Trump eyes fresh Greenland takeover bid with secret talks

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Donald Trump sees taking over Greenland as an important “strategic objective” – and it is one he is quietly working towards as negotiations stall in the Iran war, experts say.

The US is engaged in hushed talks with Denmark over extending America’s military capabilities in the Arctic, as Trump seeks to “change the conversation” and score a success ahead of November’s mid-term elections.

Trump last week described the Arctic island nation in a social media post as a “BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE”, prompting Greenland’s Prime Minister ​Jens-Frederik Nielsen to say that he “cannot see that [Trump’s] desire to either take over or control ​Greenland has been taken off the table”.

It came after reports that the US was negotiating with Denmark for access to three additional military bases in Greenland, marking the first US military expansion in the semi-autonomous territory in decades.

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That revelation, reported by The New York Times after US Northern Command chief General Gregory Guillot briefed lawmakers, followed months of Trump threatening a potentially forceful acquisition of Greenland, which has been part of the Danish kingdom for more than 300 years, before eventually relenting in January.

General Guillot told a Congressional hearing in mid-March that he was aiming to secure “increased access to different bases” across the strategically important country in response to an “increasing threat“, following previous disputed claims by Trump that Greenland is “covered” by Russian and Chinese ships.

The general added that the US was looking at developing “more ports, more airfields, which leads to more options… for the [US] President, should we need them up in the Arctic”.

It has sparked speculation that there could be more to the talks than meets the eye, with Trump previously vowing to “get Greenland “one way or the other” before backing down under pressure from Nato allies.

What is the US negotiating with Denmark for?

At present, Pituffik Space Base is the sole US military base in Greenland. The remote defence site, manned by a few hundred personnel on the country’s north-west coast, represents the last of what was once a network of more than a dozen US bases, with thousands of troops in Greenland during the Second World War, when Denmark was occupied by Nazi forces.

US Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance with Col Susan Meyers (L), commander of the US military’s Pituffik Space Base, as they tour it in March last year (Photo: Jim Watson/Getty)

According to recent reports, two of the three bases Washington is aiming to expand into are abandoned former US military bases in the southern town of Narsarsuaq, which could house a deepwater port, and Kangerlussuaq in the southwest, which boasts a long aircraft runway.

Both sites still have small functioning airports, though much of their military infrastructure has reportedly been dismantled in the years since the Cold War when they were last in active use.

Guillot, a top Pentagon general, told US lawmakers last month that Denmark and Greenland had so far been “very, very supportive partners” in talks over the proposed military base expansion, citing a 1951 defence pact with Denmark that formally established the US’s ability to build and expand military sites in Greenland.

Further details of the expansion plans have yet to be publicly revealed, with the US Department of State, Denmark’s foreign ministry and Greenland’s prime minister’s office declining to comment on reports of the talks.

Denmark’s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen (L), and Greenland’s Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, in Nuuk, Greenland, in January. She visited in a ‘show of support’ after Trump’s threats to seize the Danish territory (Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

What are Trump’s intentions in Greenland?

While the US-Denmark talks are focused on establishing a greater security presence in the Arctic to prepare for the region’s future, experts believe Trump has not lost sight of his recent goal of US ownership of Greenland.

Dr Neil Melvin, international security director at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), said it is “quite likely” that Trump will come back for more if these negotiations prove successful.

“Trump, as he has shown most recently in the Middle East, will in a sense do whatever he wants,” he told The i Paper.

“It won’t necessarily be that these security discussions will have much impact on his ultimate approach to Greenland, because for him, he’s made a political commitment to bringing Greenland into some kind of closer relationship to the US as part of his political legacy – he’s been clear about this on many occasions.”

Trump posted an AI-generated image in January showing himself, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio appearing to conquer Greenland with an American flag (Photo: @realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial)

Melvin added: “Trump is quite idiosyncratic. I think he’s going to return to his political agenda at some point and is likely to pose similar demands that we’ve seen in the past about increased US access, even infringing on current sovereignty arrangements around Greenland.

