Flying to Greenland, Vance Is Visiting a Place That Doesn’t Want Him

Europe|Flying to Greenland, Vance Is Visiting a Place That Doesn’t Want Him

When he arrives in Greenland on Friday, Vice President JD Vance is not going to get much of a welcome from Greenlanders.

Mr. Vance will be the highest-ranking American official ever to visit the island.

But the government of Greenland never invited him and after all that President Trump has said about his desire to “get” the island, many Greenlanders don’t want Mr. Vance coming at all. Mr. Vance is scheduled to visit a remote American military base on the northern coast, far from any town.

The White House’s original plan was more ambitious. Usha Vance, the second lady, had announced that she was going to attend a famous dog sled race this weekend and see other cultural sites, in an effort to bring the United States and Greenland closer.

But the plan backfired. Protesters were gearing up to line the road from the airport in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. The island’s government blasted the visit as unwanted and “highly aggressive.” And the organizers of the dog sled race released a pointed statement saying they had never asked Ms. Vance to attend in the first place.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Vance took issue with this, saying she had received “multiple invitations.”

The White House responded by scaling back the trip to just a sweep by Mr. Vance, his wife and other officials through the remote Pituffik Space Base, an American missile defense station nearly a thousand miles away from where the protests were planned.

Greenland is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark that has been connected to Denmark for more than 300 years. The Danish government also strongly opposed the original plan, and on Thursday, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said, “There is no doubt that we are facing a difficult situation.”