Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Republican Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, hasn’t taken part in the negotiations and is largely absent from the diplomatic process, three sources said.<\/p>\n
“He was supposed to be more of like a rah-rah cheerleader of the idea that we could just flex our muscles and take over Greenland as a security asset,” said a close Landry ally who asked not to be named. Landry “has never been to any of the actual talks.”<\/p>\n
Landry’s office did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The US currently has one military base in Greenland, down from approximately 17 military facilities during the height of the Cold War. Pituffik Space Base is located in northwestern Greenland – it monitors missiles for NORAD but is not configured to conduct maritime surveillance.<\/p>\n
Some current and former officials, as well as Arctic security experts, told the BBC that Washington could have advanced its interests in Greenland without threatening a Nato ally in such strong terms.<\/p>\n
“Why threaten an ally with a military operation or invasion when what you want is something that could be negotiated quite easily?” said one former senior US defence official.<\/p>\n
Others, however, praised the co-operation between the US and Denmark.<\/p>\n
“Wherever the US and our allies leave a vacuum, that vacuum is often filled by China and Russia,” retired General Glen VanHerck, the head of Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) from 2020 to 2024, told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Behind closed doors, negotiators have sought to reach a compromise under the framework of an existing decades-old security agreement between the US and Denmark.<\/p>\n
The 1951 pact grants the US a wide berth to expand its military operations in Greenland. The Danish government must approve any US military expansions in the territory, but Denmark has historically supported America’s military operations there and has never rejected a US request to expand its presence, Arctic security experts said.<\/p>\n
Representatives of the Greenland government in Washington declined to comment. The US state department also declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Trump expressed interest in the US gaining greater access to Greenland during his first term as president. But his renewed interest earlier this year set off a diplomatic crisis that highlighted tensions between Nato and the Trump administration. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Republican Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, hasn’t taken part in the negotiations and is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-579214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579214","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=579214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}