Rev. Torli H. Krua, Founder, The Free Liberia Movement
Why debate buying foreign territory when the United States already holds the deed to land it purchased under President James Monroe? Before Greenland, America must confront the obvious and unavoidable truth: Monrovia should be annexed.
As President Donald Trump revives the Monroe Doctrine to justify U.S. ownership of Greenland, the most glaringly absent voice is Liberia’s—and, more broadly, the Global South. In 2026, the debate should not be about new acquisitions, but about restoring justice, sovereignty, and human dignity long denied to colonized peoples. Liberia is not a side issue to this discussion; it is the central unresolved case.
European powers now condemning Trump for proposing to buy Greenland are simultaneously deploying troops, increasing military spending, and asserting control over the island. These same monarchies built their empires not by purchase, but by conquest. British, French, Danish, and other European powers seized territories, extracted wealth for centuries, and never left voluntarily. To this day, they have not returned stolen wealth, issued full apologies, or paid reparations—yet they posture as guardians of a so-called “global order.”
The hypocrisy is undeniable. During World Wars I and II, European states fought under the banner of freedom while continuing to brutalize and dominate colonies they had occupied for generations without consent or compensation. Greenland remains under the Danish crown in 2026, a living reminder that colonial possession did not end with the wars. What is being defended today is not peace, but unjust colonial control.
As European troops and vessels gather in Greenland, the Global South must speak plainly. The measure of legitimacy is not military reach, but moral standing. Righteousness exalts a nation. Calls to preserve a post–World War II “rules-based order” deliberately ignore that this order entrenched colonial domination. France maintained power over Tunisia and Algeria through mass violence. In Kenya, British rule—shielded by Western allies—responded to independence movements with detention camps, torture, and killings. These are not distant histories; they are unresolved crimes that demand repair. Because political elites will never lead this reckoning, citizens organized the Free Liberia Movement.
Ordinary people—not insulated politicians—must demand confession, contrition, reparations, and the return of stolen wealth. Without accountability, sovereignty is a slogan and security is a lie.
If President Trump is serious about the Monroe Doctrine, the path forward does not begin in the Arctic. It begins in Monrovia. On December 15, 1821, under the authority of President James Monroe, land was purchased with U.S. tax dollars to settle citizens of the United States. The transaction was executed by U.S. Navy Captain Robert Stockton and formally possessed on April 25, 1822, when the American flag was raised with gun salutes.
That title was never lawfully transferred. Congress later declared the American Colonization Society null and void, stripping it of any authority to convey ownership. One cannot transfer what one does not own. The United States remains on the deed—legally, historically, and morally.
The record is clear. Ten presidents of Liberia were born in the United States and relocated to Liberia without visas or naturalization. For over a century, American citizenship followed settlers across the Atlantic without interruption. Even in 2026, Liberia’s top senators, judges, and opposition leaders quietly hold U.S. passports, while ordinary Liberians endure some of the highest U.S. visa denial rates in the world. This contradiction exposes the truth: Liberia is treated as American when power benefits elites, and foreign when responsibility is owed to the people.
This is no longer a symbolic question. It is structural. Liberia’s instability is not a cultural defect or leadership failure—it is the predictable result of a nation trapped in legal limbo and sustained by American denial.
The United States must end this fiction. Annexation is required—not as domination, but as accountability—until Liberians themselves, as sovereign citizens, convene freely to draft a new constitution and determine their future. Liberia’s rebirth will not come from recycled politicians or foreign aid, but from a citizens’ convention and a government truly of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The Greenland debate exposes the real fault line of our time. The world moves quickly to defend ownership when powerful nations are involved, and slowly—if at all—to restore justice when colonized peoples demand it. If the Monroe Doctrine is to have any meaning in the 21st century, it must be measured not by expansion, but by moral repair.
Before looking north, America must look squarely at Monrovia.