Marco Rubio in Iceland to strengthen American cooperation in the Arctic

The head of American diplomacy Marco Rubio is going to Iceland on Monday to continue the United States' offensive in the Arctic after the Greenland agreement. In Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital, he is scheduled to meet with officials “to discuss economic and security cooperation,” the US State Department said in a statement announcing his visit. This express trip, as symbolic as it is political, comes in the wake of the security agreement on Greenland, signed around ten days ago on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

This agreement put an end, at least for the moment, to a saga which had soured relations with the European Union. European diplomats do not hide the fact that the Greenland affair, which Donald Trump had threatened to buy or even annex, had shaken confidence in the American partner. As part of this agreement, Washington plans to install two new military bases, further anchoring the autonomous Danish territory in the orbit of the United States. With rising tensions in the Arctic, Iceland has regained major strategic importance, but the island, lacking an army, continues to rely largely on the United States to ensure its security.

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A controversial map published by Donald Trump

At the beginning of September, the American president sparked a new controversy with a “map” covering all of North America, Mexico, the Caribbean, Greenland and Iceland with the United States flag. Iceland reacted by summoning the American ambassador to Reykjavik “to make it clear to him that this image was totally inappropriate.” Marco Rubio's trip also comes after a referendum at the end of August, where Icelanders rejected by 52.8% to 47.2% a resumption of the island's accession negotiations to the European Union, frozen since 2013.

The last visit by a US Secretary of State to Iceland dates back to that of Antony Blinken in 2021. Since its independence in 1944, Iceland has never had an army and it relies for its security on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well as on a bilateral defense agreement concluded with the United States in 1951. The United States does not have a permanent base there, but it intend to establish their domination of access routes to the Arctic, coveted by Russia and China. Donald Trump's insistent aims on Greenland - whose coast is located less than 300 kilometers away and which the American president had confused in January 2026 with Iceland - have shaken some certainties about their relationship, without calling it into question.

The Greek ally

After Iceland, Marco Rubio will travel to Athens mid-week to participate in a “strategic dialogue” with Greece, which is a member of NATO, notably concerning regional and energy security, according to the State Department. The wars in Iran and Ukraine have highlighted the fragility of energy supply routes and Greece is positioning itself to be a key hub in southeastern Europe, particularly for the transport of natural gas. Athens is also the cradle of Western democracy and Marco Rubio might want to take the opportunity to return to his speech given in Munich last February, in which he spoke of the decline of the West, which he considered particularly threatened by massive immigration.