American action in relation to Greenland can happen within "weeks or months".
That's what Thomas Dans, who is US President Donald Trump's Arctic Commissioner, says in an interview with the American media USA Today.
It is not clear what exactly he means by action.
- This is a train journey with several stops. Things can move like an express train, skip the small stops and go straight to the main station.
- This is where President Trump wants to take it - at high speed, says Thomas Dans to the media.
Driver association
Thomas Dans is a businessman and in Trump's first election term was at the head of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission (USARC). He was appointed to this again in December 2025.
USARC describes itself as an independent federal research agency that advises the president and Congress on the Arctic.
In a post on LinkedIn from December, where Thomas Dans shares that he has been appointed as USARC chairman, Dans however writes that he must also "represent American business and industrial interests in the Arctic".
He also runs the association American Daybreak, which aims to strengthen the ties between the USA and Greenland.
Donald Trump has long expressed his desire to take over Greenland, and over the past few months the tensions between Denmark, Greenland and the USA have increased.
On Wednesday, Denmark and Greenland will meet with the United States at the White House. The Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, is hosting the meeting.
On behalf of the Commonwealth, Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (M) and Greenland's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vivian Motzfeldt, will participate.
Expect Trump to maintain ambition regarding Greenland
Thomas Dans tells USA Today that he does not expect Trump to drop his ambition to gain control of Greenland.
Trump has suggested that the US could buy Greenland from Denmark, which has been consistently rejected by both the Danish and Greenlandic sides.
US officials, all of whom spoke anonymously, recently told the Reuters news agency that the possibility of sending a larger sum of money to all Greenlanders to convince them to secede from Denmark has been discussed in the US government.
An amount of between 10,000 and 100,000 dollars per person has been on the table in the talks.
- It will take time to gain the trust of the Greenlandic people
According to USA Today, Thomas Dans says that although he believes that significant progress can be made in the negotiations or in relation to an agreement on Greenland sooner rather than later, he expects that it will take longer to complete a possible acquisition.
He adds, according to the media, that "things can happen quickly from a transactional point of view".
But there will be "a process to gain the trust and support of the Greenlandic people, and it will require time and an effort on the part of the United States".
Trump has not ruled out using US military to achieve the goal of control over Greenland.
But the probability remains small, Thomas Dans estimates according to USA Today, because "you can't invade when you're already there".
The US has an agreement with Denmark where they can station more soldiers on the island upon request. They have scaled back tremendously in the last decades and only have one base left.
/Ritzau/
