation on Greenland is an extension of the Monroe Doctrine—imperialism in Latin America—they’re fundamentally correct. Greenland is both a settler-colonial and neocolonial project for US elites, a predictable outgrowth of American oligarchy.
How predictable? Well, close to eleven months ago, I warned that the current Greenland crisis was forthcoming, and that it was driven by this new geopolitical formation known as the “network state,” euphemistically as “freedom cities” or “charter cities.” Here’s the key portion of that episode:
the emergence of this thing called the network state…is this idea that comes out of Silicon Valley starting in the ‘90s but has really gained traction as part of the ideology of these Silicon Valley fuckheads capitalists…
So Trump cancelled, disestablished the Presidio Trust in San Francisco…he disestablished that land as a public trust so that it could be privatized so that these network-state advocates can create their own exit from American society and American governance within US sovereign territory. They’re trying to create new sovereignties and there’s an entire geopolitics around that. In French Polynesia, Peter Thiel tried to do the same thing. Set up this network state, carve out a sovereignty within the colony of French Polynesia, like within their territory, but they’re actually a colony of France, right?
So this is what they’ve been trying to do—create new sovereign “nations” or political units where they can be tech-bro kings.
And the geopolitics of the “network state” has to do with challenging the state form itself and leveraging state power to challenge the state form. So this Greenland stuff, Trump has said specifically “and the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark. Denmark has to have us have Greenland.” This is needed for living space for (certain) Americans. And that’s just, that’s imperialist foreign policy, very nakedly.
But Sam Alman, Open AI, also advocates of the network state, they were on the record as early as 2018 and 2019 saying that specifically they want Greenland to be Mars on Earth. They want Greenland to be the largest section of territory in the world that can become a new sovereignty.
So Trump is dead f*cking serious about taking Greenland, but it’s not really for America. It’s for the network state that will create a new nation there basically run by tech who can be kings right establish a new kind of feudalism. And the imperialist aspect of that is not just the Trump land-grab conquesty stuff; it’s also because there are critical minerals in Greenland. The ability to extract is a source of payment or rent seeking that Trump and the US state will get.
So network state, Greenland imperialist foreign policy, carving up new sovereignties. And what that means is that this idea of the network state, it’s of course dystopia wherever they emerge because it’s not going to be democratic. But also it’s going to be challenging existing nation states and that’s a source of potential conflict. And at the same time, what we’re seeing in Greenland, the proof is Greenland, that the network state itself requires an imperialist foreign policy in order for it to happen. So Trump is doing an imperialist foreign policy, right?
I’m still developing a complete account of what’s emerging and need to do more reading, but my provisional understanding is that the network state is a new kind of spatial fix to a crisis of capital accumulation—one expression among many of the “primitive” mode of wealth extraction and hoarding, something much more dehumanizing than simple exploitation of wage labor.
To put it simply, the tech section of capital that has so brazenly aligned itself with state power wants America’s national security state to, on their behalf, dispossess other peoples and even nation-states. That would permit the network-state oligarchs to establish semi-sovereign “company towns” that would extract and exploit whatever they will from the sites where they establish themselves.1 Greenland, dating back to 2018, was their ideal headquarters for utopia, the place they imagined unsettling so as to profit from carving up an already existing and governed place and render it into a frontier.
Ironically, the process of frontierizing/dispossessing a rich NATO ally—not just developing nations in the global South—could prove to be what instigates World War III. The Danish Prime Minister says:
I will also make it clear that if the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War.
The UK and Germany are planning for a coalition force that could defend Greenland against a US invasion. Spanish leaders are calling for a true European defense force. Everything has changed, and it’s all in response to America’s imperialist foreign policy, which is rooted in the oligarchic form of political rule that America’s elites just can’t seem to quit.
Most mainstream media have given no attention to the network state, and IR scholars have completely failed to recognize what’s happening. But the network state could, in a way, end up bringing about the very catastrophe that IR is ideally supposed to anticipate and therefore prevent.
From The Economist:
there is growing talk that the Trump administration is working on a deal to present to Greenland..American officials have discussed offering a so-called Compact of Free Association (COFA) to the island.
The US already has longstanding COFA arrangements in the Pacific Islands region. They are sovereignty-denying legal mechanisms that allow nations to govern themselves except in matters of national security and foreign policy. COFAs formalize a sphere of influence, which facilitates predatory frontierization.
In 1910, America almost traded its “Pacific Power” status to Denmark:
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1917/d759
From the billionaires who are actively investing in the Greenland project, among the extractive benefits of Greenland in their minds is “living space” for wealthy exiteers from civilization and the construction of AI data centers, rare earth mineral resources, hydroelectric power, and fresh water supply for bottling and resale.
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For those who want to go deeper on the Network State, a buddy of mine just published a journal article about it (minus the geopolitics): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.70069?utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack. It’s the only intellectual rigorous account of the network state I’ve seen
Also this, open access: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-spectre-of-state-capitalism-9780198925194?cc=ca&lang=en&