Donald Trump and his advisers are looking into “a range of options” in an effort to acquire Greenland, noting in a White House statement on Tuesday that using the US military to do so is “always an option”.
“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Leavitt’s comments came as the leaders of major European powers pushed back against Trump’s long-running desire to seize the Arctic territory.
In a show of solidarity on Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and other nations issued a joint statement with the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, urging the US to respect its sovereignty. They wrote in the statement that Arctic security was a top priority for Nato, a defense alliance that includes the United States and Greenland.
“Greenland belongs to its people,” the statement said. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
Greenland’s government said it had asked the US state department for an “urgent” meeting with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, Greenland’s minister for foreign affairs and research, Vivian Motzfeldt, and the Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, to discuss “the US’s claims about our country”.
Rasmussen told the Danish public broadcaster DR that a meeting would give the Danes and Greenlanders a chance to correct some of Trump’s claims, including that there are a lot of Russian and Chinese ships around Greenland, and that China exerts great influence there through investments.
“We do not share this image that Greenland is plastered with Chinese investments … nor that there are Chinese warships up and down along Greenland,” he said, according to the broadcaster. Rasmussen spoke to reporters after an emergency session of Denmark’s foreign policy committee and defence ministry with just one item on the agenda: “The Kingdom’s relations with the United States.”
Denmark’s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said after the meeting that Denmark had spent billions to increase security in Greenland, not, as Trump had claimed this week, by adding just “one more dog sled”.
Frederiksen previously warned that an attack by the US on a Nato ally would mean the “end” of the military alliance and “post-second world war security”. It would, she said, be the end of “everything”.
Trump has renewed calls for a US takeover of Greenland after the dark-of-night arrest of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, on Saturday. The next day, Trump said that he needed Greenland “very badly”, prompting a ramping-up of tensions among the US, the semi-autonomous Danish territory and Europe.
Greenland has repeatedly stated that it does not want to be part of the US. The idea is also unpopular in the US, where one poll found just 7% of Americans agree with a military seizure of Greenland.
In an earlier interview with CNN, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller suggested Denmark does not have a right to the Arctic territory, which is a former Danish colony and remains part of its kingdom. While the mineral-rich island, home to 56,000 people, has control over most internal affairs, Copenhagen continues to oversee its foreign and security policy.
Miller also claimed military intervention would not be needed to take over the island because “nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland”.
The CNN interview was conducted after Miller’s wife, the rightwing podcaster Katie Miller, posted a photo of the US flag draped across a map of Greenland, captioned “SOON”.
In a private briefing on Capitol Hill, Rubio told lawmakers on Monday that the administration would prefer to buy the island from Denmark rather than invade it, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Strategically situated between the US and Russia, Greenland is viewed as an increasingly important defense hub and an emerging geopolitical battleground as the climate crisis and growing militarization raise tensions in the region. Trump has said Greenland is critical to the US’s national security, though the US already operates a base there.
For years, European leaders mostly downplayed – or sometimes made light of – Trump’s interest in seizing Greenland. But Maduro’s swift capture by elite US forces has changed the tenor.
At a press conference in Paris on Tuesday, Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, who touted new commitments from the Trump administration to defend Ukraine, was asked pointedly: “What value do these commitments have on the very day that at the highest levels of government in Washington they are talking about seizing the sovereign territory of a fellow Nato member?”
Starmer said he stood by the statement he made on Monday, when he said that “Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark must determine the future of Greenland and nobody else”.
Meanwhile, in Washington, top congressional Republicans sought to downplay the likelihood of military action in Greenland, with the Senate majority leader, John Thune, telling Politico: “That to me is not something anybody is contemplating seriously.”
Congressman Ryan Zinke, a Republican from Montana who served as secretary of the interior during the first Trump administration, said he was not surprised that Trump would decline to rule out the use of military force to seize Greenland.
“The president rarely rules out any option,” he told NewsNation on Tuesday, adding: “But Greenland is different. Greenland is obviously a Nato partner.”
But Democrats warned that Trump’s threats should be taken seriously. The US senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, has introduced legislation that would “prohibit the use of funds for military force or other hostilities against Greenland”. In a post on X, he accused Trump of wanting Greenland simply to possess a “giant island with his name on it”.
“He wouldn’t think twice about putting our troops in danger if it makes him feel big and strong,” Gallego wrote. “The US military is not a toy.”
Robert Mackey contributed reporting
