{"id":222577,"date":"2026-01-08T03:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T03:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/222577\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T03:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T03:47:13","slug":"rubio-says-hell-meet-danish-officials-next-week-to-talk-about-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/222577\/","title":{"rendered":"Rubio says he’ll meet Danish officials next week to talk about Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"

US 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 take over Greenland<\/a>, the strategic Arctic island that is a self-governing territory of Denmark.<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump has argued that the US needs to control the world\u2019s largest island to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic, and the White House has refused to rule out using military force to acquire the territory.<\/p>\n

Rubio told a select group of lawmakers that it was the administration\u2019s intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force.<\/p>\n

Trump discussing ‘a range of options’ to take Greenland – Watch on TVNZ+<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Rubio told reporters that Trump has been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term. “That’s always been the president\u2019s intent from the very beginning,” Rubio said. “He\u2019s not the first US president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.”<\/p>\n

He was on Capitol Hill for a briefing with the entire Senate and House, where questions from lawmakers centred not only on the administration\u2019s operation to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro \u2014 but also on Trump\u2019s recent comments about Greenland.<\/p>\n

Tensions with NATO members escalated after the White House said Wednesday that the “US military is always an option<\/a>“. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned earlier this week that a US takeover would amount to the end of NATO.<\/p>\n

“The Nordics do not lightly make statements like this,\u201d Maria Martisiute, a defense analyst at the European Policy Centre think tank, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “But it is Trump, whose very bombastic language bordering on direct threats and intimidation, is threatening the fact to another ally by saying ‘I will control or annex the territory’.”<\/p>\n

\"President<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump looks on as Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025, in Washington (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Rubio did not directly answer a question about whether the Trump administration is willing to risk the NATO alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option regarding Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, I\u2019ll be meeting with them next week, we\u2019ll have those conversations with them then, but I don\u2019t have anything further to add to that,” Rubio said, telling reporters that every president retains the option to address national security threats to the United States through military means.<\/p>\n

The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom joined Frederiksen in a statement Wednesday reaffirming that the mineral-rich island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, “belongs to its people”.<\/p>\n

Danish Foreign Minister Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen and his Greenland counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, have requested a meeting with Rubio in the near future, according to a statement posted Tuesday to Greenland’s government website. Previous requests for a sit-down were not successful, the statement said.<\/p>\n

‘This is America now’<\/p>\n

Thomas Crosbie, an associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defense College, said an American takeover would not improve upon Washington’s current security strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States will gain no advantage if its flag is flying in Nuuk versus the Greenlandic flag,\u201d he told the AP. \u201cThere\u2019s no benefits to them because they already enjoy all of the advantages they want. If there\u2019s any specific security access that they want to improve American security, they\u2019ll be given it as a matter of course, as a trusted ally. So this has nothing to do with improving national security for the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denmark\u2019s parliament approved a bill last June to allow US military bases on Danish soil. It widened a previous military agreement, made in 2023 with the Biden administration, where US troops had broad access to Danish airbases in the Scandinavian country.<\/p>\n

\"Greenland's<\/p>\n

Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens Frederik Nielsen holds a press conference in Nuuk, Greenland, Monday, January 5, 2026. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Rasmussen, in a response to lawmakers\u2019 questions, wrote over the summer that Denmark would be able to terminate the agreement if the US tries to annex all or part of Greenland.<\/p>\n

But in the event of a military action, the US Department of Defence currently operates the remote Pituffik Space Base, in northwestern Greenland, and the troops there could be mobilised.<\/p>\n

Crosbie said he believes the US would not seek to hurt the local population or engage with Danish troops.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t need to bring any firepower. They don\u2019t to bring anybody.” Crosbie said Wednesday. “They could just direct the military personnel currently there to drive to the centre of Nuuk and just say, ‘This is America now,’ right? And that would lead to the same response as if they flew in 500 or 1000 people.”<\/p>\n

The danger in an American annexation, he said, lies in the “erosion of the rule of law globally and to the perception that there are any norms protecting anybody on the planet”. <\/p>\n

He added: “The impact is changing the map. The impact I don\u2019t think would be storming the parliament.” <\/p>\n

‘Greenland is not for sale’<\/p>\n

French Foreign Minister Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot said he spoke by phone Wednesday with Rubio, who dismissed the idea of a Venezuela-style operation in Greenland.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

“In the United States, there is massive support for the country belonging to NATO \u2013 a membership that, from one day to the next, would be compromised by\u2026 any form of aggressiveness toward another member of NATO,” Barrot told France Inter radio on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Asked if he has a plan in case Trump does claim Greenland, Barrot said he would not engage in “fiction diplomacy”.<\/p>\n

While most Republicans have supported Trump’s statement, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, the Democratic and Republican co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate NATO Observer Group, have criticised Trump\u2019s rhetoric.<\/p>\n

“When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honour its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” their statement on Tuesday said. “Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow NATO ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our Alliance exists to defend.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he plans to meet with Danish officials next week after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[28708,65,42,43,64,40,38,41,39,1745,66],"class_list":["post-222577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-central-south-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk-europe","tag-us-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}