‘If we’re already on the hook for having to do that, then we might as well have more control over what happens there,’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has doubled down on President Donald Trump’s remarks about buying Greenland, saying the issue is vital to U.S. national interest.
“This is not a joke,” he said in his first media appearance on Jan. 30 since taking up the post. “This is not about acquiring land for the purpose of acquiring land.”
“This is in our national interests, and it needs to be solved,” he said on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
Trump, in early January, said that taking control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, is necessary for “protecting the free world” and wouldn’t rule out using military or economic coercion to achieve the goal.
“He just speaks bluntly and frankly with people,” Rubio said of Trump. The president, he said, is “a businessman who is involved in politics, not a politician involved in politics,” and therefore “approaches these issues from a transactional business point of view.”
“He is not going to begin what he views as a negotiation or a conversation by taking … leverage off the table,” Rubio said.
The United States has raised concerns about Greenland as the Chinese regime steps up its efforts to bolster commercial and military capabilities in the Arctic.
A July 2024 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that the region is rich in minerals and holds nearly 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about one-fifth of the world’s recoverable oil and gas reserves.
Greenland houses a U.S. military base, Pituffik Space Base, which plays a key role in missile defense and satellite communication.
Rubio noted that with the ice melting, shipping lanes through the Arctic will become increasingly navigable.
“We need to be able to defend that,” he said on “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
Trump recently sounded the alarm about the Panama Canal, one of the first stops in Rubio’s upcoming weekend trip to Central America.
Beijing has exercised considerable influence there. In 2017, it successfully got Panama to break diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a self-ruling island the regime asserts as part of its own. Months later, Panama became the first Latin American country to join the Belt and Road Initiative, a global Chinese infrastructure project aimed at advancing Beijing’s geopolitical and economic interests.
A subsidiary of Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings controls ports adjacent to the Panama Canal, which Rubio said the regime could exploit in times of conflict.
Every company operating from mainland China or Hong Kong, now under strict Chinese control, has to “do whatever the government tells them,” Rubio said.
“If the government in China, in a conflict, tells them to shut down the Panama Canal, they will have to,“ he said. ”And in fact, I have zero doubt that they have contingency planning to do so. That is a direct threat.”
Rubio said it’s “completely realistic to believe the Chinese will eventually—maybe even in the short term—try to do in Greenland what they have done at the Panama Canal and in other places.” Chinese authorities may install facilities under the cover of a Chinese company to get access to the Arctic and potentially send naval vessels over during a war, a scenario he said is “completely unacceptable.”
While Panama’s president declared it impossible to negotiate over the canal’s ownership, Greenland’s prime minister recently signaled his openness to discussing U.S. interests in the Arctic island, though he also emphasized Greenland’s desire to remain independent.
Denmark on Jan. 27 unveiled a $2.05 billion package to boost its military presence in the Arctic, citing “serious challenges regarding security and defense in the Arctic and North Atlantic.”
The United States has multiple agreements with Denmark to protect Greenland from military threats.
“If we’re already on the hook for having to do that, then we might as well have more control over what happens there,” Rubio said.
“I know it’s a delicate topic for Denmark, but it’s, again, a national interest item for the United States.”