LONDON — The British government is being urged to make a more visible show of support for Greenland in the face of continued threats from Donald Trump’s White House.

The U.S. president has escalated his rhetoric on the self-ruling Danish territory in recent days, telling reporters aboard Air Force One: “I’d love to make a deal with them. It’s easier. But one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

The U.K. has been among several countries to speak up in Greenland’s defense, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivering a rare rebuke to Trump by stressing that “the future of Greenland is for Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark.”

But senior figures from across the political spectrum are now calling on the U.K. government to do more to show it is serious about security in the region. They want Britain to make much better use of its existing military links in the High North, including through the British-led, multinational military partnership known as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF).

The U.K. helped found the 10-nation JEF in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea as a forum for resisting Russian influence and threats in the Arctic region.

“The PM should convene the leaders of the Joint Expeditionary Force to discuss Greenland and what further steps might be required to protect the High North and Arctic,” Ben Wallace, the former Conservative defense secretary, told POLITICO.

Calvin Bailey, a Labour MP and military veteran who sits on the House of Commons Defense Select Committee, said: “We must shift power by building genuine European solutions to the security problems the U.S. has highlighted.

“As a leader in the Joint Expeditionary Force and with the High North in our backyard, the U.K. has an opportunity to lead this shift — but only if resources and decisions start flowing within weeks, not years.”

A second Labour MP, Graeme Downie, said: “JEF is a model for how NATO countries can prepare and respond to specific threats and is a perfect example of how we can do more in the High North in particular.”

Starmer is expected to attend a meeting of JEF leaders in Finland during the first quarter of this year, according to a government official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The scheduled annual summit has not been specifically arranged in response to Trump’s threats, but the future of Greenland is expected to have increased salience during discussions about High North security. The same official added that while committing a greater British military presence to the region via NATO remains on the table, the Arctic flank could also be reinforced by increased monitoring, rather than sending extra troops.

Anthony Heron, research associate at the Arctic Institute think tank, said JEF’s potential role in Greenland had been “overlooked” and that focusing on NATO or the U.S.-Denmark relationship “misses the value of smaller, regionally focused groupings that can act quickly and politically coherently in the High North.”

He added that JEF is “one of the few frameworks where the U.K. already has influence and the trust of key Nordic and Baltic partners, yet it is still treated as a secondary tool rather than a core part of U.K. security policy.”

In an interview during a JEF exercise last year, U.K. Defence Secretary John Healey talked up the grouping as a tool to resist aggression against Arctic countries — at that point with reference to Russia.

“We’re the nations that can best assess the risks, best respond to the threats, and best get NATO connected to take this more seriously,” he said.

The Ministry of Defence was contacted for comment.