White House Says Military Is Among Options for Acquiring Greenland

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that officials are discussing “a range of options” for acquiring Greenland and that “utilizing the U.S. military is always an option,” CBS News reported, deepening a dispute with Denmark that began after Trump renewed his demand for the island on Sunday. Denmark’s prime minister warned that an American takeover would effectively mean the end of NATO, according to CBS and CNBC.

A White House spokeswoman told CNBC that Trump believes Greenland is “a strategically important location that is critical from the standpoint of national security.” Trump has said, “We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense,” CNBC reported.

Congress began to react. Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, said Tuesday he would introduce a resolution to block Trump from invading Greenland, writing that Trump is “telling us exactly what he wants to do” and that Congress “must stop him before he invades another country on a whim.” CNBC reported that, a day earlier, Gallego offered an amendment to the Senate defense appropriations bill that would bar the use of funds for military force against Greenland. The report named no cosponsors and no vote has been taken.

Some Republicans drew a line between Greenland and Venezuela. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he hoped the Venezuela operation would spread to Cuba, but that “Greenland’s a different deal.” He said everyone wants a larger U.S. presence in Greenland to counter Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic, and that Trump is asking what the legal relationship should be, CNBC reported. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said that if he were a European member of NATO he would reassess his participation if Trump invaded a NATO country, and that Article 5, the alliance’s mutual defense clause, “did not anticipate” an attacker from inside the alliance.

The administration’s security argument has concrete elements. CNBC reported that Greenland lies on the shortest route for a Russian ballistic missile to reach the continental United States, that analysts say it could host interceptors for the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system, and that it sits on the GIUK Gap, the naval choke point between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom that the U.S. has long used to monitor Russian submarines. Melting ice could also open Arctic shipping routes, and the island has oil, gas and rare earth deposits, a field in which China dominates supply.

Critics ask why ownership is needed. The United States already operates Pituffik Space Base in northwest Greenland under a long-standing defense agreement with Denmark. The base has about 150 permanent U.S. personnel, down from about 6,000 during the Cold War, CNBC said. Marion Messmer of Chatham House noted that Washington could increase troops there without disputing Danish sovereignty. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said the agreement “gives the United States wide access to Greenland.”

Polls show most of Greenland’s roughly 57,000 residents oppose U.S. control, and a strong majority support independence from Denmark, according to CNBC. Denmark and Greenland have asked for a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, said they sought such a meeting throughout 2025 without success, CNBC reported.