“It’s going to be difficult for the Europeans to oppose that, even after some of the setbacks that the US is experiencing in the Middle East.”

US foreign policy analyst Dr Jack Clayton agreed that gaining more control over Greenland “is still a strategic objective” for Trump. “That’s not to say that the Trump administration would preferably do that by military force – he has at times mentioned that he’d rather do this diplomatically,” he told The i Paper.

“But of course, the Danish government are not interested in putting Greenland up for negotiation at all, [nor] do the people of Greenland want to be part of the United States.”

Clayton suggested there may be further strands to Trump’s approach when it comes to negotiating increased military access to Greenland, such as attempting to gain more access to the country’s rich supply of critical minerals used for defence, battery technology and AI.

“Trump has made complaints about what he would like the US to be able to do militarily, but I think this is actually about having access to critical minerals in Greenland, which, under the current agreement, the US wouldn’t be able to have – and that’s part of broader competition with China around supply chains,” he told The i Paper.

The timing of these talks also suggests a potential attempt by the Trump administration to divert attention away from events in the Middle East, Clayton said: “That is straight out of the Trump playbook to … deflect, especially when things have not been going well in the Iran war at the moment in terms of failing to achieve objectives politically.

“Trump likes to bring in kind of new stories to try and change the conversation and the headlines; people made a similar accusation about the Iran war in the first place when the Epstein scandal was becoming a problem for him domestically.”

Clayton added: “I think that there is certainly an element of distraction, but at the same time, you could say there is some consistency that we’ve seen in prioritising critical minerals and the Arctic maritime access as well.”

Will Trump get what he wants?

The negotiations over military expansion may well prove to be productive, but it remains unclear how long it will take for an agreement to be reached.

“I think those talks are likely to see progress on what the US security establishment wants,” Melvin said. “That is, firstly, enhanced facilities in Greenland to modernise their air defence and early warning systems as part of the US commitment to this so-called Golden Dome, because they see that this is the region where ballistic and air threats to North America are likely to increase.

“Secondly, they want to ensure the security of those facilities by having enough people on the ground to actually provide base security. Everyone said, from the beginning, that that’s perfectly achievable on the basis of existing treaties between the US and Denmark, so I think we can expect success within those terms.”

He added: “The question is then going to be, ‘does Trump feel that’s enough?’, and I think at the moment, that feels unlikely. So, US security presence may well increase in Greenland, but clearly Trump has a bigger agenda, and he hasn’t yet indicated that he wants to retreat from that.”

An exact timeline is hard to predict, and Melvin speculated that there may be a desire in the White House to delay announcing the conclusions of the negotiations until after the US has celebrated the 250th anniversary of its independence in July to avoid “the wrong kind of reaction”.

It is also likely that Trump will want to show off some perceived victories ahead of the mid-terms, though whether that is best done internationally or at home is up for debate.

“The unpopularity of what he is doing in the Middle East may well politically weaken him and force him to be less assertive on the international scene if there’s considerable pushback in the mid-term elections from the electorate,” Melvin added.

“I think [US voters] probably want him to focus much more on trying to fix the economy and dealing with domestic issues rather than these ventures abroad.”

Minna Ålander, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (Sceeus), said the fact that the US is referring to the 1951 defence pact shows the administration has “at least done some homework”.

However, she added that getting the abandoned bases into operational condition “will take time, and money that I’m not sure that the US currently has given the expensive war in Iran”.

Clayton, meanwhile, said Trump’s failure to reach a peace deal with Iran thus far has “revealed that [the US President] is not a good negotiator” and leaves him in “desperate” need of a political win.

“I think there is every chance that Trump does agree to, for example, take one of the proposed bases [in Greenland] rather than getting three, because of his fairly desperate, and therefore weaker, position,” he said.