U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he plans to meet with Danish officials next week to discuss U.S. interest in Greenland, after the Trump administration renewed its intention to take over the Arctic island. Greenland is described as a self-governing territory of Denmark.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt had requested the meeting, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website. The statement said previous requests for a meeting were not successful.
Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers that the administration’s intention was to eventually purchase Greenland, rather than use military force. AP reported the remarks were first described as having been made in a classified briefing Monday evening on Capitol Hill, based on information from an anonymous person with knowledge of the comments because it was a private discussion.
On Wednesday, Rubio told reporters in Washington that Trump has been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term. “That’s always been the president’s intent from the very beginning,” Rubio said, adding, “He’s not the first U.S. president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.”
Rubio did not directly answer reporters’ questions about whether the administration was willing to risk the NATO alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option regarding Greenland. “I’m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, I’ll be meeting with them next week, we’ll have those conversations with them then, but I don’t have anything further to add to that,” Rubio said. He added that every president retains the option to address national security threats to the United States through military means.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that using the military to acquire Greenland was an option, though she told reporters Wednesday that “the president’s first option always has been diplomacy.”
Several Republican senators said they saw strategic value in Greenland but stopped short of backing military action. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said he hoped “we can work out a deal,” while North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said some discussion about taking Greenland by force has been “misconstrued.” Hoeven said, “One of the things about President Trump, you may have noticed, is he keeps our adversaries off balance by making sure they don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she hated “the rhetoric around either acquiring Greenland by purchase or by force,” adding, “I think that it is very, very unsettling.” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, said the U.S. needs to honor its treaty obligations to Denmark and warned that any suggestion the U.S. would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines principles of self-determination.
European leaders also expressed concern. Leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in issuing a statement reaffirming that the mineral-rich island “belongs to its people.” Frederiksen warned that a U.S. takeover would amount to the end of NATO. Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank, told AP that while the Nordics do not lightly make such statements, it is Trump’s “bombastic language” that threatens another ally by saying, “I will control or annex the territory.”
Thomas Crosbie, an associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defense College, told AP an American takeover would not help U.S. national security. “The United States will gain no advantage if its flag is flying in Nuuk versus the Greenlandic flag,” Crosbie said. He added that if Washington wanted specific security access, it would be granted as a matter of course as a trusted ally.
Denmark’s parliament approved a bill in June to allow U.S. military bases on Danish soil, widening an earlier military agreement made in 2023 with the Biden administration. The foreign minister has said Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the U.S. tries to annex all or part of Greenland.
AP reported the U.S. Department of Defense operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland and that troops there could be mobilized in the event of military action. Crosbie said he believes the U.S. would not seek to hurt the local population or engage with Danish troops. “They don’t need to bring any firepower. They don’t need to bring anybody,” he said. He suggested U.S. military personnel could be directed to drive to the center of Nuuk and declare, “This is America now,” with the same response as if the U.S. flew in “500 or 1,000 people.”
Crosbie said the danger of annexation lies in what he called an “erosion of the rule of law globally” and “the perception that there are any norms protecting anybody on the planet.” He added, “The impact is changing the map” and said, “I don’t think would be storming the parliament.”