Ridiculous state of affairs we're in- literal threatening hostile takeover as just another in the endless stream of distraction to keep from being held accountable for anything.
What does it take? Donald Trump asked NATO to help us invade and take Greenland. The Euros that met with him said 'it's time to take up drinking' after the meeting.
What line is too far for you? This is our President doing this stuff, you act like it's some stupid kid off on the sidelines.
Before you argue some BS, the USA has WAY LESS soldiers stationed in Greenland than we did during the cold war. It isn't a serious concern, and if it was, we could...staff to the levels we previously did and that were welcome to be in Greenland.
I am starting to believe that this might actually be the objective. There is no other logical reason for the US to act this way (not that anything under Trump is logical anyway). They already have full access to Greenland for defence purposes (or pretty much any other purpose) under NATO. It's no secret that Trump is Russian aligned and that he has a intolerance (hatred?) for Europe.
There is no mystery here. Trump clearly explained his motivation in a recent interview:
"Donald Trump Says He Wants 'Ownership' of Greenland Because It's 'Psychologically Important for Me'"
He’a a rapist and does not take no for an answer. That’s it. That’s *really* it. It’s yet another score to be settled from his first term in office. Same with his Nobel Prize fixation.
I think a lot of people are having a really hard time grappling with the fact that the leader of a superpower is a literal maniac.
> Greenland is important piece of land for US security - and the US has eyed it for a long time.
The US have the ability to do everything up to and including basing troops and missiles there, today, under treaty so it's unclear what is meant by the US need for "security."
That's what I don't get. We had a solid relationship with our fellow NATO country and that relationship left all the room in the world for collaboration, including what you're describing.
We're trashing that relationship not just with Denmark but with NATO. What gains do we see that can offset that?
I guess this is not just a rhetorical question, but what is more secure than stable relationships with existing allies?
All interesting questions that fall short unless you’re willing to assume the American president will act deliberately in the national interest. I feel we’ve clearly moved past that point.
The US can, and always has been able to, maintain its security interests in Greenland without trying to forcibly take it. The calls for doing so now are not about US security.
Well of course, Greenland is a massive welfare drain, trying to forcibly take it when you already get to use it for defense is would be like marrying the $20 hooker for the 'free' services. You wouldn't buy the cow when you already get the milk cheaper than the farmer.
The reason Trump wants Denmark is for vanity purposes.
If Denmark actually can shitcan the place while making it look like a victory they would definitely do it. Although the only way I think they can pull that off is by convincing Greenland to become independent and then the US swooping in when Greenland realizes their free money hydrant has turned off and they need a new sugar daddy because all those minerals they're sitting on aren't actually worth a dime unless someone is dumb enough to try and use them in one of the most hostile inhabited environments on earth to mine them.
There are some truths in what you are saying. But I don't think Denmark wants to give up Greenland, I think they are ok with the money they pay (around $600 million per year). Denmark is a rich country so money is not a big deal.
The Danes would have allowed all those things without the annexation, think new sub pens for our Virginias, Space Force base expansions and so on. There is simply no need to piss off an ally with this nonsense.
I think the best outcome would really be the US' current allies are just waiting until trump goes and he doesn't break too much and the new person goes back to a more stable posture.
It's probably a more realistic outcome however is that no one really trusts the US any more and trump has just hastened the decline as the EU looks inward more, and other areas move more quickly to get support from china.
I hope they are more long-sighted than that. They did the same thing with Bush II's "with us or against us" rhetoric and actions. Appease the POTUS while he's there and hope the next one is a little better. Obama was more conciliatory to our allies' needs, but the cycle has been like this since 2001. The US is getting less stable instead of more stable, so I don't know what Europe is hoping for.
> The US is getting less stable instead of more stable
> I hope they are more long-sighted than that
Quoting you out of order, but when one puts all three together what do you believe the long-term plan should be? America is, by your own admission, becoming less stable, and currently threatening annexation of multiple countries. What exactly do you think "less stable" looks like after this?
> I think the best outcome would really be the US' current allies are just waiting until trump goes and he doesn't break too much and the new person goes back to a more stable posture.
This seems to be what most of the EU leaders think. However, it's not plausible that Trump is an aberration, given that he's been elected twice. Europe/EU/the West need to understand that the US populace doesn't seem to care about their alliances any more.
And this is fine, that's their total democratic right, but there's going to be really large downstream consequences over time.
> I think the best outcome would really be the US' current allies are just waiting until trump goes and he doesn't break too much and the new person goes back to a more stable posture.
I’m afraid that ship has sailed. This was the general feeling during Bidens’ presidency. After Trump’s reelection, it’s clear that the USA is permanently one swing state away from electing a tyrant.
