BRUSSELS: Nato said on Wednesday it had launched a mission to strengthen its presence in the Arctic, part of an effort to defuse severe tensions within the alliance prompted by US President Donald Trump’s push for the US to acquire Greenland.

The new mission, Arctic Sentry, will coordinate an increasing military presence of Nato allies in the region, including exercises such as Denmark’s Arctic Endurance on Greenland, the alliance’s military headquarters said in a statement.

“We will not only be able to leverage what we are doing much more effectively,” Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters at the headquarters in Brussels. “We will also be able to assess which gaps there are, which we have to fill. And, of course, we will fill them.”

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said that the German military will participate in the first stage of the mission with four Eurofighters and air-to-air refuelling capabilities.

“What will happen beyond that will be coordinated within Nato between the partners tomorrow and the day after tomorrow,” he said. Nato began planning for the mission after Trump and Rutte held talks in Davos last month at the height of the Greenland crisis, sparked by Trump’s insistence that the US had to own the territory, which is part of fellow Nato member Denmark.

Trump said the US needed Greenland for national security reasons, citing Greenland’s strategic location for detecting long-range missile strikes on the US. He declined to rule out taking Greenland by force and threatened to impose tariffs on Denmark and seven of its European partners.

Danish and other European leaders responded that the US already has a military base on Greenland and is able to add more under a 1951 agreement. Some European officials said they believed Trump was motivated primarily by a desire to expand US territory.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2026