Greenland

New opinion poll finds seven in 10 US adults disapprove of President Donald Trump’s handling of Greenland issue.

Denmark’s prime minister and Greenland’s premier met ⁠with United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio and agreed that talks would be pursued on the running of Greenland, the semi-autonomous Danish territory that President Donald Trump has threatened to take over.

Rubio held a 15-minute meeting with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday.

Greenland’s leader Nielsen said in a post on social media that during the meeting with Rubio, “it was emphasised that the conversations being made are the right way forward and the interests of Greenland were once again clearly highlighted”.

Prime Minister Frederiksen said on X after the meeting: “Constructive talk with Secretary of State Marco Rubio together with Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Chairman of Naalakkersuisut, at the Munich Security Conference.”

“Work will continue as agreed in the high-level working group,” she said.

The meeting between the Danish and Greenlandic leaders and the US state secretary comes amid severely strained ties between Europe and Washington, and NATO allies, amid President Trump’s repeated threats to take over Greenland and criticism of European nations as “decaying” and “weak”.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump said, “We’re negotiating ‌right ‌now for Greenland.”

“I ‌think Greenland’s going to want us, but we get along very well with Europe. We’ll see how it all works out,” he said.

After months of bellicose language regarding the US’s necessity to acquire Greenland, Trump abruptly stepped back from his threats last month, saying that he had reached an understanding with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte that would give the US greater influence in the mineral-rich Arctic territory.

Late last month, the US, Denmark and Greenland also launched talks to find a diplomatic path out of the crisis.

Poll finds most US adults disapprove of Trump’s Greenland plan

The US administration has cited key national security concerns related to Russia and China to justify its demand to take control over Greenland and has accused Denmark, and Europe more broadly, of being unable to defend the strategic territory.

But, according to a new opinion poll conducted by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, Trump’s push to seize control of Greenland has gone down badly with the US public and members of his own party.

The survey, conducted between February 5-8, found that about seven in 10 US adults disapprove of how Trump is handling the Greenland issue – a higher disapproval rating than the share of those who dislike how he is handling foreign policy generally.

Even among Republican supporters, about half disapprove of his attempt to turn Greenland into US territory, according to the poll.

Sweden said on Thursday that it would send fighter jets to patrol Greenland as part of a newly launched NATO mission in the Arctic aimed at placating Trump’s concerns over the threats posed by Moscow and Beijing.

The government said in a statement that Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets would patrol Greenland as part of the newly-launched NATO mission, Arctic Sentry.

“As a NATO ally, Sweden has a responsibility to contribute to the security of the entire territory of the Alliance. The Arctic region is becoming increasingly important from a strategic perspective,” Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said.

In a separate statement, the Swedish Armed Forces said the fighter jets would be based out of Iceland, where six aircraft have been stationed since early February as part of the rotating incident response force, NATO Air Policing.

Swedish special forces would also be sent to Greenland to take part in training exercises for a couple of weeks, the military said.

MILAN — Many of the officials supporting the nearly 250 U.S. athletes competing in this month’s Winter Olympics arrived in Italy last weekend to a greeting they may not have expected: Hundreds of demonstrators packed a square in central Milan to protest the reported plan to deploy U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during the Games.

The first events in the 18-day competition, which will be shared by Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Italian Alps, begin Thursday and the opening ceremony is scheduled for Friday. Against that background, International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry called the agents’ involvement “distracting” and “sad.”

“This is a militia that kills. They are not welcome in Milan,” Mayor Giuseppe Sala said on local radio ahead of the protests, which took place beneath the neoclassical Porta Garibaldi arch in the Piazza XXV Aprile, named for the date of Italy’s liberation from Nazi fascism in World War II.

Many demonstrators blew whistles and carried signs of the five Olympic rings rendered as handcuffs above the words “No ICE in Milan.” One woman held a handmade poster featuring photos of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the two Minnesotans killed by federal agents last month, alongside Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy in the blue bunny hat who was taken from his home in Minneapolis to a detention facility in Texas.

Anti-ICE protests take place in Piazza XXV Aprile ahead of the Olympics in Milan.

(Lucia Buricelli / Associated Press)

“All the videos are public and everyone can see what’s happening,” Bruna Scanziani, an 18-year-old demonstrator told reporters. “The perception of America has changed.”

Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed the presence of ICE agents in Italy to the Athletic, leaving her department, the U.S. Consulate and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to try to cool the controversy.

DHS said the agents dispatched to Milan are not immigration agents but come from a unit known as Homeland Security Investigations, which specializes in cross-border crime. They commonly provide intelligence and security at large sporting events, both in the U.S. and overseas, but in Milan their role will be strictly advisory and intelligence-based, Ambassador Tilman J. Fertitta said.

Travelers pass through the lobby of Milan Linate Airport M4 Metroline train station Tuesday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, meanwhile, said it is working with the Diplomatic Security Service, which is under the umbrella of the State Department, unlike ICE, which is part of Homeland Security. The Diplomatic Security Service has been providing security for U.S. delegations at every Olympics since 1992.

“The USOPC does not work with U.S. domestic law enforcement or immigration agencies in the planning or execution of the Games, including agencies within the Department of Homeland Security often referred to as ICE,” the committee said in a statement. “Italian authorities are solely responsible for all security operations at the Games.”

Despite the tensions, in the days before the Games there were few signs of the kind of heavy security presence that marked the Paris Olympics 17 months ago. At Linate Airport, the closest of Milan’s three airports to the city center, two camouflage-clad Italian soldiers with long guns milled outside the arrival gates Monday evening. They were gone by Tuesday afternoon.

Five miles away at the Piazza del Duomo, the cultural and social heart of Milan, two pairs of soldiers stood on either side of the massive square, huddling under white awnings on either side of a pop-up Olympic souvenir tent and ignoring the hundreds of international tourists raising their phones to take photos of the ancient Gothic cathedral that gives the square its name.

A building located in the heart of Piazza del Doumo is lit up with animated Olympic competitors Tuesday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Up the street, where the trolley tracks curve before the trendy shops and restaurants that line the busy Via Orefici, groups of city police and Carabinieri, the national police known by their black Giorgio Armani-designed uniforms, joked among themselves. They were far less menacing than the roving patrols of soldiers and police officers that were ubiquitous in France.

A local woman shrugged at the officers’ presence.

“Being the iconic and most touristy place of Milan,” she said “there are always lots of police and soldiers.”

It’s unclear how American athletes will be received during Friday’s opening ceremony, which Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are expected to attend.

“When they have the flag and when they have the tracksuit and they’re announced as the U.S., that’s obviously an opportunity for the spectators to make known their feelings about the U.S.,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for Middle East studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute and an expert on sports and international relations.

Europeans have strong feelings about the U.S. right now, feelings spurred by more than the images of ICE agents that have led TV newscasts and have filled social media feeds for months in Italy and beyond. In the last few months, President Trump has sent forces into Venezuela to removes its president, threatened military action against Iran, fired on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, and disparaged Europe as “decaying” and its leaders as “weak.”

Demonstrators in Milan hold signs protesting ICE in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis on Saturday.

(Alessandro Bremec / Associated Press)

“Without us,” he said in a combative speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “you’d all be speaking German.”

What has upset the continent most amid the chaos, however, is Trump’s insistence that the U.S. take control of Greenland from Denmark, a loyal North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, warning the Danes and seven other countries that they would be hit with 25% tariffs if they didn’t relent. Many in Europe’s far-right parties, whose members are often supportive of Trump, now consider the U.S. president an “enemy of Europe,” according to a poll published by the Paris-based platform Le Grand Continent.

As a result of the blowback, Trump has backed away from the tariff threat and said he wouldn’t take control of Greenland by force, but the fallout from tensions remains.

“Greenland, especially, has really touched a nerve. That’s unfortunate coming right in the run-up to the Olympics,” said Coates Ulrichsen, who was born in Greece to English and Norwegian parents.

And that makes the U.S. team and its 232 athletes, the largest contingent at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, a convenient foil for European wrath.

“The national team is symbolic of the nation. That just makes it such a target for any potential political frustration,” Coates Ulrichsen said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

During the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, for example, which opened 17 months after the American-led invasion of Iraq, the U.S. team was roundly booed.

“The Olympics have been no stranger to politics,” Coates Ulrichsen said. “And obviously the key element [of athletes] walking out behind a flag is a very easy target in a way.”

Some Italians aren’t so sure.

