US seeks carte blanche for military presence in Greenland

Natalia Drozdiak and Joe Deaux, Bloomberg News on Jan 22, 2026

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. wants to rewrite its defense agreement with Denmark to remove any limits on its military presence in Greenland, people familiar with the matter said, in what’s become a focal point for negotiators looking to meet President Donald Trump’s demand for control over the territory.

The original agreement, signed in 1951 and amended in 2004, says the U.S. must “consult with and inform” Denmark and Greenland before it makes “any significant changes to United States military operations or facilities in Greenland.”

The people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, said American negotiators want to rework that language to make sure the U.S. faces no restrictions at all as it makes its plans. The details of any such agreement are still being negotiated, they said.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said that “if this deal goes through, and President Trump is very hopeful it will, the United States will be achieving all of its strategic goals with respect to Greenland, at very little cost, forever.”

“As details are finalized by all parties involved, they will be released accordingly,” she added. The Danish Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

That pitch dovetails with Trump’s own description of what he wants. On Wednesday, he announced the “framework of a future deal” over Greenland, following a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but held back from providing details.

“We’re all going to work together. And actually NATO is going to be involved with us,” Trump told reporters Thursday when asked on whether the agreement gives the US ownership of the island.

“We’re going to be doing in conjunction, parts of it, in conjunction with NATO, which is really the way it should be,” he said on his return from Davos, adding that he’d make it known “in two weeks” whether the Danes have agreed.

In an interview with Fox Business earlier on Thursday, Trump said the U.S. will have “all military access that we want.”

“We’re going to be able to put what we need on Greenland because we want it,” Trump said. “Essentially it’s total access, there’s no end, there’s no time limit.”

A final deal would defuse what’s emerged as the gravest threat to the transatlantic alliance since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s founding after World War II. Bloomberg reported previously that the framework deal Trump announced would entail the stationing of U.S. missiles, mining rights aimed at keeping Chinese interests out and a bolstered NATO presence in the Arctic.

In exchange, Trump would uphold a promise not to impose tariffs against European nations.

Trump’s move would reverse a decades-long trend that’s seen the U.S. drastically scale back its presence on Greenland since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. military went from as many as 17 bases on the territory to a single base with around 150 personnel and more than 300 contract employees, many of whom are Danish or Greenlandic citizens.

Yet it remains unclear to what extent Denmark and Greenland will agree to any changes. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters before a European Union leaders’ summit in Brussels on Thursday that Denmark and Greenland are open to “further expanding” the 1951 defense treaty with the U.S., but wouldn’t go into details around what that might look like.

“This must, of course, take place in a proper and respectful manner, and we are now seeing whether that can be done,” Frederiksen said.

The language of the agreement already poses few limits on the U.S., and Denmark and Greenland have for years been encouraging greater U.S. military presence there.

“Any time we requested a meeting on things, we were always met with a willingness to talk about it,” said Iris Ferguson, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience during the Biden administration. She said Greenland was also interested in the U.S. doing more militarily because the contracts supported the local economy.

(Sanne Wass, Alex Wickham, Courtney McBride, Kate Sullivan, Tony Capaccio, John Harney and Hadriana Lowenkron contributed to this report.)