Danish official says Greenland’s status ‘not negotiable’, Zelensky shares that U.S. security guarantees document for Ukraine is ‘100% ready”, and new national defense strategy shifts away from China.
1. Greenland and Denmark are drawing a hard line after President Donald Trump said the United States and NATO were discussing a future security framework involving the Arctic island, pushing back against any suggestion of outside control as Copenhagen accelerates military cooperation with NATO allies. The dispute now centers on Greenland—a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark that sits along critical transatlantic defense routes. Trump’s remarks last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos prompted swift responses from Danish and Greenlandic leaders, renewed alliance-level coordination, and confirmation that Denmark is expanding its military presence in and around Greenland while pressing NATO to take on a larger role in Arctic security. A Danish Defense Ministry spokesperson said in a statement to Military.com that Greenland’s status is not negotiable, and that any defense cooperation must operate within Denmark’s constitutional framework and existing NATO arrangements.
2. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that a U.S. security guarantees document for Ukraine is “100% ready” after two days of talks involving representatives from Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia. Speaking to journalists in Vilnius during a visit to Lithuania, Zelenskyy said Ukraine is waiting for its partners to set a signing date, after which the document would go to the U.S. Congress and Ukrainian parliament for ratification. Zelenskyy also emphasized Ukraine’s push for European Union membership by 2027, calling it an “economic security guarantee.” The Ukrainian leader described the talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, as likely the first trilateral format in “quite a long while” that included not only diplomats but military representatives from all three sides. The talks, which began on Friday and continued Saturday, were the latest aiming to end Russia’s nearly four-year full-scale invasion.
3. A new U.S. national defense strategy released Friday puts protection of the homeland and access to strategic terrain in the Western Hemisphere atop the military’s agenda, marking a shift from the Pentagon’s previous position that countering China was the Defense Department’s number one pacing threat. The Pentagon’s long-awaited new plan lines up with the White House’s National Security Strategy, released last month, and prioritizes border security, targeting drug traffickers and “fearlessly” defending “America’s interests across the hemisphere.” “We will guarantee U.S. military and commercial access to key terrain, especially the Panama Canal, Gulf of America, and Greenland,” the document states. “We will provide President Trump with credible military options to use against narco-terrorists wherever they may be.” The Pentagon said it will work with nearby allies and partners, such as neighbor and NATO ally Canada, and added “we will ensure that they respect and do their part to defend our shared interests.”
4. President Donald Trump said the U.S. used a secret weapon he called “The Discombobulator” to disable Venezuelan equipment when the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro. Trump also renewed his threat to conduct military strikes on land against drug cartels, including in Mexico. Trump made the comments in an interview Friday with the New York Post. The Republican president was commenting on reports that the U.S. had a pulsed energy weapon and said, “The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it.” He said the weapon made Venezuelan equipment “not work.” “They never got their rockets off. They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off,” Trump said in the interview. “We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked. They were all set for us.”
5. Seven Japanese American soldiers will be promoted to officer ranks in a solemn ceremony Monday, eight decades after they died fighting for the U.S. during World War II despite having been branded “enemy aliens.” The seven were students at the University of Hawaii and cadets in the Reserve Officer Training Corps, on track to become Army officers, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. They initially served in the Hawaii Territorial Guard, but soon after the attack the U.S. barred most Japanese Americans from service and deemed them enemy aliens. The seven cadets instead worked with a civilian labor battalion known as “Varsity Victory Volunteers,” which performed tasks such as digging ditches and breaking rocks, until American leaders in early 1943 announced the formation of a segregated Japanese American regiment. The seven were among those who joined the unit, known as the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
- Security