Rubio visits Iceland to shore up Trump's Arctic strategy

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Iceland Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir re-enact a famous photo of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik’s Hofdi House.

On the heels of the Greenland deal signed last month during the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Iceland on Tuesday to meet with the prime minister, his counterpart and other officials to discuss ongoing ties between the two countries as the Trump administration continues its focus on the Arctic region. 

During meetings with Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir and other Iceland officials, Rubio said the U.S. was open to growing the security cooperation that already exists between the two nations, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“There’s interest in doing more together,” Rubio said. He also lauded Iceland for helping “the U.S. military to project power using your land, your air, your sea, giving us a critical outpost for monitoring clandestine behavior and deterring our adversaries.” The Trump administration has put a renewed focus on the Arctic region during the president's second term. Twenty years ago, the U.S. discontinued its military presence there as foreign policy priorities shifted. 

“The reality of it is the world has changed over the last 20 years. Our focus has changed. There’s a lot of focus on the Arctic,” Rubio, who visited a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon crew at Keflavik Air Base, said. The aircraft is used to patrol the North Atlantic and detect adversarial submarines. 

Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir downplayed any tensions that may have bubbled up between Iceland and the U.S. amid Trump's tough rhetoric on acquiring Greenland. “We are looking forward, not backwards,” she said when asked about Trump posting an image of Iceland on social media that showed the small island nation covered by the American flag. 

“We’ve been trying to get people’s eyes up north for a really long time,” she told The Wall Street Journal. “Let’s not be naive about Russia, about China, about everything that’s going on.”

In fact, Rubio and Gunnarsdóttir met at Reykjavik’s Hofdi House, the famous site of a 1986 summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. That meeting is remembered as the beginning of the end of the Cold War. The two even re-enacted a famous photo of Reagan and Gorbachev shaking hands outside the front door of the building.

Iceland, while a founding NATO member, doesn't have its own military. “We have tremendous respect for the people. We have respect for the country in the role it plays, and it has for a very long time,” Rubio said, according to The Associated Press. Below, watch Rubio's remarks after the visit.