Denmark’s foreign minister said a “fundamental disagreement” remained after a Wednesday meeting in Washington with the Trump administration on U.S. ambitions to take control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen said after the talks that Denmark “didn’t manage to change the American position,” and that he “hadn’t expected to.” The meeting included Denmark’s foreign minister and his Greenland counterpart, as well as U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to the report.
Rasmussen said the parties agreed to create a high-level working group “to explore if we can find a common way forward.” He said he expects the group’s first meeting “within a matter of weeks,” though Danish and Greenlandic officials did not say who would be in the group or provide other details.
Rasmussen said the group should focus on how to address U.S. security concerns while respecting Denmark’s “red lines.” He said “Whether that is doable, I don’t know,” and held out hope the effort could “take down the temperature,” while also saying he would not elaborate on what a compromise might look like.
The report said expectations for progress were low. Denmark’s Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said Thursday that having the working group is better than having no group at all, describing it as “a step in the right direction.” He added that the working group gives “the two sides” a chance “to talk with each other rather than about each other,” rather than communicating only through each side’s statements.
U.S. and Danish officials have been grappling with President Donald Trump’s repeated argument that the United States needs control of Greenland for national security. The report said Trump has sought to justify his calls for a U.S. takeover by repeatedly claiming that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland, which it described as having “vast untapped reserves of critical minerals.”
While diplomacy unfolded in Washington, Denmark and several European partners announced moves meant to increase security activity in the Arctic. The Danish Defense Ministry said it was increasing its military presence in Greenland along with NATO allies, and France, Germany, Norway and Sweden announced they were each sending very small numbers of troops in a symbolic but pointed show of solidarity with Copenhagen.
The U.K. said one British officer would be part of what it called a reconnaissance group for an Arctic endurance exercise. Germany said it dispatched 13 troops and that the aim is to sound out “possibilities to ensure security with a view to Russian and Chinese threats in the Arctic,” adding that it would send the troops on a joint flight from Denmark “as ‘a strong signal of our unity.’”
Poulsen said the Danish Armed Forces, together with Arctic and European allies, will explore in the coming weeks how increased presence and exercise activity in the Arctic can be implemented in practice. On Thursday, he said the intention was “to establish a more permanent military presence with a larger Danish contribution,” and to invite allies to take part in exercises and training on a rotating basis, according to Danish broadcaster DR.
Maria Martisiute, an analyst at the European Policy Center in Brussels, said the European deployments served both to send a political and military signal to America and to recognize that Arctic security should be reinforced more. She said the approach should be driven by allied effort rather than by the U.S. “coming and wanting to take it over,” and added that this complicates the situation for the U.S.
The report said the European efforts are Danish-led and not coordinated through NATO, which it described as dominated by the United States. It said the allies also want to keep NATO in play, with Germany saying the aim is to obtain a “well-founded picture on the ground for further talks and planning within NATO.”
Rasmussen and Poulsen have said they plan to keep NATO engagement central, with Poulsen saying he and Greenland’s foreign minister plan to meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels on Monday to discuss security in and around the Arctic. Martisiute said she was looking forward to an announcement of military activity or deployment under NATO’s framework, warning that without it there was a risk NATO would be “paralyzed,” which she said “would not be good.”