Reykjavik, Iceland - Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Iceland on Monday in a bid to press US interests in the Arctic mere weeks after securing a pact with Greenland.
Rubio will meet with officials in Reykjavik "to discuss economic and security collaboration," the US State Department said in a statement announcing the trip.
The lightning visit, as symbolic as it is political, comes after the US signed a security pact with Denmark and Greenland in late September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The agreement has theoretically put an end to President Donald Trump's threats to buy or even annex Greenland, which soured relations with the EU. It hasn't, however, stopped Trump from making jokes about such an annexation on social media.
Under the pact, Washington plans to establish two new military bases on Greenland, drawing the autonomous Danish territory further into US orbit.
With competition on the rise in the Arctic, Iceland has regained status as a strategic player, even as the island continues to rely heavily on the US for its security.
At the start of September, Trump sparked new controversy by sharing an AI-generated map that appeared to show all of North America, the Caribbean, Greenland, and Iceland as "the United States of America."
In response, Reykjavik summoned the US ambassador "to convey a clear message that the image was wholly inappropriate," Iceland's foreign ministry said in a statement to AFP.
Icelanders had voted in late August 52.8% to 47.2% against resuming negotiations on joining the European Union, which have been frozen since 2013.
Since gaining independence in 1944, Iceland has never had a military. It relies on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for its security and on a bilateral defense pact signed with the US in 1951.