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Danish officials on Saturday struck back against coruscating criticism from JD Vance about their neglect of Greenland, accusing America of significantly scaling back its military presence in the Arctic.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Denmark’s foreign minister, responded to the US vice-president’s uninvited visit to an American military base in Greenland by saying Copenhagen was “open to criticism” but that “we do not appreciate the tone in which it is being delivered — this is not how you speak to your close allies”.
He added: “In 1945, the United States had 17 bases and military installations in Greenland with thousands of soldiers. Today, only one American base is left . . . and something like 200 soldiers. We can do more, much more, within the framework we have today . . . Let us do it together.”
Donald Trump’s public desire to take over Greenland from Denmark has placed the future of the Arctic island and its 57,000 people in the geopolitical spotlight.
Vance, together with US national security adviser Mike Waltz and energy secretary Chris Wright, visited the Pituffik Space Base on the island on Friday and accused Denmark of not doing “a good job by the people of Greenland”.
Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory in the kingdom of Denmark but a majority of its population eventually want independence from Copenhagen.
Danish officials, who unveiled a $2bn defence package after conceding that they had not invested enough in the island’s security, initially took a cautious approach to Trump’s expansionist claims. But in the past week they have grown more assertive in pushing back against the US.
Rasmussen said Vance had also admitted that the US had not invested enough in the Arctic. “The fact is, we all have been harvesting the peace dividend. We all acted on the assumption that the Arctic was and should be a low-tension area. But that time is over. Status quo is not an option,” he said.
Trump has argued that the US has fallen behind Russia and China in areas such as icebreakers as its two biggest geopolitical rivals gear up for a melting of the ice in the far north.
But Danish and Greenlandic officials have been horrified by his rhetoric that “we have to have” Greenland, refusing to rule out military force.
On Friday Vance said that he did not think “military force is ever going to be necessary”, in part because he expected Greenlanders to choose independence from Denmark and thereafter a closer partnership with the US. The vice-president added that there were threats from China and Russia to Greenland, but experts said the sole public threat had come from the US.
Denmark has sent troops to fight alongside US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and its officials were dismayed by the criticism from their closest security ally. But they were also relieved that Vance did not escalate matters. “I thought it would have been worse,” one said.
Mette Frederiksen, Danish prime minister, said that Vance’s criticism was not “a fair way to refer to Denmark”, which she called “a good and strong ally” to the US.
Under a wide-ranging defence agreement from 1951, the US is allowed to set up military bases across Greenland as long as it does not impinge on Denmark’s sovereignty.
Greenlandic and Danish officials said that they had proposed several times in recent years for the US to increase its military footprint but America has instead scaled back its presence.
Greenland unveiled a new, broad government coalition on Friday. Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the new prime minister, has criticised Vance for a lack of respect by announcing his uninvited visit while the government formation talks were still taking place.
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