Denmark and Greenland have clapped back at Donald Trump’s latest power grab, emerging from a White House meeting to call him out for lying and rebuke his push to seize the island as “totally unacceptable.”
Hours after Trump ramped up pressure to acquire Greenland, foreign ministers from the two nations accused the president of making up “a narrative” about China potentially seizing Greenland to justify America’s desire to acquire it first.
The comments came hours after Trump put out an incendiary post insisting that the U.S. “needs Greenland” for national security.
“NATO should be leading the way for us to get it. IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!” he wrote on Wednesday.
But speaking after meeting Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen rejected this claim.
“It’s not a true narrative that we have Chinese warships all around the place,” said Rasmussen, a two-time former prime minister of Denmark.
“According to our intelligence, we haven’t had Chinese warships in Greenland for a decade or so.”
The comments are consistent with independent researchers who have pointed out that Russian and Chinese warships are not “all over” Greenland, as the administration has claimed, but in the Bering Strait, which is on the other side of the U.S.
Rasmussen added that while they wanted to work with the U.S. to bolster security in the region, any move that did not respect Greenland’s self-determination would be “totally unacceptable”.
Greenland Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt agreed, noting that while her nation considered the U.S. to be an ally, “that doesn’t mean we want to be owned by the United States.”
Trump has had his eye on Greenland since his first administration, but has ramped up his push in recent weeks as he moves to assert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Some of the options reportedly being canvassed by the administration include purchasing Greenland outright or forming a Compact of Free Association with the territory—although the latter would stop short of Trump’s ambition to make Greenland part of the US.
But he has also not ruled out using military force to annex Greenland, even though doing so would be highly controversial, as Greenland is a self-governing democratic territory of Denmark, a close U.S. ally.
As the ministers reiterated on Wednesday, Greenland is also a fellow NATO member, and military action would therefore be a gross violation of international law and state sovereignty.
“Our perspectives continue to differ,” Rasmussen said. “The president has made his view clear. And we have a different position.”
Speaking in the Oval Office after the meeting, Trump said he had not yet been briefed by Vance and Rubio on the talks.
However, he reiterated that “we need Greenland for national security”. Earlier, he also claimed the island was “vital for the Golden Dome that we are building."
“The “Golden Dome” is a cutting-edge missile defense system meant to intercept threats targeting the American homeland, similar to the Iron Dome used in Israel,” Trump said on Truth Social on Wednesday.
“NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable.”
Experts have described Trump’s claims as ridiculous.
“Most of this is nonsense,” said Shashank Joshi, a fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London and the defence editor for The Economist.
“Greenland is important to US missile defence, including Golden Dome, because of its location and its early-warning radar. A US radar of one sort of another has been there for nearly 70 years, without the need for US sovereignty.”
Michael McFaul, Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at Stanford University, added: “Denmark is a member of NATO, which means China and Russia will never attack, let alone invade, Greenland. Our president is making completely absurd statements right now, which are extremely damaging to our reputation and thus national security.”
