President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration had reached a deal with Denmark and Greenland to expand the US security presence in Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, raising the possibility of a diplomatic solution to a US-made threat that nearly upended the Western alliance.
The full contours of the deal Mr Trump was describing were not immediately clear, but shortly after his announcement, leaders of Greenland and Denmark issued statements indicating they expected an agreement to be signed next week during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The two sides described the agreement in very different terms. Mr Trump claimed the United States had secured “permanent control over security, and all other needs” in Greenland, while the Danish prime minister said the deal “recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Denmark.
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That description would mean the agreement fell well short of Mr Trump’s long-standing demand of total control over Greenland.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump said that “anything less” than US ownership of Greenland would be “unacceptable.” He said possession of the territory was “psychologically important” to him.
Instead, what Mr Trump described Friday was a deal that would prevent US adversaries from having a base on Greenland and expand the US military presence in the territory. In his social media post, Mr Trump said that under the deal, “no U.S. adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval.”
Officials from Denmark and Greenland did not immediately confirm that the United States had received such veto power — a US demand that they had strongly opposed in closed-door negotiations in recent months. And two people close to the negotiations said Mr Trump’s declaration of permanent control over Greenland’s security exaggerated the degree of new powers the United States would get over the territory. The US military will be working with its counterparts in Denmark and Greenland under the agreement rather than asserting control over them, a US military official said.
Still, the apparent deal, reached after months of high-stakes confidential talks with officials from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, could mark an off-ramp to an issue that caused widespread concern among NATO allies this year.
Mr Trump said in his post that the United States “will immediately begin the process of developing a large Military presence in the appropriate part of Greenland, of which there are many.”
He also said the United States would “FOREVER have the complete ability to do what is necessary in Greenland in order to secure and defend the security of Greenland,” even though the existing US agreement with Denmark to host American military bases on Greenland does not have a time limit.
The United States first established a military presence in Greenland during World War II, and in 1951 reached an agreement with Denmark granting it broad freedom to operate military installations on the island.
The 1951 pact allowed for access by the forces of NATO nations. But it did not explicitly restrict the presence of “adversary” nations, as Mr Trump claimed on Friday the new agreement would do. Under the new deal, countries that are not part of NATO would not be permitted to build a base or maintain a military presence in Greenland, according to a State Department official detailing the deal under the condition of anonymity.
Given that Greenland is alliance territory, the prospect of a non-NATO nation building bases there was already highly unlikely.
The agreement would also remain in effect even if Greenland were to become an independent nation, the official said.
“This deal permanently and completely addresses our national security concerns in Greenland,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
Denmark still manages defence issues for Greenland, and one of the Trump administration’s goals has been to ensure that even if Greenland achieves independence, which many Greenlanders support, that would not change the access the US military has today.
Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, said in a statement Friday night that the agreement would strengthen “our common security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic area and is therefore also good for NATO and Europe.”
Frederiksen also said the deal “recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom and the right of the Greenlandic people to self-determination.”
Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s Prime Minister, said in a statement that the agreement “recognizes Greenland’s interests and our place in international cooperation. It is to the benefit of us all.”
Mr Trump has been pushing to acquire Greenland since his first term, but leaders in both Denmark and Greenland have rejected the idea. As tensions with Mr Trump peaked in January, the Danish military developed detailed plans to blow up airfields in Greenland in the event of a US invasion. Danish soldiers were even sent to Greenland equipped with explosives and blood supplies, though the worst-case scenarios never materialized.
The action then turned to confidential talks between the United States, Greenland and Denmark. Negotiators met in Washington about once a month. In those talks, the United States discussed cooperation with Greenland on natural resources and expanding the US military presence on the territory. According to officials close to the talks, American negotiators had been insisting on veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China.
During the Cold War, the US military maintained more than a dozen installations on the island but all were eventually shut down except one, the Pituffik Space Base, on the north-west coast. In recent weeks, US military officers have been visiting the island with plans to reopen several old bases. Just this week, Denmark’s public broadcaster reported that a group of American soldiers were surveying the runway in Narsarsuaq, in southern Greenland.
Imran Bayoumi, a deputy director for the GeoStrategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said the agreement announced Friday offered “little in the way of new content.”
“It’s likely that Washington could have achieved many of these outcomes through negotiations with Denmark and Greenland directly, without worsening the relationship,” Mr Bayoumi said. “Nonetheless, it gives the US a critical footprint in the Arctic at a time when the region is becoming more important.”