“My personal view is that U.S. athletes will not be targeted by the protests,” said one woman who asked that her name not be used because she works with many international clients, including some in the United States. “It is more of a political subject.”

She also said the attitude of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, among the European leaders most supportive of President Trump, has blunted public opposition to the U.S.

The Olympic Rings ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Tuesday.

(Mattia Ozbot / Getty Images)

Because this month’s Games, the first Winter Olympics to officially have co-host cities, will be spread across four clusters covering about 8,500 square miles in northern Italy, there will be four opening ceremonies Friday, with the main one at San Siro Olympic Stadium in Milan beginning at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Smaller events will take place simultaneously in the mountain venues of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Valtellina and Val di Fiemme.

Bobsledder Azaria Hill, a first-time Olympian whose mother, father and aunt all competed in the Summer Games, said marching in the opening ceremony has long been a dream of hers. And she doesn’t think politics will spoil that Friday.

“Olympics brings all the nations together,” she said. “That’s one of the special things about the Olympics, and you really see that in the unity. I think everything will be fine.”

In an effort to separate athletes from politicians, the U.S. governing bodies for three winter sports — figure skating, speedskating and hockey — changed the name of their Milan hospitality space to the Winter House.

They had planned to call it the Ice House.

As the Trump administration ploughs forward with its incendiary policies, European trust in the US government is fading.

Amid tariff threats and pledges to conquer Greenland, citizens and politicians in Europe are unsettled — questioning a long-standing alliance.

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), chair of the Defence Committee in the EU Parliament, claims to have an answer that is “worth its weight in gold”. In this case, the expression is more literal than figurative.

Around 1,236 tonnes of German gold, worth more than €100bn, are sitting in vaults in the US. Strack-Zimmermann has now announced that, in view of Trump’s recent political manoeuvres, it’s no longer justifiable to leave them be. This has reignited a fierce debate: to retrieve or not to retrieve?

The demand to bring gold back to Germany has been around for a long time, with some surveys suggesting that many citizens are in favour of the move. Similar debates are happening in Italy, which has the third-largest gold reserves in the world after the US and Germany.

Why does Germany hold gold in the US?

Germany’s gold reserves amount to around 3,350 tonnes. About 36.6% of this is in the US, a legacy of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates after World War II.

“At the time, all exchange rates were tied to the dollar, and the dollar was tied to gold,” Dr. Demary, senior economist for Monetary Policy and Financial Markets at the German Economic Institute (IW), told Euronews.

“Germany had large export surpluses with the US, so we accumulated a lot of dollars. To keep exchange rates stable, we exchanged those dollars for gold. That’s how these reserves were built up.”

During the Cold War, it was also practical to store gold abroad, as the US was considered a safe place in case of conflict with the Soviet Union. Over the years, some gold has been repatriated. By 2017, 300 tonnes were brought back from New York, 380 tonnes from Paris, and 900 tonnes from London.

This was part of a Bundesbank plan, unveiled in 2013, to store half of Germany’s gold reserves in Germany from 2020 onwards.

Bringing in the gold treasure: What are the risks?

Strack-Zimmermann and other politicians and economists cite Trump’s unpredictable trade and foreign policy as the reason for moving the gold out of the US.

“Of course, there is always some risk when you keep assets abroad,” said Demary. For example, there is a storage risk if a break-in occurs. But this risk exists whether the gold is stored abroad or in Germany.

“Another possible scenario is that the US government, due to tight currency reserves, could prevent the gold from being transferred,” he explained.

To ensure the safety of gold holdings, the Bundesbank has had to make frequent trips to New York in the past to take an inventory.

“It makes sense to leave this gold in the US in case we have a banking crisis here and need to obtain dollars,” said Demary.

Retrieving the gold could not only be logistically complex, but also risky.

“The gold would have to be transported in armoured vehicles onto a ship, which would also need to be guarded, and then brought back to Frankfurt under security,” added Demary. “There could be robberies, the ship could sink, or the cargo could be seized.”

Is Strack-Zimmermann’s demand pure populism?

Is Strack-Zimmermann’s demand pure symbolic politics? “I think so,” said the economist. “Perhaps it was a political move in response to the tariff threats, saying, ‘We’re bringing our gold back now.’”

