With the conflict in Iran still smoldering, President Trump’s obsession with Greenland seems like a forgotten sideshow.
But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.
The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.
Some Greenlandic politicians say they have even circled a date on their calendars to be wary: June 14, Mr. Trump’s birthday.
An investigation by The New York Times, based on interviews with officials in Washington, Copenhagen and Greenland, has discovered:
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The United States is trying to modify a longstanding military arrangement to ensure American troops can stay in Greenland indefinitely, even if Greenland becomes independent. The notion is basically a forever clause, and Greenlanders do not like it.
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The United States has pushed the talks beyond military matters and wants effective veto power over any major investment deals in Greenland to box out competitors like Russia and China. Greenlanders and Danes strongly object to this.
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The United States is discussing cooperation with Greenland on natural resources. The island is loaded with oil, uranium, rare earths and other critical minerals, though much of it is buried deep beneath Greenland’s ice.
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The Pentagon is rapidly moving ahead on plans for a military expansion and recently sent a Marine Corps officer to Narsarsuaq, a town in southern Greenland, to inspect the World War II-era airport, the harbor and places where American troops could be housed.
The American demands are so steep, Greenlandic officials fear, that they amount to a major imposition on their sovereignty. Despite all of the talk from Danish and American officials that Greenland’s future is up to the island’s 57,000 people, Greenlandic officials said the American demands would tie their hands for generations.
If the Americans get everything they want, said Justus Hansen, a member of Greenland’s Parliament, there will never be any “real independence.”
“We might as well raise our own flag halfway,” he said.
State Department and Danish officials have said little about the negotiations, which are being spearheaded by one of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s top advisers, Michael Needham.
Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, the head of the Pentagon’s Northern Command, described in a recent interview with The Times the broader American vision to defend the Arctic, an arena of increased geopolitical competition as climate change melts polar ice and opens up what had been one of world’s most inaccessible regions.
General Guillot said Greenland would be part of a chain of interlinking radar stations and military bases, which also includes sites in Alaska and Canada. He said the American military needs a deepwater port and a base for Special Operations soldiers who would rotate through Greenland for training and exercises.
General Guillot said this could be done through the defense pact that the United States signed with Denmark in 1951, when Greenland was still a Danish colony. That pact has been the jumping off point for the current negotiations, and Greenlandic and Danish officials originally tried to argue that the agreement gave the United States such a free hand for forces on Greenland that there was no need to take over the island.
Negotiators have met about five times in Washington since January, when Mr. Trump threatened to seize Greenland, saying it was essential to American national security. Though he eventually backed down and has since been absorbed by the conflict in Iran, the White House has indicated he is still deeply interested in Greenland.
So the Greenlandic, Danish and American negotiators involved in the talks hope they can reach a deal that the mercurial president will accept, officials familiar with the discussions say. The accounts made clear that there was still some distance to go. The officials who spoke to The Times asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the continuing negotiations.
Dylan Johnson, the assistant secretary of state for global public affairs, said in a statement that the national security and economic concerns laid out by the president “are undisputed by all parties and we continue to negotiate to address those concerns on a permanent basis.”
“This is not a president who allows problems to go unsolved for future presidents to deal with,” Mr. Johnson said.
Greenlanders have been emphatic they do not want to be part of the United States, but Greenlandic politicians say they are OK with having more American soldiers on their soil. Thousands of American troops were stationed there during World War II and the Cold War, though the United States eventually shut down every base save one.
Still, Greenland’s leaders feel they are being pressured to make other concessions and that they have little leverage in these talks.
“None of this is fair,” said Pipaluk Lynge, the chairwoman of the Greenlandic Parliament’s foreign affairs committee. “It feels very all or nothing. The best outcome is simply not to be invaded or controlled.”
Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenland’s former foreign minister and another member of Parliament, said that if the wars in Iran and in Ukraine end, it could spell trouble for Greenland. She fears Mr. Trump would return to his obsession and Russia would also shift to the Arctic, long a strategic priority for Moscow.
“They are coming from both sides,” she said.
She and other Greenlandic politicians were bracing for June 14, the president’s birthday, and the Fourth of July.
“If he’s going to realize his policy of making the U.S. greater again,” she said, “he could use days like those.”
Some Greenlanders fear that the U.S. interest in exploring their natural resources might mean pressure to loosen their mining rules.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Greenland’s prime minister, said during a recent interview in his office in Nuuk, the island’s capital, “We can absolutely do business.”
But, he added, “we have very strict environmental regulations and that is how it will remain.”
Mr. Nielsen cuts an unusual figure in the middle of a geopolitical maelstrom. Before becoming prime minister last year at age 33, he was best known as one of Greenland’s top badminton players. Since taking office, he has lined up behind Denmark, seeing Greenland’s former colonizer as the best protection against the United States.
“I’m almost tired of saying it,” Mr. Nielsen said. “But the question of Greenlandic independence and the relationship between Greenland and Denmark is something we must decide internally. It’s not something the Americans or anyone else should interfere in. ”
Officials with knowledge of the talks said the Americans are pushing to establish a strict screening mechanism and veto power to make sure Russia or China do not land any major infrastructure or resource deals.
Even though China lies hundreds of miles from the Arctic Circle, it has been increasingly active in the region and tried to come into Greenland before.
In 2018, a Chinese state company was a leading contender to build several new airports on the island, including one in Ilulissat, where thousands of visitors come each year to gaze at the icebergs. After American officials pressured Denmark to step in, Greenland opted for a Danish company.
Officials with knowledge of the current talks said Denmark and Greenland did not want the United States making decisions on investment deals, arguing it would violate Greenland’s sovereignty.
Over recent decades, Greenland has steadily gained more autonomy from Denmark, and most people on the island want to be independent some day. But Greenland lacks the intelligence capability to screen potential investors for links to Moscow and Beijing. So negotiators are discussing a process by which Copenhagen would do the screening, with American input.
The result could be that the negotiations, far from increasing Greenland’s sovereignty, end up giving Denmark more sway over the gigantic island.
Mr. Nielsen said he couldn’t “get into the specifics” of the talks but that Greenland should have the last word when it comes to who it does business with.
As he sat in his office, dressed in a black suit, black turtleneck and spotless black sneakers, he looked frustrated.
“We would like to see an end to this,” he said. “Because it’s a very strange situation.”
Jeffrey Gettleman is an international correspondent based in London covering global events. He has worked for The Times for more than 20 years.
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