Vance to meet Danish and Greenlandic officials in Washington : NPR
People walk on a street in downtown Nuuk, Greenland, Tuesday, January 13, 2026.
Evgueni Maloletka/AP
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Evgueni Maloletka/AP
NUUK, Greenland — Along the narrow, snowy main street of Greenland’s capital, international journalists and film crews stop passersby every few meters (feet) to ask their opinions on a crisis that Denmark’s prime minister says could potentially trigger the end of NATO.
Greenland is at the center of a geopolitical storm as US President Donald Trump insists he wants ownership of the island – and residents of its capital Nuuk say it is not for sale. Trump has said he wants to control Greenland at all costs and the White House has not ruled out taking the island by force.
US Vice President JD Vance will meet with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the Arctic island, which is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally of the United States.
Tuuta Mikaelsen, a 22-year-old student, told The Associated Press in Nuuk that she hoped U.S. officials would get the message to “step back.”
Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told a news conference in the Danish capital Copenhagen on Tuesday that “if we have to choose here and now between the United States and Denmark, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU.”
Greenland is strategically important because as climate change causes ice to melt, it opens up the possibility of shorter trade routes to Asia. It could also make it easier to extract and transport untapped deposits of essential minerals needed for computers and phones.
Trump also said he wants the island to increase U.S. security and cited what he sees as the threat from Russian and Chinese ships as a reason for controlling it.
But experts and Greenlanders question this claim.
“The only Chinese people I see are when I go to the fast food market,” Lars Vintner, a heating engineer, told AP. He stated that he frequently went sailing and hunting and had never seen Russian or Chinese ships.
His friend Hans Nørgaard agrees, adding that “what came out of Donald Trump’s mouth about all these ships is just a fantasy.”
Denmark said the United States – which already has a military presence – could strengthen its bases in Greenland. For this reason, “security is just a cover,” Vintner said, suggesting that Trump actually wants to own the island to make money from its untapped natural resources.
Nørgaard told AP that he filed a police complaint in Nuuk against Trump’s “aggressive” behavior because, he said, US officials are threatening the people of Greenland and NATO. He suggested that Trump was using the ships as a pretext to continue American expansion.
“Donald Trump would like to have Greenland, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would like Ukraine and (Chinese President) Xi Jinping would like to have Taiwan,” Nørgaard said.
Mikaelsen, the student, said Greenlanders benefit from being part of Denmark, which offers free health care, education and payments while studying.
“I don’t want the United States to take that away from us,” she said.
Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s Minister of Business and Mineral Resources, said it was “inconceivable” that the United States would discuss taking over a NATO ally and urged the Trump administration to listen to the voices of the Arctic island’s residents.
