Discussions to resolve the future of Greenland have focused in recent days on proposals to increase NATO’s presence in the Arctic, give America a sovereign claim to pockets of Greenland’s territory and block potentially hostile adversaries from mining the island’s minerals.

Those elements, described by eight senior Western security and diplomatic officials, offer the fullest picture yet of the contours of a potential Greenland compromise that President Trump announced on Wednesday without details. His move appeared to at least temporarily defuse an American-made trans-Atlantic crisis over the Danish territory.

Critically, the proposals under discussion would stop short of Mr. Trump’s goal of transferring ownership of all of Greenland to the United States from Denmark, according to the officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. The officials cautioned that many details have yet to be finalized.

It is unclear if these discussions will ultimately yield agreement over the territory. Denmark, which publicly opposes ceding ownership of any Greenlandic land, may not agree to the plans on the table. Still, the officials said they were hopeful that they could simultaneously address Mr. Trump’s stated concerns about securing the Arctic against possible threats from Russia and China, while holding to Europe’s “red line” that Greenland was not for sale.

To do that, the proposals would:

• Create a significant new NATO mission in the Arctic. Multiple officials have dubbed this mission “Arctic Sentry,” in a nod to similarly named NATO missions in the Baltic Sea and Eastern Europe that are meant to counter an increasingly aggressive Russia.

• Update a pact signed between Denmark and the United States in 1951. The pact gives the U.S. military wide access to Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, for operations including the construction and operation of military bases. American officials have said they are concerned that this access could be curbed or ended if Greenland were to obtain independence. NATO officials have discussed expanding the 1951 pact with a new agreement that would effectively create pockets of American soil in the territory.

• Such an agreement would likely be modeled on a “sovereign base area” agreement in Cyprus, where Britain’s military bases are regarded as British territory. That would give the United States greater control over the land than it currently exerts over U.S. embassy sites. Mr. Trump and other officials have said that territory in Greenland could prove important for his plans to build a so-called Golden Dome missile defense system for the United States, which could include components stationed in Greenland.

• Restrict non-NATO member countries, particularly Russia and China, from obtaining rights to mine the rare-earth minerals that lie deep under Greenland’s ice sheet.

All of those plans have been under discussion inside NATO over the last year, as a direct response to Mr. Trump’s stated ambitions. Since returning to the White House in 2025, Mr. Trump has described publicly, with increasing intensity, his desire to own Greenland. Denmark, with equal intensity, has insisted it would not sell, with Danish leaders saying that the island’s fate is up to Denmark and Greenland, not NATO. Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said on Thursday he was not in favor of giving the United States sovereignty over military bases there. “We are ready to discuss a lot of things,” Mr. Nielsen said, adding, “Sovereignty is a red line.”