Vice President JD Vance will visit Greenland on March 28 alongside his wife and senior national security officials from the Trump administration.
Vance announced in a short March 25 video shared on social media that he would visit American service members stationed in the Danish territory.
“I’m going to visit some of our Guardians in the Space Force on the northwest coast of Greenland and also check out what’s going on with the security there in Greenland,” Vance said.
An email from the White House shared with The Epoch Times also said that Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, will receive a briefing on Arctic security issues and meet with U.S. service members.
White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright will also visit Pituffik Space Base, formerly known as Thule Air Base, in northwestern Greenland later in the week.
The American delegation was not invited by Greenland or Denmark, and the visit comes as ties between the territory and the United States continue to sour over a pressure campaign by the Trump administration, which seeks to establish American control over the region.
Greenland’s current government, however, seeks a path of slow reform toward official independence.
Vance echoed some of Trump’s concerns about the territory in his video, saying that “a lot of other countries” have threatened to use Greenland and its waterways as a staging ground for acts of aggression against North American countries. He did not specify which countries he believed had made those threats.
He also said that national leadership in the United States and Denmark “ignored Greenland for far too long” and that the Trump administration could “take things in a different direction.”
Likewise, the White House email said that the trip would help to reverse what it described as “neglect and inaction” by Denmark to prevent foreign aggression against the United States.
The United States has long taken an interest in Greenland for its strategic position in the Arctic, overseeing critical air and sea routes.
Greenland has also been home to vital U.S. military infrastructure since World War II and houses missile defense and space systems responsible for defending the United States from a ballistic missile attack from Russia or China, which would pass over the Arctic to reach America.
Egede has also suggested that the visit by the Vances, Waltz, and Wright is a form of foreign interference and has caused a “mess” in Greenland amid already heightened fears that a long-time ally might turn aggressor.
Similarly, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on March 25 that the United States was exerting “unacceptable pressure” on the nation and its territory and that Denmark “will resist” the effort.
