Trump renews threat on Greenland before meeting at White House
By Amelia Nierenberg
LONDON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday (14) that “anything less than” getting Greenland would be “unacceptable”, hours before the first meeting among the governments of Greenland, Denmark and the United States since he escalated his push to buy or get the semiautonomous Danish territory.
“The United States needs Greenland,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, doubling down on his argument that it was necessary for national security and that Russia or China would take control of the territory if it wasn’t in US hands.
“NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES,” he wrote. The post was likely to add to tensions as the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland were expected to meet with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House later Wednesday.
Although representatives of the three governments have sat down together before, this is the first meeting called to discuss Trump’s repeated threats to get Greenland. He has turned up the pressure this year, apparently emboldened by the success of the US military operation that led to the capture of Venezuela’s leader Jan. 3.
Trump said last week that he was “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not”.
Denmark’s leader has said that a US attack on Greenland — which, as a part of the kingdom of Denmark, is already under the protection of NATO — would destroy the alliance. And Greenland’s leader has been clear that the territory is not interested in a US takeover. On Tuesday (13), he made his strongest statement yet that Greenlanders would prefer to stick with Denmark.
“If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark,” Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen of Greenland said during a joint news conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark.
“The time has not come for internal discussions and division,” he said, speaking of its often fraught relations with Denmark, Greenland’s former colonizer. “The time has come to stand together.”
In her comments, Frederiksen agreed, laying out a strategy for the White House meeting: “We come together, we stay together, and we leave together.”
Trump and top officials in his administration have given various explanations of how the United States might take control or ownership of Greenland. Trump has not ruled out taking Greenland with military force, but Rubio has said the president plans to buy it, rather than invade.
Denmark has increased its security presence in the Arctic over the past year, the Danish Defence Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
Danish defence forces are “continuously training” on deployment capabilities in the Arctic and maintaining a presence for both “routine tasks as well as in preparation for upcoming activities,” the ministry said.
Buying Greenland may be a nonstarter. Denmark does not have the authority to sell Greenland, and Nielsen has said repeatedly that the territory is not for sale.
Ulrik Pram Gad, a Greenland expert at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said the face-to-face meeting with US officials was a sign of progress.
“The bar for success is very low,” he said.
“A success from this meeting would be that we had a meeting,” he said. “It’s a process. We are now talking.”
Vance appears to be a new addition to the meeting, which Rubio announced last week without mentioning the vice president. Denmark’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Vance would also attend.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the think tank Bruegel in Brussels, said the presence of the vice president, a higher-ranking official who has shown a willingness to publicly and aggressively challenge foreign officials, raised the stakes for the meeting.
“The fact that it is not just foreign ministers — that it is also JD Vance — is upping the ante a bit,” Kirkegaard said.
On Friday (16) and Saturday (17), a bipartisan delegation of US lawmakers will go to Copenhagen, the Danish capital, to meet with political and business leaders from Denmark and Greenland.
The goal of the visit, said Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., is to show that US lawmakers “oppose President Trump’s aggressive efforts to acquire Greenland”.
-New York Times
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