Washington, Jan 9 US Vice President JD Vance urged European leaders to “take the president of the United States seriously” on Greenland, arguing the island is critical to global security and warning that the US would act if allies do not address what he described as growing interest from “hostile adversaries.”
Asked about a message for Europe amid pushback to the idea that Greenland “could be for sale,” Vance said the administration would continue to raise the matter through diplomacy. “We’ll — we’ll continue to deliver some of these messages in private, some of them in public,” he said.
At a White House news conference, Vance pointed to upcoming contacts involving the State Department. “Secretary (of State, Marco) Rubio, I believe, is meeting with the leaders of Denmark and Greenland next week, I want to say it is, but maybe it’s the week after that,” Vance said.
Vance argued critics were overreacting to Trump’s statements. “Set to the side the crazy overreactions that I’ve seen from the press and from certain people in Europe,” he said, before laying out what he described as the president’s core points.
“What has the President said? Number one, Greenland is really important, not just to America’s missile defense, but to the world’s missile defense,” Vance said. “Number two, we know that there are hostile adversaries that have shown a lot of interest in that particular territory, that particular slice of the world.”
He said the administration was pressing allies to bolster security around the island. “So what we’re asking our European friends to do is to take the security of that landmass more seriously,” Vance said, adding, “because if they’re not, the United States is going to have to do something about it.”
Vance did not define what US action might entail and said decisions would remain with Trump. “What that is, I’ll leave that to the president as we continue to engage in diplomacy with our European friends and everybody on this particular topic,” he said.
Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, and its location in the Arctic has long been viewed as strategically significant for early warning and defense architecture across the North Atlantic.
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