Vice President JD Vance and other top U.S. officials arrived on Friday in Greenland, where locals have expressed deep unease about the visit after President Trump vowed to acquire the island “one way or the other.”
Mr. Vance is being joined on the one-day trip by Usha Vance, his wife; Chris Wright, the energy secretary; Michael Waltz, the embattled national security adviser; and Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, according to the White House.
The Vances were having lunch with members of the military stationed at the base before receiving briefings. The temperature when they landed was minus 3 degrees Fahrenheit, prompting Mr. Vance to joke that he didn’t realize it would be so cold. “Nobody told me,” he said to laughs.
The trip changed in recent days after an earlier announcement was met with backlash in Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Initially, Ms. Vance, the second lady, was expected to visit with Mr. Waltz. Ms. Vance also planned to attend a dogsled race in southern Greenland. Mr. Vance was not included in the plans.
One travel agency in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, said that it would deny a U.S. request for Ms. Vance to visit its office. The organizers of the dogsled race made clear they had not invited her. And the prime minister of Greenland, Mute B. Egede, said in an indignant statement that there would be no meetings between U.S. officials and Greenland’s government.
In a video posted on social media Tuesday after that backlash, Mr. Vance said he had decided to accompany his wife. “I didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself,” Mr. Vance said, grinning.
The larger delegation now plans to only visit the Pituffik Space Base, once called Thule Air Base, a seven-decade-old installation operated by U.S. forces in the remote northwestern reaches of Greenland, well within the Arctic Circle. They are not expected to stop in the capital or other parts of the island.
President Trump has said the United States has a security imperative to acquire the world’s largest island, which has been controlled by Denmark since 1721. A landmass larger than Mexico, Greenland is home to glaciers, icy mountains, prized earth minerals and some 56,000 people, roughly enough to fill Dodger Stadium.
The president has declined to rule out using military force to get his way.
“We’ll go as far as we have to go,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “We need Greenland. And the world needs us to have Greenland.”
Most on the island would prefer not: A recent poll found an overwhelming majority in Greenland does not want to join the United States.
An independence movement has been gaining momentum, though the party that won a parliamentary election on the island this month aims to gingerly pursue autonomy from Denmark. (The party, Demokraatit, has been critical of Mr. Trump.)
During Mr. Vance’s visit on Friday, he plans to stress the importance of security infrastructure in Greenland, according to his office.
“U.S. leaders have neglected Arctic security, while Greenland’s Danish rulers have neglected their security obligations to the island,” Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said in a statement on Thursday.
The American delegation plans to visit U.S. troops and members of the U.S. Space Force, called guardians, who are stationed at the base. The military site, one of the world’s most isolated and strategically valuable, has about 150 members of the U.S. Air and Space Forces stationed there under an agreement with Denmark.
Since World War II, the United States has kept troops in Greenland. Still, a visit by an American delegation is highly unusual, said Troy Bouffard, an Arctic defense expert in Alaska.
“This is a very unconventional approach,” Mr. Bouffard said, adding, “This is possibly one of the highest-level delegations ever to go to Greenland.”
He said the American officials were dispensing with typical customs for a visiting delegation: Going to Nuuk and greeting residents.
“They’re just going straight to U.S. territory and ignoring the rules,” he said of Trump administration officials. “These are indications of the seriousness of the U.S. and the conditions in which they want to pursue this.”
The presence of Mr. Waltz, the national security adviser, has been a particular point of contention.
Mr. Waltz has been under intense scrutiny after The Atlantic reported that he had added its editor to a Signal group chat where high-ranking U.S. officials discussed sensitive military plans.
The leader of Greenland suggested that he viewed Mr. Waltz’s presence as a show of aggression.
“What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland?” Mr. Egede, the prime minister, told the local newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”
