Noam Chomsky once observed that nearly every imperial or colonial act arrives wrapped in a “disinterested” justification. Empires rarely admit to naked ambition. They come to protect ethnic Germans, to civilize the savages, to stop Nazis, to referee a civil war. We usually know these explanations are pretexts—but the instinct to offer one still matters. It reflects a belief, however thin, that power ought to answer to something beyond itself.
In the aftermath of the U.S. action in Venezuela, our justifications have shifted with unsettling speed. At first, it was about drugs—protecting Americans from fentanyl and criminal networks. Then it became about migration and disorder. Now it is described more bluntly as our “sphere of influence,” as if proximity confers ownership and geography grants entitlement.
That progression is revealing.
It will be harder to manufacture a “disinterested” justification for Greenland. There is no drug crisis to invoke, no migration threat, no criminal syndicate. Greenland is part of NATO—an alliance that has mattered deeply to both Europe and the United States. What remains, then, is not explanation but assertion: we want it, and we can take it.
That is a darker place.
Lying about drugs is corrosive enough. But abandoning justification altogether sends a more dangerous message—that power need not explain itself at all. That strength alone is reason enough. It is the logic of the schoolyard bully, elevated to statecraft.
For decades, the United States insisted—sometimes sincerely, sometimes not—that its actions were constrained by principles, institutions, and norms. The UN exists precisely to force nations to explain themselves before the world. When wars require no rationalization, and no forum for judgment, we are not merely weakening international institutions—we are teaching our own society that restraint is optional and accountability obsolete.
Strength without explanation is not leadership.
It is abandonment.
And the cost of that abandonment is never borne only by those on the receiving end. It is paid, eventually, by those who decided they no longer had to explain themselves at all.