‘US won’t get Greenland’: PM’s scathing response as Vice President JD Vance visits military base on island

The prime minister of Greenland pushed back on Sunday against assertions by US President Donald Trump that America will take control of the island territory.

Greenland, a huge, resource-rich island in the Atlantic, is a self-governing territory of Denmark, a NATO ally of the United States. Trump wants to annex the territory, claiming it’s needed for national security purposes.

“President Trump says that the United States ‘will get Greenland.’ Let me be clear: The United States will not get it. We do not belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,” Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a Facebook post.

JD Vance on Greenland visit

Nielsen’s post comes at a time when the US Vice President JD Vance is on a visit to the US military base at Pituffik in the north of the Arctic island. During this visit, Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not doing a good job keeping Greenland safe and suggested the United States would better protect the semi-autonomous Danish territory that President Trump has pressed to take over.

Vance said the US has no immediate plans to expand its military presence on the ground but will invest in resources including additional naval ships. He pledged respect for Greenland’s sovereignty but also suggested the territory would come to see the benefit of partnering with the US, in remarks the Danish prime minister called unfair.

As Greenlanders expressed deep unease about the visit, Vance vowed the people of Greenland would have “self-determination” and the US would respect its sovereignty.

“I think that they ultimately will partner with the United States,” Vance said. “We can make them much more secure. We could do a lot more protection. And I think they’d fare a lot better economically as well.”

The US today has a base with 200 soldiers, while during the Cold War the Americans had 17 military installations in Greenland with 10,000 soldiers.

Nothing is off the table for Trump

Nielsen’s Facebook post comes a day after the US president told NBC News that military force wasn’t off the table with regard to acquiring Greenland.

In Saturday’s interview, Trump said that “I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force.”

“This is world peace, this is international security,” he said, but added: “I don’t take anything off the table.”

Greenland’s residents and politicians have reacted with anger to Trump’s repeated suggestions, with Danish leaders also pushing back.

Trump also said “I don’t care,” when asked what message this would send to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has invaded Ukraine and annexed several of its provinces in defiance of international law.

As Vance’s visit was underway, Trump told reporters at the White House the US needs Greenland to ensure the “peace of the entire world.”

“We need Greenland, very importantly, for international security. We have to have Greenland. It’s not a question of, ‘Do you think we can do without it?’ We can’t,” Trump said.

Trump said Greenland’s waterways have “Chinese and Russian ships all over the place” and the United States will not rely on Denmark or anybody else to handle the situation.

Trump has frequently said that the United States has a security imperative to acquire the island, which has been controlled by Denmark since 1721.

(With inputs from agencies)