Europe moves troops to Greenland as Trump fixates

What happened

The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House on Wednesday to try to defuse President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to take control of Greenland, possibly through force. The meeting did not resolve the “fundamental disagreement” with the U.S., Danish envoy Lars Lokke Rasmussen said afterward. “It’s clear that the president has this wish of conquering Greenland, and we made it very, very clear” that the U.S. needs to respect Copenhagen’s “red lines” on territorial sovereignty.

“As the White House meeting unfolded” Wednesday, “C-130 aircraft were delivering the first Swedish troops to Greenland in a deployment of military personnel meant to shore up the defenses of the self-governing island,” The Wall Street Journal said. Germany, France, Norway and Britain also said they are sending military assets to Greenland, at Denmark’s request.

Who said what

“Anything less” than “Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES” is “unacceptable,” Trump said on social media Wednesday. “There’s not a thing that Denmark can do about it if Russia or China wants to occupy Greenland,” Trump told reporters after the meeting, which he did not attend. “But there’s everything we can do.”

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The U.S. can already station as many troops as it wants in Greenland under a 1951 treaty, and as a member of NATO, the large Arctic island should be protected by the alliance’s mutual-defense compact. European officials said Trump’s proposed takeover of Greenland would spell the end of NATO.

Denmark’s new “more permanent presence in Greenland” is “a necessary step in a time when no one can predict what will happen tomorrow,” Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said. Europe’s military buildup there is “an apparent response to Trump’s security criticisms,” The Washington Post said. But Poulson “declined to say whether those troops were sent to help the U.S. protect the island — or to help protect the island from the U.S,” the Journal said.

What next?

Rasmussen said the U.S. had agreed to form a “high-level working group” that will meet in the coming weeks to try to find a way forward on the Greenland impasse. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that only 17% of Americans approved of Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, and only 4% said it would be a “good idea” to take it by force.