Vice President JD Vance and other top U.S. officials arrived at a military base in Greenland on Friday, as President Trump declared in Washington that the United States had an urgent need to acquire the island.
“We have to have Greenland,” Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office, reiterating his desire to get a territory that has been controlled by Denmark since 1721. “It’s not a question of, ‘Do you think we can do without it?’ We can’t.”
Mr. Vance is being joined on the one-day trip by Usha Vance, the second lady; Chris Wright, the energy secretary; Michael Waltz, the embattled national security adviser; and Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, according to the White House.
The Vances were having lunch with members of the military stationed at the base before receiving briefings. The temperature when they landed was minus 3 degrees Fahrenheit, prompting Mr. Vance to joke that he didn’t realize it would be so cold. “Nobody told me,” he said to laughs, according to a pool report.
Mr. Trump has said the United States has a security imperative to acquire the world’s largest island. A landmass larger than Mexico, Greenland is home to glaciers, icy mountains, prized earth minerals and some 56,000 people, roughly enough to fill Dodger Stadium.
The president has vowed to acquire the island “one way or the other,” declining to rule out using military force. He said Friday that global security relied on American ownership of the island, expressing concern about Chinese and Russian warships.
“You have warships going through right along Greenland,” he said, adding, “We cannot let that happen. Or if it’s going to happen, we have to be protective of our country.”
The U.S. delegation’s trip changed after an earlier announcement was met with backlash in Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Initially, Ms. Vance was expected to visit with Mr. Waltz but without the vice president. Ms. Vance had planned to attend a dogsled race in southern Greenland.
One travel agency in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, said it would deny a U.S. request for Ms. Vance to visit its office. The organizers of the dogsled race made clear they had not invited her. And the prime minister of Greenland, Mute B. Egede, said in an indignant statement that there would be no meetings between U.S. officials and Greenland’s government.
In a video posted on social media Tuesday after that backlash, Mr. Vance said he had decided to accompany his wife. “I didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself,” Mr. Vance said, grinning.
The larger delegation now plans to only visit the Pituffik Space Base, once called Thule Air Base, a seven-decade-old installation operated by U.S. forces in the remote northwestern reaches of Greenland, well within the Arctic Circle. They are not expected to stop in the capital or other parts of the island.
During the visit, Mr. Vance planned to stress the importance of security infrastructure in Greenland, according to his office.
“U.S. leaders have neglected Arctic security, while Greenland’s Danish rulers have neglected their security obligations to the island,” Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said in a statement on Thursday.
The American delegation plans to visit U.S. troops and members of the U.S. Space Force, called guardians, who are stationed at the base. The military site, one of the world’s most isolated and strategically valuable, is operated by the United States under an agreement with Denmark. About 150 members of the U.S. Air and Space Forces are stationed there.
Since World War II, the United States has kept troops in Greenland. Still, a visit by the delegation is highly unusual, said Troy Bouffard, an Arctic defense expert in Alaska.
“This is a very unconventional approach,” Mr. Bouffard said, adding, “This is possibly one of the highest-level delegations ever to go to Greenland.”
He said the American officials were dispensing with typical customs for a visiting delegation: Going to Nuuk and greeting residents.
“They’re just going straight to U.S. territory and ignoring the rules,” he said of Trump administration officials. “These are indications of the seriousness of the U.S. and the conditions in which they want to pursue this.”
The presence of Mr. Waltz, the national security adviser, has been a particular point of contention.
Mr. Waltz has been under intense scrutiny after The Atlantic reported that he had added its editor to a Signal group chat where high-ranking U.S. officials discussed sensitive military plans.
The leader of Greenland suggested that he viewed Mr. Waltz’s presence as a show of aggression.
“What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland?” Mr. Egede, the prime minister, told the local newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”
Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
