Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he plans to meet with Danish officials next week after the Trump administration doubled down on its intention to acquire Greenland, the strategic Arctic island that is a self-governing territory of Denmark. Since the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicol ás Maduro, President Donald Trump has revived his argument that the United States needs to control the world’s largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenland counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, had requested a meeting with Rubio, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website. Previous requests for a meeting were not successful, the statement said. Rubio told a select group of U.S. lawmakers that it was the Republican administration’s intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force. The remarks, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were made in a classified briefing Monday evening on Capitol Hill, according to a person with knowledge of his comments who was granted anonymity because it was a private discussion. On Wednesday, Rubio told reporters in Washington that Trump has been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term. “That’s always been the president’s intent from the very beginning,” Rubio said. “He’s not the first U.S. president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.” Rubio’s announcement followed statements by Greenland officials that pressure from the U.S. to take control of the island is inappropriate. “Nobody is going to want to be allies of the USA if they do not honour treaties and attack and stab allies,” said Rasmus Jarlov, a member of the Danish parliament and chairman of Denmark’s Defense Committee, on social media. Threatening Denmark also doesn’t make strategic sense, said Professor John Mearsheimer, an expert in international relations at the University of Chicago, during a Tuesday panel hosted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “The Danes are the best allies the United States could ask for, and if need be, they will cooperate with us completely,” he said. Denmark was a founding member of NATO. Increasing international tensions, climate change and the changing world economy have put Greenland at the heart of the debate over global trade and security, and Trump wants to make sure his country controls the mineral-rich island that guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America. Greenland sits off the northeastern coast of Canada, with more than two-thirds of its territory lying within the Arctic Circle. That has made it crucial to the defense of North America since World War II, when the U.S. occupied Greenland to ensure it didn’t fall into the hands of Nazi Germany and to protect crucial North Atlantic shipping lanes. Following the Cold War, the Arctic was largely an area of international cooperation. But climate change is thinning the Arctic ice, promising to create a northwest passage for international trade and reigniting competition with Russia, China and other countries over access to the region’s mineral resources. The only U.S. military base in Greenland is the Pituffik Space Force Base, formerly Thule Air Base, and it is overseen by Space Base Delta 1 at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs. The small contingent at the base works on missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations. Special Operations Command North, headquartered in Colorado Springs, has also focused on training to counter China and Russia in the Arctic in recent years. In 2024, Col. Matt Tucker, who leads the command, told The Gazette that service members working for him were focused on making sure they were ready for the challenging arctic environment, drawing on the experience of native communities. The Gazette’s Mary Shinn contributed to this report. ...read more read less