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The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, says he plans to meet Danish officials next week to discuss Greenland as a crisis escalates within Nato over Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Arctic territory.
An urgent meeting had been requested by the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark, which has said that any invasion or seizure of the territory by its Nato ally would mark the end of the western military alliance and “post-second world war security”.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, Rubio did not directly answer a question about whether the Trump administration was willing to risk the alliance by potentially moving ahead with a military option to gain control of Greenland.
“I’m not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention, I’ll be meeting with them next week,” he said. “We’ll have those conversations with them then, but I don’t have anything further to add to that.” Every US president retains the option of addressing national security threats through military means, he said.
France said on Tuesday that it was working with allies on how to react if the US were to invade Greenland. “We want to take action, but we want to do so together with our European partners,” the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, told France Inter radio.
Rubio said Trump had been talking about acquiring Greenland since his first term. “That’s always been the president’s intent from the very beginning,” he said. “He’s not the first US president that has examined or looked at how we could acquire Greenland.”
The White House said Trump preferred diplomacy but would not rule out military action. “That’s something that’s currently being actively discussed by the president and his national security team,” the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said when asked about a possible US offer to buy the territory from Denmark. “The president has been very open and clear … that he views it in the best interest of the United States to deter Russian and Chinese aggression in the Arctic region, and so that’s why his team is currently talking about what a potential purchase would look like,” she said.
Asked why the US had refused to rule out military action, she replied: “I know that past presidents and past leaders have often ruled things out. They’ve often been very open about ruling things in and basically broadcasting their foreign policy strategy to the rest of the world – not just to our allies, but most egregiously to our adversaries. That’s not something this president does.
“All options are always on the table … But I will just say that the president’s first option always has been diplomacy.”
Leavitt was also pressed on what the US would gain by controling Greenland that it did not have already in its access to military bases there. “More control over the Arctic region and ensuring that China and Russia and our adversaries cannot continue their aggression in this very important and strategic region,” she said.
Trump said on Wednesday that the US would not desert Nato in a backhanded social media post that also criticised the alliance.
“We will always be there for Nato, even if they won’t be there for us,” he wrote on Truth Social. Russia and China would “have zero fear” of Nato without the US, he said. Addressing “all of those big Nato fans”, he added: “They were at 2% GDP, and most weren’t paying their bills, UNTIL I CAME ALONG.”
After one of Trump’s leading aides said on Tuesday that the US may be willing to seize control of the Arctic territory by force, European leaders rallied around Denmark and Greenland with a rare rebuke to the White House, declaring that Greenland “belongs to its people”.
Barrot said that in a phone call on Tuesday Rubio had told him that he had “ruled out the possibility of an invasion” of Greenland. “I myself was on the phone yesterday with Marco Rubio … who confirmed that this was not the approach taken,” he said.
Trump has long expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland. But in recent days, after the US military operation in Venezuela on Saturday in which troops removed the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration’s rhetoric – and, subsequently, international tensions – have ramped up to new heights, putting the survival of Nato into question.
On Tuesday night, the Danish parliament held an extraordinary meeting to discuss the unprecedented situation.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, and his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, said they were seeking an urgent meeting with Rubio to discuss Greenland. “We would like to add some nuance to the conversation,” Rasmussen said on social media. “The shouting match must be replaced by a more sensible dialogue. Now.”
Trump has claimed that Greenland is “full of Chinese and Russian ships” and that Denmark is incapable of defending Greenland, which the president has said is vital for US national security.
But Rasmussen said after the extraordinary meeting that the US was giving a false representation of what was happening in Greenland. “The image that is being painted of Russian and Chinese ships right inside the Nuuk fjord and massive Chinese investments being made is not correct,” he said.
The situation, Rasmussen said, was “based on a misreading of what is up and what is down”, adding: “We are looking after the kingdom.”
Denmark’s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, disputed US claims that the country was not doing enough to protect Greenland. “We have invested close to 100bn [Danish kroner] (£11.6bn) in security capabilities,” he said.
