The United States has been holding regular negotiations with Denmark to open three new military bases in Greenland, with talks progressing through a small, deliberately low-profile working group — even as the Trump administration publicly threatened to seize the territory by force.
The bases would be in southern Greenland and primarily focus on surveillance of Russian and Chinese maritime activity in the GIUK Gap — the strategically vital North Atlantic corridor between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom that sits at the center of NATO’s northern flank.
The US currently operates one base in Greenland, Pituffik Space Base in the northwest, down from approximately 17 military facilities at the height of the Cold War. Pituffik monitors missiles for NORAD but is not configured for maritime surveillance — the gap the new bases would fill.
BBC News, citing multiple officials familiar with the discussions, reported that the White House confirmed it was engaged in high-level talks with Greenland and Denmark but declined to comment on details. A White House official told the BBC the administration was “very optimistic” the talks were headed in the right direction. Denmark’s Foreign Ministry confirmed talks are underway.
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“There is a diplomatic track underway with the United States,” a spokesman said. “The Foreign Office will not go into further detail at this time.”
One source with knowledge of the negotiations told the BBC that US officials have floated an arrangement in which the three new bases would be formally designated as US sovereign territory — a significant step beyond a standard basing agreement and one that would test the limits of the 1951 US-Denmark Defense Treaty, which grants Washington broad rights to expand military operations in Greenland but requires Danish government approval. Denmark has historically never rejected a US request to expand its presence there.
One of the new bases would likely be at Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland, on the site of a former US military installation with an existing small airport, reducing construction costs. Other locations would similarly prioritize existing infrastructure, such as airfields and ports. The final number of bases could change, sources said.
The negotiations have been kept deliberately quiet while the administration has been consumed by the Iran war. General Gregory Guillot, head of US Northern Command, provided a broad overview during his March congressional hearing but did not disclose details.
“Why threaten an ally with a military operation or invasion when what you want is something that could be negotiated quite easily?” one former senior US defence official told the BBC.
“Wherever the US and our allies leave a vacuum, that vacuum is often filled by China and Russia,” retired General Glen VanHerck, former head of Northern Command and NORAD, told the BBC.
The military talks are unfolding alongside a parallel US push to secure Greenland’s mineral wealth. Critical Metals Corp, a Nasdaq-listed mining company backed by Cantor Fitzgerald — the firm formerly led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — recently closed a 92.5% acquisition of the Tanbreez rare earth deposit in southern Greenland, with the US Export-Import Bank considering a $120 million loan to advance the project.
Read: A Western Company Just Locked Up Greenland’s Rarest Deposit—and Its Backers Have Washington Ties
US officials lobbied the deposit’s previous owner not to sell to Chinese-linked buyers. The southern Greenland focus of both the military base proposals and the Tanbreez deposit is not a coincidence — it is the part of the island closest to North Atlantic shipping lanes and most accessible for development and logistics.
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