European troops arrive in Greenland as talks with U.S. highlight ‘disagreement’ over island’s future

Troops from sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries con­tin­ued to ar­rive in Green­land on Thurs­day in a show of sup­port for Den­mark as talks be­tween rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Den­mark, Green­land and the U.S. high­light­ed “fun­da­men­tal dis­agree­ment” over the fu­ture of the Arc­tic is­land.

Den­mark an­nounced it would in­crease its mil­i­tary pres­ence in Green­land on Wednes­day as for­eign min­is­ters from Den­mark and Green­land were prepar­ing to meet with White House rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Wash­ing­ton. Sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean part­ners — in­clud­ing France, Ger­many, the U.K., Nor­way, Swe­den and the Nether­lands — start­ed send­ing sym­bol­ic num­bers of troops al­ready on Wednes­day or promised to do so in the fol­low­ing days.

The troop move­ments were in­tend­ed to por­tray uni­ty among Eu­ro­peans and send a sig­nal to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump that an Amer­i­can takeover of Green­land is not nec­es­sary as NA­TO to­geth­er can safe­guard the se­cu­ri­ty of the Arc­tic re­gion amid ris­ing Russ­ian and Chi­nese in­ter­est.

“The first French mil­i­tary el­e­ments are al­ready en route” and “oth­ers will fol­low,” French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron an­nounced Wednes­day, as French au­thor­i­ties said about 15 sol­diers from the moun­tain in­fantry unit were al­ready in Nuuk for a mil­i­tary ex­er­cise.

Ger­many will de­ploy a re­con­nais­sance team of 13 per­son­nel to Green­land on Thurs­day, the De­fense Min­istry said.

On Thurs­day, Dan­ish De­fense Min­is­ter Troels Lund Poulsen said the in­ten­tion was “to es­tab­lish a more per­ma­nent mil­i­tary pres­ence with a larg­er Dan­ish con­tri­bu­tion,” ac­cord­ing to Dan­ish broad­cast­er DR. He said sol­diers from sev­er­al NA­TO coun­tries will be in Green­land on a ro­ta­tion sys­tem.

Dan­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Lars Løkke Ras­mussen, flanked by his Green­landic coun­ter­part Vi­vian Motzfeldt, said Wednes­day that a “fun­da­men­tal dis­agree­ment” over Green­land re­mains with Trump af­ter they held high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed talks at the White House with Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance and Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio.

Ras­mussen added that it re­mains “clear that the pres­i­dent has this wish of con­quer­ing over Green­land” but that di­a­logue with the U.S. would con­tin­ue at a high lev­el over the fol­low­ing weeks.

‘Green­land does not want to be part of the Unit­ed States’

In­hab­i­tants of Green­land and Den­mark re­act­ed with anx­i­ety but al­so some re­lief that ne­go­ti­a­tions with the U.S. would go on and Eu­ro­pean sup­port was be­com­ing vis­i­ble.

Green­land’s Prime Min­is­ter Jens-Fred­erik Nielsen wel­comed the con­tin­u­a­tion of “di­a­logue and diplo­ma­cy.”

“Green­land is not for sale,” he said Thurs­day. “Green­land does not want to be owned by the Unit­ed States. Green­land does not want to be gov­erned from the Unit­ed States. Green­land does not want to be part of the Unit­ed States.”

In Green­land’s cap­i­tal, Nuuk, lo­cal res­i­dents told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press they were glad the first meet­ing be­tween Green­landic, Dan­ish and Amer­i­can of­fi­cials had tak­en place but sug­gest­ed it left more ques­tions than an­swers.

Sev­er­al peo­ple said they viewed Den­mark’s de­ci­sion to send more troops, and promis­es of sup­port from oth­er NA­TO al­lies, as pro­tec­tion against pos­si­ble U.S. mil­i­tary ac­tion. But Eu­ro­pean mil­i­tary of­fi­cials have not sug­gest­ed the goal is to de­ter a U.S. move against the is­land.

Maya Mar­tin­sen, 21, said it was “com­fort­ing to know that the Nordic coun­tries are send­ing re­in­force­ments” be­cause Green­land is a part of Den­mark and NA­TO.

The dis­pute, she said, is not about “na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty” but rather about “the oils and min­er­als that we have that are un­touched.”

More troops, more talks

On Wednes­day, Poulsen an­nounced a stepped-up mil­i­tary pres­ence in the Arc­tic “in close co­op­er­a­tion with our al­lies,” call­ing it a ne­ces­si­ty in a se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment in which “no one can pre­dict what will hap­pen to­mor­row.”

