By Tom Little and Leonhard Foeger
NUUK, Greenland (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President JD Vance will visit Greenland on Friday at a time when President Donald Trump is renewing his insistence that Washington should take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
In a scaled-back version of a trip plan that had angered authorities in both Greenland and Denmark, Vance was expected to fly to the U.S. military base at Pituffik in the north of the Arctic island.
Under the terms of a 1951 agreement, the U.S. is entitled to visit its base whenever it wants, as long as it notifies Greenland and Copenhagen.
The initial plan had been for Vance’s wife, Usha, to visit a popular dog-sled race together with national security adviser Mike Waltz, even though they were not invited by authorities in either Greenland or Denmark.
Waltz, who has faced pressure over Trump administration officials’ discussion of sensitive Houthi attack plans on the Signal messaging app, will still be on the Greenland trip, according to a White House source.
Greenland’s acting Prime Minister Mute Egede called the visit a provocation as the country has not yet formed a new government after a March 11 election.
Public broadcaster KNR reported on Thursday, without identifying its sources, that a pro-business party that emerged as the winner of the election will present a broad coalition on Friday.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the U.S. visit “unacceptable” although Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen welcomed news of the revised visit as a positive, de-escalating step.
By changing the trip, the Trump administration is seeking to refocus the discussion on the topics it is interested in: the U.S. presence on Greenland, military capabilities available, and the wider security of the Arctic, said Catherine Sendak, head of the Transatlantic Defense and Security programme at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based think tank.
“A change of course was needed,” Sendak told Reuters. “It is positive, given the very public back and forth between the Danish and Greenland governments and the Trump administration about the intent of the initial visit.”
Still, Trump reiterated his desire to take over Greenland, saying the U.S. needs the strategically located island for national and international security.
“So, I think we’ll go as far as we have to go. We need Greenland and the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark,” he said on Wednesday.
Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen condemned what he called Trump’s escalated rhetoric.
WHO BENEFITS FROM DISPUTE?
The question now is how far Trump is willing to push his idea of taking over the island, said Andreas Oesthagen, a senior researcher on Arctic politics and security at the Oslo-based Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
“It is still unlikely that the United States will use military means to try to get full control over Greenland,” he told Reuters.
That would break with many fundamental principles and rules that the U.S. has benefited from and has been a pillar for, he said.
“But it is unfortunately likely that President Trump and Vice President Vance will continue to use other means of pressure, such as ambiguous statements, semi-official visits to Greenland, and economic instruments,” he added.
“And the real winner in this unnecessary drama is Russia, who gets exactly what they want: discord in the transatlantic relationship.”
Tom Dans, a former member of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission during Trump’s first presidency, said Vance’s visit would help the Trump administration understand where it can collaborate further with Greenland.
“They’re trying to put the picture together for the future and understand where the best intersections are going to be for U.S. policy and investments to help Greenland,” Dans, a businessman, told Reuters.
(Reporting by Tom Little and Leonhard Foeger in Nuuk, Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Louise Breusch Rasmussen in Copenhagen; Writing by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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