When he arrives in Greenland on Friday, Vice President JD Vance is not going to get much of a welcome from Greenlanders.
Mr. Vance will be the highest-ranking American official ever to visit the island.
But the government of Greenland never invited him and after all that President Trump has said about his desire to “get” the island, many Greenlanders don’t want Mr. Vance coming at all. Mr. Vance is scheduled to visit a remote American military base on the northern coast, far from any town.
The White House’s original plan was more ambitious. Usha Vance, the second lady, had announced that she was going to attend a famous dog sled race this weekend and see other cultural sites, in an effort to bring the United States and Greenland closer.
But the plan backfired. Protesters were gearing up to line the road from the airport in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. The island’s government blasted the visit as unwanted and “highly aggressive.” And the organizers of the dog sled race released a pointed statement saying they had never asked Ms. Vance to attend in the first place.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Vance took issue with this, saying she had received “multiple invitations.”
The White House responded by scaling back the trip to just a sweep by Mr. Vance, his wife and other officials through the remote Pituffik Space Base, an American missile defense station nearly a thousand miles away from where the protests were planned.
Greenland is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark that has been connected to Denmark for more than 300 years. The Danish government also strongly opposed the original plan, and on Thursday, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said, “There is no doubt that we are facing a difficult situation.”
According to Danish media, Mr. Vance will land at the base around 1:30 p.m. Greenland time. American officials said he would travel with Chris Wright, the energy secretary; Mike Lee, a Republican senator; and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser who is under fire for discussing military plans over a messaging app in a group that included a journalist.
Foreign policy analysts say the new plan is a weaker version of what the White House wanted.
“It’s a tactical retreat — a repositioning to strike harder later,” said Lars Trier Mogensen, a political analyst based in Copenhagen. “On the one hand, they de-escalated by not carrying out the full cultural mission and skipping the P.R. stunt. On the other hand, it’s a symbolic escalation that the highest-ranking official is visiting Greenland, reinforcing Trump’s message that it should become American.”
Since his first term, Mr. Trump has been fixated on Greenland. In 2019, he floated the idea of buying it: Danish officials called that “absurd,” which provoked Mr. Trump into calling them “nasty.”
This January, Mr. Trump resurrected his interest in Greenland for “national security purposes” and refused to rule out using force to take it from Denmark.
Greenland’s massive size — it’s the largest island in the world, three times bigger than Texas — and its location in North America along the increasingly contested Arctic Ocean seems to be the root of Mr. Trump’s fascination. Members of his inner circle, including Mr. Vance, have also spoken of Greenland’s “incredible natural resources” (though most of them are buried under ice).
Just this week, Mr. Trump said again: “We need it. We have to have it.”
“From a defensive posture and even offensive posture,” he said, Greenland is “something we need.”
Greenland had been steadily inching away from Denmark, with the island gaining more power over its own affairs and Greenlanders showing more interest in full independence. There is — or there was until recently — a significant movement within Greenland that wanted to form a closer alliance with the United States, which has stationed troops on the island since World War II, for trade and military purposes. But the mood in the past few weeks has turned even more against Mr. Trump.
On Friday, during an overcast day in Nuuk, ordinary Greenlanders said they were not happy about Mr. Vance coming.
“I don’t know what he wants,” said Tupaarnaq Kanuthsen, a woman on maternity leave, as she walked through Nuuk. “He’s not welcome.”
Jens Olsen, a retiree on his way to the bank, said, “They have no business here.”
He said Mr. Vance “should be kicked out by the police immediately.”