According to the economist, it is also possible that Strack-Zimmermann estimated the magnitude of this gold value to be somewhat greater than it really is. In any case, the gold is currently safe in New York, even if Trump wanted to use it to exert pressure on Germany.

“The Federal Reserve is actually independent in its monetary policy. The US government cannot simply intervene. They would have to change laws first,” explained Dr Demary.

Even in the absolute worst case, if the US refused to release the gold, there would still be the option to go to court and enforce its return or receive compensation in dollars, said Demary.

“You have to weigh up the pros and cons and I would say the advantages of leaving the gold in the US outweigh the disadvantages,” he told Euronews.

Jan. 31 (UPI) — Danish military veterans and others staged a protest march against U.S. President Donald Trump‘s recent comments regarding NATO members and Greenland.

Trump criticized the amount of support the United States received from NATO allies during recent conflicts, and many veterans and others in Denmark took to the streets on Saturday to show their displeasure.

One protester, Danish Lance Cpl. Soren Teigen, said only the president is responsible for the comments.

“I don’t blame American soldiers in any way — we’ve fought side by side, and we still do,” Teigen told The New York Times. “But when the president says something like this, of course it hurts.”

Trump earlier accused NATO allies of shying away from fighting after sending their troops to Afghanistan but allegedly keeping them away from the front lines.

Officials with Danish Veterans & Veteran Support took exception to the president’s comments.

“Denmark has always stood side by side with the USA, and we have shown up in the world’s crisis zones when the USA has asked us to,” the group said in a prepared statement.

“We feel let down and ridiculed by the Trump administration, which is deliberately disregarding Denmark’s combat side by side with the USA,” it added.

Many veterans and other Danes also are unhappy with the president’s efforts to annex or otherwise control Greenland.

Hundreds of Danish military veterans on Saturday quietly marched to outside the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, where some placed 44 small Danish flags in planters located nearby.

The flags are to commemorate the 44 Danish military personnel who died in Afghanistan.

U.S. Embassy staff members were unaware of the flags’ meaning and initially removed them, which further upset many Danes.

Upon learning what the flags represented, the embassy staff left alone any that remained or were replaced.

Hey, Greenland — feeling a little low after President Trump’s ongoing attempts to buy or otherwise acquire the land under your feet? Neil Young can fix that framework!

Just keep “Rockin’ in the Free World.” For free. Forever.

The 80-year-old “hippie at heart” on Tuesday granted “our friends in Greenland” a year of free access to his music catalog, hoping that its contents “ease some of the unwarranted stress and threats you are experiencing from our unpopular and hopefully temporary government.”

(Of course, all U.S. administrations, even Trump’s, are effectively temporary, given the whole “elections every four years” thing. That should ease some stress right there.)

“It is my sincere wish for you to be able to enjoy all of my music in your beautiful Greenland home, in its highest quality,” Young wrote on his blog. “This is an offer of Peace and Love. All the music i have made during the last 62 years is yours to hear.” It’s unclear whether he’s giving away the middle-tier “Rust” subscription, which is just a penny under $45 a year, or the top-notch “Patron” subscription, which adds unspecified extras and a promise of priority treatment for $99.99 annually. The basic level subscription, at $24.99 a year, doesn’t provide the “highest quality” sound or the “music films” his message promises.

Greenlanders who take him up on his offer can renew for free annually as long as they stay put on the island. Young’s team will need cellphone numbers with the Greenland country code: 299.

Young said he hoped other “organizations” would follow in his footsteps.

He does have a “Heart of Gold,” after all.

BRUSSELS — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte insisted on Monday that Europe is incapable of defending itself without U.S. military support and would have to more than double current military spending targets to be able to do so.

“If anyone thinks here … that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming. You can’t,” Rutte told EU lawmakers in Brussels. Europe and the United States “need each other,” he said.

Tensions are festering within NATO over President Trump’s renewed threats in recent weeks to annex Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.

Trump also said that he was slapping new tariffs on Greenland’s European backers, but later dropped his threats after a “framework” for a deal over the mineral-rich island was reached, with Rutte’s help. Few details of the agreement have emerged.

The 32-nation military organization is bound together by a mutual defense clause, Article 5 of NATO’s founding Washington treaty, which commits every country to come to the defense of an ally whose territory is under threat.

