President Donald Trump has repeatedly said the United States should take control of Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, according to reporting by The Associated Press. Trump also said Friday that he is going to do “something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” and added that if an effort is not carried out “the easy way,” it would be done “the hard way,” without further detail.
The push prompted diplomacy as well as debate. Officials from Denmark, Greenland and the United States met in Washington on Thursday and are scheduled to meet again next week to discuss what the White House is calling a renewed effort to acquire the island, with options including the use of military force.
In a separate interview Thursday, Trump told The New York Times that ownership gives “things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO, while Greenlanders have said they do not want to become part of the United States.
Several analysts said that even posing the idea of taking Greenland by force would raise major alliance and security questions. Imran Bayoumi, an associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the spotlight on Greenland is tied partly to “the realization we need to increase our presence in the Arctic, and we don’t yet have the right strategy or vision to do so,” and he pointed to earlier decades of neglect regarding Washington’s Arctic posture.
Others said a forced takeover would stress NATO’s cohesion. The reporting said that if the U.S. moved militarily, it would plunge NATO into a crisis, possibly an existential one, and it highlighted Frederiksen’s warning that “If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops.” Greenland does not have its own military, and defense is provided by Denmark, whose military is described as much smaller than that of the United States.
Trump has said he needs control of the island to guarantee American security, citing threats from Russian and Chinese ships in the region. But Lin Mortensgaard, an expert on Arctic politics at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), said, “it’s not true” that the situation supports Trump’s argument. Mortensgaard said Russian submarines likely operate across the Arctic but that there are no surface vessels, and she said China has research vessels in the Central Arctic Ocean while joint military exercises by China and Russia have taken place closer to Alaska.
Bayoumi said he doubted Trump would take control by force, citing the idea that it would be unpopular with lawmakers in both major U.S. parties and would likely “fundamentally alter” U.S. relationships with allies worldwide. Mortensgaard and Ulrik Pram Gad of DIIS also suggested that the U.S. already has access to Greenland under a 1951 defense agreement, and Gad said it did not make sense to “blow[] up the NATO alliance” for something Washington already can do.
Alongside military options, U.S. officials have suggested more indirect routes. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers this week that the administration’s intention was to eventually purchase Greenland rather than use military force. Danish and Greenlandic officials have previously said Greenland is not for sale, and it remains unclear how much such a purchase could cost or who it would be bought from.
Bayoumi said Washington could also increase its military presence through “cooperation and diplomacy” without taking over Greenland, and Gad said one possible approach could be for the U.S. to obtain a veto over security decisions made by Greenland’s government. He pointed to the Compact of Free Association, citing a Congressional Research Service description that, under such arrangements, the U.S. would gain rights to operate bases and make security decisions in exchange for security guarantees and around $7 billion of yearly economic assistance.
The discussions also intersect with Greenlanders’ political preferences. Greenlandic politician Aaja Chemnitz told The Associated Press that Greenlanders want more rights, including independence, but do not want to become part of the U.S. Gad said influence operations aimed at persuading Greenlanders to join the U.S. would likely fail, in part because the island community is small and the language is “inaccessible.”
The reporting said Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen summoned the top U.S. official in Denmark in August to complain that “foreign actors” were seeking to influence Denmark’s future, and Danish media reported that at least three people with connections to Trump carried out covert influence operations in Greenland. Gad also said any takeover would likely bring a large bill because Greenlanders currently have Danish citizenship and access to Danish welfare, including free health care and schooling, adding that “Trump would have to build a welfare state for Greenlanders that he doesn’t want for his own citizens.”
The prospects for resolving the dispute were described as unlikely. Rasmussen said the American military presence in Greenland declined from thousands of soldiers over 17 bases and installations since 1945 to 200 at the remote Pituffik Space Base in the northwest of the island, which supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance told Fox News that Denmark has neglected its missile defense obligations in Greenland, but Mortensgaard said it makes “little sense to criticize Denmark” because the main reason the U.S. operates Pituffik is to provide early detection of missiles.
Gad said the best outcome for Denmark would be to update the defense agreement that allows the U.S. military presence, with Trump signing it with a “gold-plated signature,” but he suggested that’s unlikely because Greenland is “handy” to the U.S. president. He said when Trump wants to shift the news agenda, he can “just say the word ‘Greenland’ and this starts all over again.”