{"id":356320,"date":"2026-01-07T03:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T03:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/356320\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T03:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T03:35:07","slug":"white-house-says-using-us-military-is-always-an-option-for-acquiring-greenland-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/356320\/","title":{"rendered":"White House says using US military is \u2018always an option\u2019 for acquiring Greenland | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump and his advisers are looking into \u201ca range of options\u201d in an effort to acquire Greenland<\/a>, noting in a White House statement on Tuesday that using the US military to do so is \u201calways an option\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it\u2019s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief\u2019s disposal,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Leavitt\u2019s comments came as the leaders of major European powers pushed back<\/a> against Trump\u2019s long-running desire to seize the Arctic territory.<\/p>\n

In a show of solidarity on Tuesday, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and other nations issued a joint statement with the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, urging the US to respect its sovereignty. They wrote in the statement that Arctic security was a top priority for Nato, a defense alliance that includes the United States and Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreenland belongs to its people,\u201d the statement said. \u201cIt is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frederiksen previously warned that an attack by the US on a Nato ally would mean the \u201cend\u201d of the military alliance<\/a> and \u201cpost-second world war security\u201d. It would, she said, be the end of \u201ceverything\u201d.<\/p>\n

Greenland\u2019s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, also urged Trump to give up his \u201cfantasies about annexation\u201d and accused the US of \u201ccompletely and utterly unacceptable\u201d rhetoric.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnough is enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Trump has renewed calls for a US takeover of Greenland after the dark-of-night arrest of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, the Venezuelan president, on Saturday. The next day, Trump said that he needed Greenland \u201cvery badly\u201d, prompting a ramping-up of tensions among the US, the semi-autonomous Danish territory and Europe.<\/p>\n

Greenland has repeatedly stated that it does not want to be part of the US. The idea is also unpopular in the US, where one poll found<\/a> just 7% of Americans agree with a military seizure of Greenland.<\/p>\n

In an earlier interview with CNN, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller suggested Denmark does not have a right to the Arctic territory, which is a former Danish colony and remains part of its kingdom. While the mineral-rich island, home to 56,000 people, has control over most internal affairs, Copenhagen continues to oversee its foreign and security policy.<\/p>\n

Miller also claimed military intervention would not be needed to take over the island because \u201cnobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland\u201d.<\/p>\n

The CNN interview<\/a> was conducted after Miller\u2019s wife, the rightwing podcaster Katie Miller, posted a photo<\/a> of the US flag draped across a map of Greenland, captioned \u201cSOON\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a private briefing on Capitol Hill, the US secretary of state Marco Rubio told lawmakers on Monday that the administration would prefer to buy the island from Denmark rather than invade it, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Strategically situated between the US and Russia, Greenland is viewed as an increasingly important defense hub and an emerging geopolitical battleground as the climate crisis and growing militarization raise tensions in the region. Trump has said Greenland is critical to the US\u2019s national security, though the US already operates a base there.<\/p>\n

For years, European leaders mostly downplayed \u2013 or sometimes made light of \u2013 Trump\u2019s interest in seizing Greenland. But Maduro\u2019s swift capture by elite US forces has changed the tenor.<\/p>\n

Greenland\u2019s government said it had asked the US state department for an \u201curgent\u201d meeting with Rubio, Greenland\u2019s minister for foreign affairs and research Vivian Motzfeldt, and the Danish foreign minister, Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen, to discuss \u201cthe US\u2019s claims about our country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rasmussen told the Danish public broadcaster DR<\/a> that a meeting would give the Danes and Greenlanders a chance to correct some of Trump\u2019s claims, including that there are a lot of Russian and Chinese ships around Greenland, and that China exerts great influence there through investments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not share this image that Greenland is plastered with Chinese investments \u2026 nor that there are Chinese warships up and down along Greenland,\u201d he said, according to the broadcaster. Rasmussen spoke to reporters after an emergency session<\/a> of Denmark\u2019s foreign policy committee and defense ministry with just one item on the agenda: \u201cThe Kingdom\u2019s relations with the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Denmark\u2019s defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said after the meeting that Denmark had spent billions to increase security in Greenland, not, as Trump had claimed this week, by adding just \u201cone more dog sled\u201d.<\/p>\n

At a press conference in Paris on Tuesday, Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, who touted new commitments from the Trump administration to defend Ukraine, was asked pointedly: \u201cWhat value do these commitments have on the very day that at the highest levels of government in Washington they are talking about seizing the sovereign territory of a fellow Nato member?\u201d<\/p>\n

Starmer said he stood by the statement he made on Monday, when he said that \u201cGreenland and the Kingdom of Denmark<\/a> must determine the future of Greenland and nobody else\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Washington, top congressional Republicans sought to downplay the likelihood of military action in Greenland, with the Senate majority leader, John Thune, telling<\/a> Politico: \u201cThat to me is not something anybody is contemplating seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Congressman Ryan Zinke, a Republican from Montana who served as secretary of the interior during the first Trump administration, said he was not surprised that Trump would decline to rule out the use of military force to seize Greenland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president rarely rules out any option,\u201d he told<\/a> NewsNation on Tuesday, adding: \u201cBut Greenland is different. Greenland is obviously a Nato partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Democrats warned that Trump\u2019s threats should be taken seriously. The US senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, has introduced legislation that would \u201cprohibit the use of funds for military force or other hostilities against Greenland\u201d. In a post on X, he accused Trump of wanting Greenland simply to possess a \u201cgiant island with his name on it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wouldn\u2019t think twice about putting our troops in danger if it makes him feel big and strong,\u201d Gallego wrote. \u201cThe US military is not a toy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert Mackey contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump and his advisers are looking into \u201ca range of options\u201d in an effort to acquire Greenland,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-356320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}