At NATO’s summit in The Hague in July, European allies — with the exception of Spain — plus Canada agreed to Trump’s demand that they invest the same percentage of their economic output on defense as the United States within a decade.

They pledged to spend 3.5% of gross domestic product on core defense, and a further 1.5% on security-related infrastructure – a total of 5% of GDP – by 2035.

“If you really want to go it alone,” Rutte said, “forget that you can ever get there with 5%. It will be 10%. You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros.”

France has led calls for Europe to build its “strategic autonomy,” and support for its stance has grown since the Trump administration warned last year that its security priorities lie elsewhere and that the Europeans would have to fend for themselves.

Rutte told the lawmakers that without the United States, Europe “would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the U.S. nuclear umbrella. So, hey, good luck!”

WASHINGTON — The crisis touched off by President Trump’s demand to take ownership of Greenland appears over, at least for now. But the United States and its European allies still face a larger long-term challenge: Can their shaky marriage be saved?

At 75 years old, NATO has survived storms before, from squabbles over trade to estrangement over wars in Vietnam and Iraq. France, jealous of its independence, even pulled its armed forces out of NATO for 43 years.

But diplomats and foreign policy scholars warn that the current division in the alliance may be worse, because Trump’s threats on Greenland convinced many Europeans that the United States has become an unreliable and perhaps even dangerous ally.

The roots of the crisis lie in the president’s frequently expressed disdain for alliances in general and NATO in particular.

Long before Trump arrived in the White House, presidents from both parties complained that many NATO countries weren’t pulling their weight in military spending.

But earlier presidents still considered the alliance an essential asset to U.S. foreign policy and the cornerstone of a system that prevented war in Europe for most of a century.

Trump has never seemed to share that view. Even after he succeeded in persuading NATO members to increase their defense spending, he continued to deride most allies as freeloaders.

Until last year, he refused to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to help defend other NATO countries, the core principle of the alliance. And he reserved the right to walk away from any agreement, military or commercial, whenever it suited his purpose.

In the two-week standoff over Greenland, he threatened to seize the island from NATO member Denmark by force, an action that would have violated the NATO treaty.

When Britain, Germany and other countries sent troops to Greenland, he threatened to hit them with new tariffs, which would have violated a trade deal Trump made only last year.

Both threats touched off fury in Europe, where governments had spent most of the past year making concessions to Trump on both military spending and tariffs. When Trump backed down, the lesson some leaders drew was that pushing back worked better than playing nice.

“We do prefer respect to bullies,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.

“Being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said.

The long-term danger for the United States, scholars said, is that Europeans might choose to look elsewhere for military and economic partners.

“They just don’t trust us,” said Richard N. Haass, a former top State Department official in the George W. Bush administration.

“A post-American world is fast emerging, one brought about in large part by the United States taking the lead in dismantling the international order that this country built,” he wrote last week.

Some European leaders, including Macron, have argued that they need to disentangle from the United States, build military forces that can defend against Russia, and seek more reliable trade partners, potentially including India and China.

But decoupling from the United States would not be easy, fast or cheap. Europe and Canada still depend on the United States for many of their defense needs and as a major market for exports.

Almost all NATO countries have pledged to increase defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product, but they aren’t scheduled to reach that goal until 2035.

Meanwhile, they face the current danger of an expansionist Russia on their eastern frontier.

Not surprisingly for a group of 30 countries, Europe’s NATO members aren’t united on the question. Macron has argued for more autonomy, but others have called for caution.

“Despite all the frustration and anger of recent months, let us not be too quick to write off the transatlantic partnership,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at Davos.

“I think we are actually in the process of creating a stronger NATO,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb. “As long as we keep doing that, slowly and surely we’ll be just fine.”

They argue, in effect, that the best strategy is to muddle through — which is what NATO and Europe have done in most earlier crises.

The strongest argument for that course may be the uncertainty and disorder that would follow a rapid erosion — or worse, dissolution — of an alliance that has helped keep its members safe for most of a century.

The costs of that outcome, historian Robert Kagan warned recently, would be borne by Americans as well as Europeans.

If the United States continues to weaken its commitments to NATO and other alliances, he wrote in the Atlantic, “The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies, and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less. … If Americans thought defending the liberal world order was too expensive, wait until they start paying for what comes next.”