“This means that from to­day and in the com­ing time there will be an in­creased mil­i­tary pres­ence in and around Green­land of air­craft, ships and sol­diers, in­clud­ing from oth­er NA­TO al­lies,” Poulsen said.

Asked whether the Eu­ro­pean troop move­ments were co­or­di­nat­ed with NA­TO or what role the U.S.-led mil­i­tary al­liance might play in the ex­er­cis­es, NA­TO re­ferred all ques­tions to the Dan­ish au­thor­i­ties. How­ev­er, NA­TO is cur­rent­ly study­ing ways to bol­ster se­cu­ri­ty in the Arc­tic.

The Russ­ian em­bassy in Brus­sels on Thurs­day lam­bast­ed what it called the West’s “bel­li­cose plans” in re­sponse to “phan­tom threats that they gen­er­ate them­selves”. It said the planned mil­i­tary ac­tions were part of an “an­ti-Russ­ian and an­ti-Chi­nese agen­da” by NA­TO.

“Rus­sia has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that the Arc­tic should re­main a ter­ri­to­ry of peace, di­a­logue and equal co­op­er­a­tion,” the em­bassy said.

Ras­mussen an­nounced the cre­ation of a work­ing group with the Amer­i­cans to dis­cuss ways to work through dif­fer­ences.

“The group, in our view, should fo­cus on how to ad­dress the Amer­i­can se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, while at the same time re­spect­ing the red lines of the King­dom of Den­mark,” he said.

Some diplo­mat­ic progress

Com­ment­ing on the out­come of the Wash­ing­ton meet­ing on Thurs­day, Poulsen said the work­ing group was “bet­ter than no work­ing group” and “a step in the right di­rec­tion.” He added nev­er­the­less that the di­a­logue with the U.S. did not mean “the dan­ger has passed.”

Speak­ing on Thurs­day, Dan­ish Prime Min­is­ter Mette Fred­erik­sen said the Amer­i­can am­bi­tion to take over Green­land re­mains in­tact de­spite the Wash­ing­ton meet­ing, but she wel­comed the cre­ation of the work­ing group.

The most im­por­tant thing for Green­lan­ders is that they were di­rect­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the meet­ing in the White House and that “the diplo­mat­ic di­a­logue has be­gun now,” Juno Berthelsen, a law­mak­er for the pro-in­de­pen­dence Naler­aq op­po­si­tion par­ty, told AP.

A re­la­tion­ship with the U.S. is ben­e­fi­cial for Green­lan­ders and Amer­i­cans and is “vi­tal to the se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of the Arc­tic and the West­ern Al­liance,” Berthelsen said. He sug­gest­ed the U.S. could be in­volved in the cre­ation of a coast guard for Green­land, pro­vid­ing fund­ing and cre­at­ing jobs for lo­cal peo­ple who can help to pa­trol the Arc­tic.

In Wash­ing­ton, Ras­mussen and Motzfeldt met with a bi­par­ti­san group of sen­a­tors at the U.S. Capi­tol.

“We re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that we have close friends in the Sen­ate and the House as well,” Ras­mussen told re­porters, adding that Den­mark would work to “ac­com­mo­date any rea­son­able Amer­i­can re­quests” with Green­land.

There has been sig­nif­i­cant con­cern among law­mak­ers of both po­lit­i­cal par­ties that Trump could up­end the NA­TO al­liance by in­sist­ing on us­ing mil­i­tary force to pos­sess Green­land. Key Re­pub­li­cans law­mak­ers have pushed back on those plans and sug­gest­ed that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion should work with Den­mark to en­hance mu­tu­al se­cu­ri­ty in the Arc­tic.

Line McGee, 38, from Copen­hagen, told AP that she was glad to see some diplo­mat­ic progress. “I don’t think the threat has gone away,” she said. “But I feel slight­ly bet­ter than I did yes­ter­day.”

Trump, in his Oval Of­fice meet­ing with re­porters, said: “We’ll see how it all works out. I think some­thing will work out.” —NUUK, Green­land (AP)

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Sto­ry by EM­MA BUR­ROWS, CLAU­DIA CIOBANU and DANIEL NIE­MANN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Daniel Nie­mann re­port­ed from Copen­hagen, Den­mark, and Ciobanu from War­saw, Poland. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Stephen Groves in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.