In Closed-Door Talks, U.S. Demands a Major Role in Greenland

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Greenlandic officials worry about the direction of the negotiations aimed at defusing President Trump’s threats to seize their island. But they have little leverage.

Screenshot taken from this NYT article. | Ilulisaat, Greenland, a town where a Chinese state company nearly won a contract to build an airport in 2018. After U.S. officials pressured Denmark to step in, Greenland opted for a Danish company. | Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
With the conflict in Iran still smoldering, President Trump’s obsession with Greenland seems like a forgotten sideshow.

But for the past four months, negotiators from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs, have been holding confidential talks in Washington about Greenland’s future.

The talks were meant to give Mr. Trump an offramp to his threats of a military takeover of Greenland and to scale back a crisis that risked breaking apart the NATO alliance. But Greenlandic leaders are worried about what is being proposed, which is a much larger U.S. role on the Arctic island. And they fear that if the conflict with Iran winds down, the president will swing his aggression back on them.

Some Greenlandic politicians say they have even circled a date on their calendars to be wary: June 14, Mr. Trump’s birthday. » | Jeffrey Gettleman, Maya Tekeli, Anton Troianovski and Eric Schmitt | Monday, May 18, 2026

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