Even some Trump advisers are wary of a military pursuit of Greenland. Is an off-ramp possible?

Flying home this month from an extended Christmas vacation in Palm Beach, President Donald Trump was momentarily taken aback when a reporter asked him about the ice-covered island he’s openly trying to annex.

“How did we come up to Greenland?” he asked, incredulously, on January 4. “We’ll worry about Greenland in about two months. Let’s talk about Greenland in 20 days.”

As it turns out, it took far less than two months for everyone to be talking about Greenland. And the president himself is driving the conversation.

What began during his first term as a novel — if, at least in the minds of some advisers, not entirely serious — bid to control the massive Arctic landmass has turned into a fixation that is causing the worst crisis between the United States and Europe in generations.

The sudden escalation in the early weeks of this year of Trump’s efforts to seize control of Greenland has left European allies badly shaken and sent his own aides rushing to develop policies that would fulfill his widening threats, even as some are worried the president might be taking things too far in asserting the US will settle for nothing less than total control of the country.

While Trump’s team is largely aligned with him on the importance of having US control of Greenland for national security reasons, many of his top advisers are not on the same page about the best way to achieve it.

“We don’t want to make it a state,” one Trump adviser said. “But do we want an alliance with them? No question about it.”

Even as Trump ratchets up his aggressive rhetoric about wanting to annex the country, and refuses to rule out military means to do so, several officials are wary of such a drastic step. Instead, the preference among many of Trump’s allies going forward is that the president uses the tariff threat as a negotiating tool, creating an opening for more concessions from the Europeans and resolving it all in an “Art of the Deal”-style negotiation.

“They believe they can try to pressure Denmark into a deal, even if it doesn’t lead to ceding the entire territory,” another source familiar with the discussions said. “Having some sort of cooperative control of Greenland would accomplish the same goal.”

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement for this story that “The entire administration is prepared to execute any plan to acquire Greenland that the President chooses.”

“President Trump leads on all foreign policy, and he was not elected to preserve the status quo,” she said. “Many of this President’s predecessors recognized the strategic logic of acquiring Greenland, but only President Trump has had the courage to pursue this seriously.”

At least some European leaders still hold out hope such a deal is possible. After conversations with Trump this weekend, some officials said the president appeared receptive to their clarifications on why some European nations were sending troops to Greenland. According to a senior British official, Trump conceded in a phone call with Prime Minister Keir Starmer that he may have been given “bad information” on the European deployment of troops to Greenland.

One European official said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, a Trump confidant, seems convinced a deal is possible to give the president an off-ramp, and has been raising the possibility privately of a renegotiation of the 1951 agreement between the US, Denmark and Greenland, potentially with some strong guarantees that Chinese investments in Greenland would be prohibited.

Officials say Trump’s most recent, aggressive pursuit of Greenland began after the successful US military mission at the start of this month to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which cemented in the US president’s mind a vision of American hegemony over the entire Western Hemisphere. Some European officials said they are fearful, too, that their decision to dispatch troops from Denmark and other NATO nations for joint military exercises over the weekend might have backfired, irking Trump and convincing him to move more quickly than he otherwise would have.

“Right now, we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” Trump said on January 9, five days after appearing surprised to hear the island was on anyone’s mind. “Because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland.”

A long-standing obsession

Around the midway point of his first term in office, Trump began asking an usual question of his myriad acquaintances and advisers: Did they think the United States should purchase Greenland?

There are various accounts of how the idea first came to the president, who was at that point still relatively inexperienced in the world of diplomacy. Ronald Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics heir who has known Trump for decades, is among those who first raised the idea with him, former officials said. It was also discussed during some of the president’s intelligence briefings.

From the start, the officials said, Trump appeared fixated on Greenland’s size — or at least how large in appears on maps using the Mercator projection, which makes the island’s 836,000 square miles appear roughly the same size as Africa. Even if the island is smaller than it appears, acquiring it would amount to the largest territorial acquisition by any American president — and would make the US the largest country in area on Earth.

Trump’s aides at the time did not dismiss the idea outright. Greenland’s strategic importance in the Arctic was clear to many, and concerns about Russian or Chinese influence had been growing. A small group at the National Security Council was tasked with providing options for Trump — most of which involved scaling up the US military presence, and none of which involved a military takeover.

Once the idea became public, however, its feasibility appeared to wane. The Danish government declared Greenland was not for sale. Offended, Trump abruptly canceled a planned visit to Copenhagen and called the prime minister “nasty.” The idea was rarely mentioned in public again.

Until early last year. After winning the presidency again — without mentioning Greenland once during his campaign — Trump renewed his pledge to take control of the territory, and refused to rule out military action to do it.

One year later, Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, was hours away from boarding a flight for Washington when word came of a notable addition to his planned meetings with Trump administration officials to discuss the fate of Greenland.

The talks, arranged hastily amid Trump’s renewed push to acquire the island, were originally just with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Now, Vice President JD Vance wanted to join.

The addition of Trump’s No. 2 — who traveled to Greenland last year to accuse Denmark of failing to invest in its Arctic territory — immediately upped the stakes of the meeting. Vance has been harshly critical of Europe over the past year, and shown a willingness to forcefully advance Trump’s demands.

