Trump says his Greenland fixation is about national security. Europeans are skeptical.

President Donald Trump says the U.S. needs Greenland for national security, ostensibly to counter Russia and China. But Trump’s interest in the sparsely populated island appears to be as much about hemispheric dominance as homeland defense.

According to two people familiar with private high-level discussions and granted anonymity to share their details, the White House has shown little interest in an overture last year from Denmark’s prime minister offering the U.S. the option to increase its military presence in Greenland, where it already operates a base and has long deployed troops at liberty.

“The option of more U.S. military presence has been on the table,” said one of the people, a European defense official. “The White House is not interested.”

The second person, an American in frequent contact with the administration and European officials, said that most of what Trump says he wants out of Greenland — access to investment resources like critical minerals, more troops and military bases, better intelligence sharing — could be easily accomplished by negotiating directly with Denmark, a steadfast ally.

“The problem is that Trump has gotten into his head that the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ is his thing,” the second person said. “He’s now very focused on this. And it’s hard to come to an agreement with the Danes when Trump thinks he can just take it.”

A senior administration official, also granted anonymity to respond, disputed that the president has written off any negotiations.

“We are working closely with the government of Denmark and the government of Greenland on closer security and economic cooperation,” the official said, pointing to a meeting in Nuuk last month of the U.S.-Greenland Joint Committee as evidence that the “framework is working perfectly. We had an extremely productive meeting in December and we’ll continue to build even closer ties.”

Few Danes would describe the current situation as perfect and the nation’s prime minister on Sunday, after months of quiet diplomatic efforts, publicly urged the Trump administration to stop its quest for Greenland, a potential strategic foothold in the Arctic-North Atlantic gateway region.

Trump, over the last few weeks, has ratcheted up his rhetoric around Greenland, and the U.S. action in Venezuela has caused increasing concern among Danish and European leaders that the president may move to strongarm them.

“We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday night. “Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.”

After the Venezuela operation over the weekend, Trump and top aides made a point of emphasizing a lesson for other countries: that the president’s threats aren’t rhetorical and that he’s willing to follow through with action.

“The president has been clear for months now that the United States should be the nation that has Greenland as part of our overall security apparatus,” deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Monday on CNN. “The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?”

Denmark has controlled Greenland for roughly 300 years and in 1916 the United States formally recognized Denmark’s interests in Greenland in exchange for the Danish West Indies, which became the U.S. Virgin Islands.

As Trump muses about taking over Greenland for national security reasons, European leaders — already stretched thin over Trump’s pressure on trade, defense and his unpredictable diplomacy regarding the Russia-Ukraine war — have grown ever more alarmed.

A number of European leaders close to Trump, including Finnish President Alex Stubb and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have spoken in support of Denmark and Greenland and against any American effort to seize control of the territory.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen made it clear she’s taking Trump’s threats seriously with a statement over the weekend and again in an interview Monday, laying out the deep and lasting consequences for the transatlantic alliance should one NATO member attempt to conquer the territory of another.

“If the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War,” Frederiksen said.

Tensions were already high after Trump last month appointed Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as a special envoy to Greenland. Landry, a Republican who has been in office since early 2024, called the “volunteer position” an “honor” in a post on social media and said he would work to “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”

Trump has never explained exactly why it is imperative for the U.S. to control Greenland seeing as how Denmark is a NATO ally willing to let America expand its military presence. The island, however, has vast caches of metals and minerals that are critical to U.S. security, including uranium and graphite – though Greenland’s stores are largely unexplored and untapped. And according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey, Greenland “contains approximately 31,400 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMBOE) of oil” and other fuel products, including around 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Inside the White House those working on the Greenland portfolio aren’t focused on a military operation like Trump authorized to oust former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, according to three people familiar with the discussions and granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Another kind of pressure campaign challenging Denmark’s control of Greenland or its people’s right to choose its own future, some combination of carrots and sticks, could be murkier for NATO members in terms of the application of Article 5 of the organization’s founding charter, which deems an attack on one member country an attack on the entire alliance.

Trump first signaled an interest in acquiring Greenland during his first term. As he campaigned in 2024, he refused to rule out the use of military force to seize the territory from Denmark. Last January in his inaugural address, the president declared that the U.S. “will once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons. And the administration’s new National Security Strategy, released in December, prioritized defending the homeland from threats within the hemisphere; and the Venezuela campaign showed it’s being implemented.

But that an American president would even threaten a NATO ally is hard for many to fathom.

“We all can agree Maduro was a bad guy. But this is a whole ‘nother level of insanity — it’s not grounded in any reality,” said Rufus Gifford, who served as U.S. ambassador to Denmark under President Barack Obama. He added that he found Trump’s laughter aboard Air Force One Sunday night as he threatened to take Greenland “legitimately terrifying.”

During a trip last March to the Pituffik Space Base on Greenland’s Arctic coast, Vice President JD Vance said Denmark “hasn’t done a good job at keeping Greenland safe.” But he also suggested that the U.S. approach to taking governance of the territory away from the Danes would respect the rights of Greenlanders to determine their own fate. “The people of Greenland are going to have self-determination,” Vance said. “We hope that they choose to partner with the United States.”

In a video response to Vance’s comments, Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen took umbrage with the vice president’s tone but reiterated publicly what Frederiksen had conveyed privately. “We respect that the United States needs a greater military presence in Greenland,” Rasmussen said. “We — Denmark and Greenland — are very much open to discussing this with you.”

Trump, in his comments Sunday night, joked to reporters that Denmark’s only contribution to bolstering Greenland’s security was “one more dogsled.” In fact, Denmark announced a plan in November to spend $4.26 billion to boost its security capabilities in the Arctic that will procure two Arctic patrol ships, maritime patrol aircraft, a new early-warning radar and extensive drone systems.

Gifford, who went on a speaking tour across Denmark last fall to tell Danes that many Americans disagree with the Trump administration’s approach, said that even if the U.S. doesn’t ultimately take control of Greenland under Trump, there’s real damage already being done.

Trump officials “have enormous egos and they don’t care about the rule of law and alliances and history and treaties and trust — all these fundamental concepts that have made the United States what we are,” he said. “Every member of Congress should be screaming bloody murder about this; and if you’re not, you’re complicit in what could be the downfall of the West as we know it.”