US envoy Jeff Landry seeks sovereign bases as Denmark’s government collapses

Jeff Landry, Donald Trump's special envoy to Greenland, landed in Nuuk on 17 May without warning, two days before the business conference he was meant to attend. He arrived at a useful moment for Washington: Denmark had no functioning government, Greenland still had no investment screening law, and Europe was trying to secure access to Arctic minerals before the United States moved first.

For a small-state audience, the issue is familiar. Sovereignty is often tested less by formal declarations than by who controls the legal machinery, the money and the timetable. Greenland holds 25 of the EU's 34 designated critical minerals, including the largest rare earth deposits outside China. For now, those assets sit behind a door whose lock has not yet been fitted.

The Vacuum Landry Walked Into

Denmark has been without a functioning executive for more than seven weeks. After Mette Frederiksen failed to form a coalition, Troels Lund Poulsen was appointed royal investigator on 11 May with a 14-day deadline. No Danish minister attended the Future Greenland conference; only the Arctic ambassador was present. That leaves Greenland's Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen negotiating with Washington with little active cover from Copenhagen.

Nielsen's public line is firm, but his room for manoeuvre is narrow. "We are not for sale. We are not for the taking," he told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on 12 May. He also said he would not give up "not a postage stamp". Yet he confirmed that a larger US military presence is "part of the discussions." That gap, between rejecting territorial transfer and accepting expanded military use, is where Washington's leverage lies.

What Washington Actually Wants

The American position has moved beyond Trump's earlier talk of annexation into a more precise legal demand. Washington wants three new military bases at Narsarsuaq, Kangerlussuaq and a third undisclosed site, all designated as US sovereign territory. In practice, that would mean American enclaves where Danish and Greenlandic law would not apply, closer to Britain's Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus than to the usual arrangements for US bases in Germany or Japan.

Such an agreement would require either a Danish constitutional amendment or Greenlandic independence followed by a transfer of territory. Legal scholars see both routes as extremely difficult under the present legal order. But the demand itself does political work. Once Washington asks for sovereign territory, a deal that stops short of that can be presented as the reasonable middle ground.

Europe's Parallel Sprint

While Landry described his visit as a "trade mission", European governments had already started moving. France's trade minister Nicolas Forissier arrived two days earlier to sign a cooperation declaration on sustainable mining, with France's geological survey funding satellite mapping of Greenland's subsoil.

Germany chose a careful line. Chancellor Merz spoke privately with Trump on 15 May, avoiding a public clash, while sending four Eurofighters to the Arctic as a signal of solidarity with Denmark. The aircraft, rather than the phone call, were meant to be seen. Finland sent two liaison officers, a deployment its foreign ministry first described as a "misunderstanding" before confirming it was intentional.

NATO's Arctic Sentry operation, launched in February under Secretary General Rutte, gives this military activity a multilateral frame. Rutte put it plainly: "Coming from my talks with the American president, one work stream is what is now Arctic Sentry". The operation sits under Joint Force Command Norfolk, an American command. That gives Washington operational primacy through NATO structures, without having to win the sovereignty argument outright.

The Missing Lock on the Door

The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act, which sets binding 2030 targets for extraction and recycling, and the RESourceEU plan, which commits €3 billion for 2026, are Brussels' answer to the minerals race. But Greenland's investment screening law, which would allow Nuuk to block acquisitions in strategic sectors, was pulled from the spring parliamentary session and delayed until autumn. Until then, as Nielsen himself has acknowledged, there is no legal tool to identify or stop buyers acting on Washington's behalf.

A Canadian-Norwegian consortium has already secured mineral rights in Greenland's Quanefield corridor without screening. The European Court of Auditors warned in February that the EU is likely to miss its 2030 extraction targets. Greenland is now a test of institutional speed. Washington is acting in days. Europe is still working in plans measured in years.