JD Vance is set to visit Greenland with his wife Usha on Friday – making him the most senior US official to visit the territory amid a growing war of words following threats from Donald Trump to take the island over.
Ahead of the visit, the Vice President suggested that the self-governing Danish territory has not received enough defence support from Copenhagen, arguing that global security is at stake.
‘Speaking for President Trump, we want to reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland because we think it’s important to protecting the security of the entire world,’ he said in an online video.
In an apparent jibe after a comment he made about Europe ‘free-loading’ off the US for its defence was revealed on Monday, Vance added: ‘Unfortunately, leaders in both America and in Denmark, I think, ignored Greenland for far too long.
‘That’s been bad for Greenland, it’s also been bad for the security of the entire world. We think we can take things in a different direction, so I’m gonna go check it out.’
President Trump has irked much of Europe with claims that the US will get control of the mineral-rich territory ‘one way or another’, with tensions ratcheting up as leaders from Greenland and Denmark condemned the US approach as ‘aggressive’.
Against this backdrop of widespread backlash against Washington, Denmark has taken changes to the US delegation’s itinerary as a diplomatic victory.
The Vice President’s decision to visit a US military base in northern Greenland, rather than doing a tour of the country, has removed the risk of violating potential diplomatic taboos by sending a delegation to another country without an official invite.
JD Vance is set to visit Greenland with his wife Usha on Friday. The couple is pictured during a visit to France in February
When Greenland’s prime minister Mute B. Egede learned about the back-to-back trips, he was incensed and raged in a statement to local media
Donald Trump (pictured) is putting unacceptable pressure on Greenland, Denmark’s Prime Minister said today
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (pictured) made the comments ahead of a trip to the semi-autonomous Danish territory this week by a high-profile US delegation
Denmark’s foreign minister welcomed the decision to alter the planned visit, which was expected to see Mrs Vance attend a popular dog-sled race.
The White House announced that the delegation would instead be headed by JD Vance, but that it would only visit the US Space Base at Pituffik in northern Greenland and not the dog-sled race.
‘I think it’s very positive that the Americans cancelled their visit to the Greenlandic society. Instead, they will visit their own base, Pituffik, and we have nothing against that,’ Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told broadcaster DR.
Vance’s trip is unlikely to go down well on the island and with Denmark, with the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen saying yesterday that the US is exerting ‘unacceptable pressure’.
Lars-Christian Brask, the deputy speaker of the Danish Parliament, said: ‘Having changed now so they only visit the base is sort of a little bit more acceptable, although still very strange.’
Responding to the news this morning, the leading Danish politician accused Vance and the US of being ‘intimidating’, claiming that the visit represented somewhat of ‘a provocation’ and a ‘show of force’.
He told BBC Radio 4 that any US effort to take Greenland would be ‘Nato against Nato’, though said he did not know how that could happen.
Ahead of the vice president’s announcement that he would join his wife, discontent from the governments of Greenland and Denmark had been growing sharper, with the Greenland government posting on Facebook Monday night that it had ‘not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official.’
Speaking ahead of Vance’s announced visit, Frederiksen told local broadcaster TV2 on Tuesday: ‘I have to say that it is unacceptable pressure being placed on Greenland and Denmark in this situation. And it is pressure that we will resist.’
‘This is clearly not a visit that is about what Greenland needs or wants,’ she added.
Thule Air Base is the U.S. military’s northernmost base located some 750 miles above the Arctic Circle
The office of second lady Usha Vance said Sunday that she would depart Thursday for Greenland and return Saturday.
Mrs Vance and one of her three children had planned to visit historic sites and learn about Greenland’s culture, but her husband’s participation has reoriented the trip around national security.
The vice president said he didn’t want to let his wife ‘have all that fun by herself’ and said he plans to visit a Space Force outpost in the northwest coast of Greenland.
Danish parliamentarian Mr Brask said ‘Greenlanders and Danes have been baffled’ by his comments in the video, with many seeing the video as ‘insensitive’ and causing ‘some uncertainty’.
Vance has repeatedly criticized longstanding European allies for relying on military support from the United States, openly antagonizing partners in ways that have generated concerns about America’s reliability.
Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, was initially listed among the group of US officials also heading to Greenland – but his name was omitted when it was announced that the vice president was now attending.
The White House didn’t say Tuesday if Waltz’s travel plans had been altered after it was revealed that he had errantly added a journalist to a secure messaging app conversation about a military strike in Yemen.
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Vance said leaders in Denmark and North America had ‘ignored’ Greenland for ‘far too long.’
The visit to Pituffik Space Base will take place instead of Usha Vance’s previously announced trip to the Avannaata Qimussersu dogsled race in Sisimiut.
But Dwayne Ryan Menezes, founder and managing director of the Polar Research & Policy Initiative, said that the Trump administration’s ‘intimidation’ of Greenland could backfire.
Menezes said if Trump was ‘smart enough’ to understand Greenland’s strategic importance that he should also be ‘smart enough to know there is no greater way to weaken America’s hand and hurt its long-term interests than turning its back on its allies, the principal asymmetrical advantage it enjoys over its adversaries.’
People take part in a demonstration in front of the US consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, on 15 March 2025, under the slogan ‘Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people’
Despite officials in Greenland and Denmark becoming more vocal in expressing objections, Vance is allowed to visit the space base, said Marc Jacobsen, a professor at the Royal Danish Defense College, because of a 1951 agreement between Denmark and the U.S. regarding the defense of Greenland.
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‘What is controversial here is all about the timing,’ he said. ‘Greenland and Denmark have stated very clearly that they don’t want the US to visit right now, when Greenland doesn’t have a government in place.’
During his first term, Trump floated the idea of purchasing the world’s largest island, even as Denmark, a NATO ally, insisted it wasn’t for sale. The people of Greenland also have firmly rejected Trump’s plans.
Trump’s return to the White House has included a desire with territorial expansion, with the U.S. president seeking to add Canada as a 51st state and resume control of the Panama Canal. He has also indicated that U.S. interests could take over the land in the war-torn Gaza Strip from Israel and convert it into a luxury outpost.