But during the meeting, it was Vance who proposed that there could potentially be a “middle ground” that further discussions could work toward, but there was no detailed discussion of what that potential idea might look like, a Danish official said.

The demands on Greenland had been intensifying following the daring mission to capture Maduro on January 3. Trump had come to view the capture of the Venezuelan leader as a major achievement for the US, and many of the conversations leading up to and following the operation centered on America’s global influence, people familiar with the conversations said.

The White House declared in a statement that using the military to annex Greenland “is always an option.” Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s most powerful advisers, argued on CNN that the US had a right to take Greenland, citing a world “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” Miller’s wife, Katie Miller, posted a social media picture of the island covered in the red, white and blue.

In internal conversations, Trump and Rubio framed the Venezuela operation as crucial to the US expanding its dominance over the Western Hemisphere — the central tenet of Trump’s so-called Donroe Doctrine. As part of those discussions, Trump’s long-held desire to expand that reach to the Arctic has taken on a more fervent urgency, sources said.

“Trump believes the US is the only country that can properly ensure the Arctic region is secure and to properly fend off Russian and Chinese aggression,” a White House official told CNN.

It was against that backdrop that Rasmussen, a seasoned diplomat who once served as Denmark’s prime minister, entered his meeting with Vance and Rubio. He emerged less than 90 minutes later to describe the talks as “frank and constructive,” without resolving the “fundamental disagreement” over the US taking Greenland.

The words could barely paper over the tension. As he departed the White House with his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, the pair were spotted smoking cigarettes in a nearby parking lot.

As it turns out, the uncomfortable meetings paled in comparison to how much worse the situation was about to get.

A new threat, and new fears

It was almost in passing that Trump mused Friday about applying new tariffs on nations who oppose his Arctic ambitions.

“I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security,” Trump said in an aside during an event focused on health care.

At the time, there was little planning underway by his team to draw up such tariffs, a source familiar with the matter said. In fact, the very authority Trump would use to apply them is still being decided by the Supreme Court.

Twenty-four hours later, however, the idea had become a full-blown threat — with specific deadlines for action. Starting February 1, Trump wrote, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland would face a 10% tariff, which would increase to 25% on June 1, “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”

The decision to dispatch troops from Denmark and other NATO nations for joint military exercises over the weekend were viewed by many NATO diplomats as having backfired and triggered Trump’s tariff threat, four European diplomats told CNN. Rather than boosting NATO’s presence in Greenland, it served to show Trump that Danish-led activities were capable of improving Arctic security.

A scramble ensued to clarify for Trump was the military moves meant. Three European leaders who maintain the closest ties to him — Starmer, Rutte and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — all tried explaining on the phone Sunday. Rutte even told Denmark on Monday to refrain from sending any more troops, a European official said.

Despite those calls, it was clear Trump’s advisers wanted to ensure his feelings were known widely. A text message he sent to Norway’s prime minister over the weekend — saying he no longer feels bound “to think purely of Peace” because the Norwegian Nobel Committee did not award him the Nobel Peace Prize — was also set by US officials to multiple European ambassadors in Washington on Sunday, two sources familiar with the messages said.

The message was unmistakable: Even though last week ended with some glimmers of hope for how to reconcile the Greenland matter, Trump was hardening in his intention.

Behind the scenes, European diplomats are angry and aghast. Some have even privately compared Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin because it is seen as a “fool’s game” to try to appease Trump, one US diplomat who had discussed the matter with Europeans said.

Trump has continued to insist the US needs to own Greenland because of its strategic importance, its potential attractiveness to Beijing and Moscow and because, he says, it is vital for developing his space-based missile defense system, known as the “Golden Dome.”

But US officials and experts overwhelmingly agree that the Trump administration does not need to own Greenland to facilitate the project, despite the territory’s value when it comes to missile defense — as reflected by the assets already positioned there.

An early warning radar at the Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base, on Greenland is already in place. Other US resources in the United Kingdom also provide coverage for the region, one US official noted.

“The question is, ‘What is it that the Trump administration believes they will get from owning Greenland in terms of ballistic missile defense and air defense in space’ versus Greenland’s current rhetoric, which is, ‘You can send in however many troops you want. You can have as many bases as you want. We will cooperate with you guys,’” said a source familiar with discussions between bipartisan lawmakers and Danish officials about the Golden Dome during a recent congressional visit to the country focused on Greenland.

For Trump, the answer is obvious. He has never viewed merely placing more US bases, radars or missiles in Greenland — which the Danes have said they are ready and willing to accommodate, as they did during the Cold War — as an alternative to controlling the island entirely. Kelly, the White House spokesperson, said in her statement “As the President said, NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the United States, and Greenlanders would be better served if protected by the United States from modern threats in the Arctic region.”

Indeed, Trump has been consistent that the only way to truly reap Greenland’s benefits is to own it outright.

“We could put a lot of soldiers there right now if I want, but you need more than that,” he said last week. “You need ownership. You really need title.”