COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) — United States (US) Vice President JD Vance is on Friday due to tour a US military base in Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation amid President Donald Trump’s bid to annex the strategically-placed, resource-rich Danish territory.
Trump insisted on Wednesday that the US needed the vast Arctic island for national and international security, and has previously refused to rule out the use of force to get it.
“We have to have it,” he said.
Danish and Greenlandic officials, backed by the European Union, have insisted that the US will not get Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen denounced plans by a US delegation to visit the Arctic island uninvited — for what was initially a much broader visit to Greenlandic society — as “unacceptable pressure” on Greenland and Denmark.
Greenlanders — a majority of whom oppose US annexation, according to a January poll — had also said they would give the delegation a frosty reception, with several protests planned.
In the end, Vance and his wife Usha will only visit the US-run Pituffik Space Base in the northwest of the island, accompanied by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The delegation is to meet with US Space Force members and “check out what’s going on with the security” of Greenland, Vance said in a video message.
The vice president angered Danes in early February when he said Denmark was “not doing its job (protecting Greenland), and it’s not being a good ally.”
A fuming Frederiksen quickly retorted that Denmark had long been a loyal US ally, fighting alongside the Americans “for many, many decades,” including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Key missile defense cog
The Pituffik base is an essential part of Washington’s missile defense infrastructure, its location in the Arctic putting it on the shortest route for missiles fired from Russia at the US.
Known as Thule Air Base until 2023, the base served as a warning post for possible attacks from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
It is also a strategic location for air and submarine surveillance in the northern hemisphere, which Washington claims Denmark has neglected.
Vance is “right in that we didn’t meet the American wishes for an increased presence, but we have taken steps towards meeting that wish,” Marc Jacobsen, a senior lecturer at the Royal Danish Defense College, told Agence France-Presse.