Rubio to meet with Danish officials to discuss Greenland after refusing to rule out military action

Trump has doubled down on threats to take over mineral-rich Arctic island, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet with Danish officials to discuss Greenland next week after refusing to rule out taking military action to seize the territory.

President Donald Trump has doubled down on his threats to take over the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark, a Nato country. On Wednesday, the White House warned that “utilising the US military is always an option” to achieve “this important foreign policy goal”.

Mr Rubio reiterated this warning, telling reporters in Washington DC later in the day that Mr Trump “retains the option” to use the US military to take Greenland. But he added that the US president would prioritise a “diplomatic” solution.

However, he did not directly answer reporters' questions about whether the administration was willing to risk the integrity of the Nato alliance by potentially moving ahead with military action in Greenland. “I'm not here to talk about Denmark or military intervention,” he said. “I'll be meeting with them next week, we'll have those conversations with them then, but I don't have anything further to add to that.”

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his Greenland counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, requested the meeting with Mr Rubio, according to a statement posted to Greenland's government website on Tuesday, after previous requests were unsuccessful.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet with Danish officials to discuss Greenland next week after refusing to rule out taking military action to seize the territory (Getty)

The meeting comes amid an escalating diplomatic crisis between Washington and its western allies, who have said that any attempt to occupy the territory would violate Denmark’s sovereignty. European leaders issued a statement on Tuesday declaring that “it is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland”.

Since the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, Mr Trump has revived his argument that the US needs to control the world's largest island, which guards the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches to North America, to ensure its own security in the face of rising threats from China and Russia in the Arctic.

But Mr Rubio told a select group of US lawmakers on Monday that it was the Republican administration's intention to eventually purchase Greenland, as opposed to using military force.

The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in issuing the statement this week, reaffirming that the island “belongs to its people”, with Frederiksen warning that a US takeover would amount to the end of Nato.

Greenland is a strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark, a Nato country (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also said on Tuesday that using the military to acquire Greenland was an option, though she told reporters Wednesday that “the president's first option always has been diplomacy”.

Some Republican senators said they saw strategic value in Greenland, but they stopped short of supporting military action to acquire it. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall said he hoped “we can work out a deal”, while North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said some of the discussion about taking Greenland by force has been “misconstrued”.

But Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she hated “the rhetoric around either acquiring Greenland by purchase or by force”, adding, “I think that it is very, very unsettling.”

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, co-chairs of the bipartisan Senate Nato Observer Group, said the US needs to honour its treaty obligations to Denmark.

“Any suggestion that our nation would subject a fellow Nato ally to coercion or external pressure undermines the very principles of self-determination that our alliance exists to defend,” the senators said in a joint statement.