The United States, Denmark and Greenland have struck a security deal that expands Washington’s security role on the Arctic island without ceding land to the U.S., ending for now a long-running diplomatic feud marked by President Trump’s repeated demands to acquire the territory and military threats against a NATO ally.
Trump said Friday that his administration had reached an agreement handing the U.S. “permanent control over security” in Greenland. Leaders of Denmark and Greenland confirmed that an accord is expected to be signed next week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Full details have yet to be released, but Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the pact “recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the Danish kingdom and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination, indicating that the U.S. gains no ownership or sovereignty over the island.
That marks a significant pullback from Trump’s earlier push to control Greenland or make it part of the U.S. — even threatening military force. His repeated threats and demands to acquire the territory had fueled distrust between Washington and its European allies, presenting one of the most serious strains on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in decades.
For Denmark and Greenland, the agreement is significant because it appears to bring an end to a nearly two-year standoff without ceding land to the U.S., said Marc Jacobsen, associate professor at the Institute for Strategy and War Studies at the Royal Danish Defense College.
“Donald Trump needs to be seen as a winner,” he said in an interview. “So a new agreement was necessary, allowing him to say: ‘Look, my pressure worked.’ ” But when it comes to Trump’s ambition to acquire or politically control Greenland, “he did not get his way on this,” Jacobsen said.
Trump announced the arrangement on social media on Friday, saying it would give Washington the power to block U.S. adversaries from establishing bases or a military presence in Greenland, as well as from making sensitive investments there.
Trump also said the U.S. would immediately begin expanding its military footprint on the island and work with Greenlanders on developing and building the facilities, alleging it would come at “NO COST to the United States.”
The agreement comes after a plethora of setbacks for Trump, including no signs of resolution to either the U.S. war on Iran or Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the rising cost of living for American voters ahead of the midterms.
Based on what Trump has disclosed so far, the new pact appears to grant Washington many of the same rights over security it already enjoys under the existing arrangement, Jacobsen said. A 1951 agreement with Denmark, updated in 2004 and still in force, gives the U.S. broad latitude to station forces in Greenland. Washington is obliged to consult and inform Copenhagen about its plans, but that was seen as a largely pro forma condition that required little more than notification.
The U.S. had more than a dozen military bases in Greenland during the Cold War, later closing all of them except the Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base, in the far north.
Some elements of the deal appear to be new, said Jacobsen. One is a U.S. veto over whether other countries can establish a military presence in Greenland — though that would seem an unlikely prospect in a NATO territory. Another is that the arrangement would be permanent. The 1951 agreement is explicitly tied to a key NATO accord and therefore the alliance’s existence. “This one is about the U.S. and is not linked to NATO’s lifespan,” he said.
The deal, based on the U.S. account, also appears to break new ground on investment. Giving the U.S. the power to bar sensitive investments into Greenlandic mining, ports and infrastructure would amount to the “most far-reaching transfer of decision-making authority among the measures announced,” said Soren Lippert, who runs the consultancy GeoPolitik.
“That concerns economic sovereignty, not land used for military bases, and it does not feature at all in the Danish account” of the agreement, Lippert said in a note.
Several important questions remain unanswered, said Jacobsen, including where any new bases would be located, what capabilities and personnel they would host, and who would pay for them. Another question is what Greenland receives in return, beyond the evident removal of the threat of U.S. annexation, he said.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, who has previously ruled out ceding sovereignty, said he was encouraged by the accord, which “recognizes Greenland’s interests and our place in the international cooperation.”
“It is to the benefit of us all,” said the prime minister of the semiautonomous territory, which is part of the kingdom of Denmark.
Denmark’s parliament, which must still approve the agreement, is unlikely to oppose the deal, said Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher specialized in Greenland at the Danish Institute for International Studies.
There’s a broad wish among Danish politicians to settle the issue “and get back to solving real problems” and also “to have the U.S. back as an ally you can trust, in some form,” Gad told reporters Saturday. A caveat is whether “a deal with Donald Trump is a deal at all,” he said.
Since returning to office last year, Trump had repeatedly pressured Denmark to give up Greenland. Tensions escalated in January after he refused to rule out military action, prompting Denmark and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to send troops to the island.
While the deployment was publicly presented as an exercise, Copenhagen sent forces with live ammunition who were prepared to blow up airport runways to prevent U.S. troops from landing if Trump attempted to seize Greenland by force, according to a report by DR.
The confrontation began to ease after Trump held talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at January’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. There, the two agreed on the contours of a framework agreement regarding Greenland. Senior officials from Denmark, Greenland and the U.S. have since been holding talks in a working group set up to manage the dispute.
Speaking to reporters in Copenhagen on Saturday following a meeting of NATO countries’ chiefs of defense, Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone welcomed news of Friday’s deal, saying that from a military perspective the alliance is “taking great care” of the area, including with the Arctic Sentry exercise. It’s one of NATO’s top priorities, he said, “because we want to keep that area under control.”
Trump’s interest in taking over Greenland dates back to his first term in the White House. He has warned that Russia and China desired a foothold there and claimed that only the U.S. could keep them out. But Danish and Greenlandic leaders have long ruled out the idea of giving up control of the island.
“Next week could be a good week. For Greenland, Denmark and the United States alike,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said in a post on Instagram after the deal was struck. “Hopefully, a long period of uncertainty will be replaced by a binding agreement that strengthens security in the Arctic and North Atlantic, and thereby our shared security in NATO and Europe — while respecting the Kingdom’s red lines.”
Wass writes for Bloomberg. Bloomberg writers Chris Miller, Sara Sjolin, Christian Wienberg, Valentine Baldassari and Rebecca Smith contributed to this report.
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