US Vice President J.D. Vance was yesterday to visit Greenland at a time when US President Donald Trump is renewing his insistence that Washington should take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
In a scaled-back version of a trip plan that had angered authorities in Greenland and Denmark, Vance was expected to fly to the US military base at nchin the north of the arctic island.
Under the terms of a 1951 agreement, the US is entitled to visit its base whenever it wants, as long as it notifies Greenland and Copenhagen.
Photo: Reuters
The initial plan had been for Vance’s wife, Usha, to visit a popular dog-sled race together with US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz even though they were not invited by authorities in either Greenland or Denmark.
Waltz, who has faced pressure over Trump administration officials’ discussion of sensitive Houthi attack plans on the Signal messaging app, would still be on the Greenland trip, a White House source said.
Greenland acting prime minister Mute Egede called the visit a provocation as the country had yet to form a new government after a March 11 election.
Local media on Thursday reported that Greenland’s Democrats were to announce a four-party coalition government yesterday.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the US visit “unacceptable” although Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Lars Lokke Rasmussen welcomed news of the revised visit as a positive, de-escalating step.
By changing the trip, the Trump administration is seeking to refocus the discussion on the topics it is interested in: the US presence on Greenland, military capabilities available and the wider security of the arctic region, said Catherine Sendak, director of the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based think tank.
“A change of course was needed,” Sendak said. “It is positive, given the very public back and forth between the Danish and Greenland governments and the Trump administration about the intent of the initial visit.”
Still, Trump reiterated his desire to take over Greenland, saying the US needs the strategically island for national and international security.
“So, I think we’ll go as far as we have to go. We need Greenland and the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark,” he said on Wednesday.
Danish Minister of Defense Troels Lund Poulsen condemned what he called Trump’s escalated rhetoric.
The question now is how far Trump is willing to push his idea of taking over the island, said Andreas Oesthagen, a senior researcher on arctic politics and security at the Oslo-based Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
“It is still unlikely that the United States will use military means to try to get full control over Greenland,” he said.
That would break with many fundamental principles and rules that the US has benefited from and has been a pillar for, Oesthagen said.
However, “it is unfortunately likely that President Trump and Vice President Vance will continue to use other means of pressure, such as ambiguous statements, semi-official visits to Greenland and economic instruments,” he added.
“The real winner in this unnecessary drama is Russia, who gets exactly what they want: discord in the transatlantic relationship,” he said.
Tom Dans, a businessman and former member of the US Arctic Research Commission during Trump’s first presidency, said Vance’s visit would help the Trump administration understand where it can collaborate further with Greenland.
“They’re trying to put the picture together for the future and understand where the best intersections are going to be for US policy and investments to help Greenland,” Dans said.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS