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US Vice President JD Vance will join his wife Usha on the trip to Greenland on Friday, a visit that follows Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island.
The couple will go to the Pitik space base to receive an Arctic security briefing and meet with members of US forces located there, according to the White House.
Usha Vance had planned to travel to the Danish territory on a cultural visit before her husband announced his plans. Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Walz is also ready to visit a separate trip this week.
Officials in Greenland fiercely criticize planned visits as disrespectful.
Greenland – the largest island in the world, located between the Arctic and the Atlantic – is controlled by Denmark, about 3,000 km (1860 miles) about 300 years old.
He regulates his own interior, but decisions are made in Copenhagen on foreign and defense policy. The United States has long been interested in security and military presence there since World War II.
The Pituffik space base, located in northwestern Greenland, supports missions for missile warnings, air defense and space supervision.
In a video posted on the Social Media Platform X, Vance said there were many excitement about his wife’s trip to Greenland. He joins her because “he didn’t want her to have fun alone.”
He said a visit to the military installation is to check the security of the island, as “many other countries threaten Greenland, threaten to use their territories and water roads to threaten the United States, to threaten Canada and, of course, to threaten people from Greenland.”
He added that the Trump administration wants to “summarize the security of Greenland people” and that the United States and Denmark have ignored it for “too long”.
It is unclear if Mike Waltz is still planned to visit. The BBC turned to the White House for confirmation.
Dr. Dwayne Ryan Menezes, founder and managing director of Polar Research and Policy Think Thank, based in London, criticizes the visit.
He said it was an “extremely unusual” high -level delegation to visit Greenland without being invited, especially after national elections in the country where parties still negotiate to form the next government.
The US interest in Greenland’s security, given its strategic meaning, makes sense, he said. But he added that it was “inexplicable” for Washington that he has adopted such an aggressive approach, especially in the light of Trump’s comments about the acquisition of the territory.
“The disrespect of Greenland people, saying that the United States will acquire” one way or another “is useless and counterproductive as tactics,” he added.
According to recent polls, almost 80% of Greenland’s independence from Denmark from Denmark. But a study of the opinion in January suggested an even more number of rejected the idea of ​​becoming part of the United States.