I think the rest of the world will need to see a widely held conviction of never again and fundamental changes to America’s democratic system, before trust can be rebuilt.
Luckily there are other defensive alliances in place.
The broad advantage of having a "felt of society" —mutually overlapping circles— as opposed to a "fabric of society", is that the latter is much easier to tear.
Not well developed would be to our advantage if the casus foederis were in a grey area.
(It's somewhat :lolsob: to note that Thucydides already distinguished between "stated reasons" and "real reasons" behind a conflict; remember "Remember the Maine!"
EDIT: looks like there may not even be a need to be part of an existing mutual defence alliance; sending troops to take part in Operation Arctic Endurance might suffice for an Art 51 response to invasion?
And what will we Europeans do if Denmark triggers article 5. A single US carrier group could stop all commercial traffic to Europe and a single USA submarine could keep the parody of navies we have in check.
Why? Because even if Oceania, Rasia, and Eastasia want to play 1984 sphere of influence games, we can probably position ourselves neutrally, to trade freely with all of them — and whenever one has designs on us, then the other two would naturally be forced to counter.
Somehow, "deep state" is always there as the god of Trump's failures. The concept of "deep state" should be excised from conversation now that we can clearly see the unilateral rule of this administration. At this point, I wish there was a deep state, but unfortunately there's just Trump. His personal idiosyncrasies explain things much better than any conspiracy theory ever could.
No, there is a deep state. It's people who are in the government, who hold to the constitution and the rule of law, rather than implementing whatever wild idea Trump currently proposes that is illegal and/or unconstitutional, and who therefore work internally to block a bunch of Trump's plans.
Or at least they must feel like the deep state to Trump. It's just that, for those who like the rule of law, those people are the good guys.
Nonsense. What "deep stater" would think taking de jure control of Greenland would be worth destroying NATO and transatlantic relations broadly, especially when the US already has access to it for military purposes?
It's stupider than any notion of the deep state. It's rich billionaire assholes like Ronald Lauder that pushed stuff like the annexation of Greenland because they have money-induced rotting brains and have never encountered pushback for anything in their lives. And if there's anything Trump loves more than gaudy fake gold, it's trying to be one of the big shots.
However, one of Putin's aims is to destroy NATO and the U.S. attacking Greenland would likely lead to that. Also, Trump seems keen to flex military might (despite his FIFA Peace award), so it's not wise to ignore threats that he's made more than once.
It often makes more sense to view Trump's behaviour as him being a Putin plant to destroy the USA and weaken Europe. I'd guess that Putin has a lot of incriminating evidence of Trump being involved in dubious sexual acts.
"It is just Trump being Trump" maybe made sense as an argument in March of 2017. Trump has done so much incredibly crazy shit that "well he is just saying that and isn't serious" is the most unbelievable political statement possible.
The US would erupt in protest if the American military laid a finger on any <checks notes> Danish or other NATO-allied troops.
Indeed, there would likely be a great deal of backlash in the military itself.
This is not what Americans want. It cannot even be said that those who voted for Our National Embarrassment want this, because He Who Shall Not Be Named ran on an isolationist, xenophobic platform that pledged "no new wars" and that he would be the "president of peace".
"Zero backlash" isn't fully accurate. You could complain about the focus of current protests in the United States being in other areas, but that's what happens when masked thugs are brutalizing and abducting your neighbors under color of authority.
All signs except for polls showing a large majority of Americans opposing the idea[1], opposition from within Trump's own party[2], and resistance from the military[3], for example... This Greenland nonsense is Trump's private obsession. The only Americans supporting it are Trump loyalists who would just as readily support a plan to blow up the moon if Trump started yammering on about that instead.
They should also be arming the population to make an occupation impossible. This is assuming they have mandatory military training in Denmark and people know how to use automatic weapons, grenades, etc.
If the would-be invaders were "normal", they'd not go near populated areas. They'd just set up base wherever they wanted to extract resources or whatever.
But the US already had excellent relations with Denmark and could probably have gotten mining rights or whatever they wanted without this weird display of power.
The huge downside to that would be it would quickly demonstrate how incredibly expensive, slow and uncertain such mining operations would be.
I must conclude the annexation of Greenland is mostly a play for the US domestic audience. Very similar to Russia - Ukraine. Maybe a way to put pressure on Canada too.
A number of my Canadian friends are of the opinion that if the US takes Greenland, Canada will be the next acquisition target. I really, really wish I could argue against that notion.
You can buy a rifle like a hammer in Greenland. It has probably the loosest gun control for bolt action arms of any relatively well off country, including looser than the US as there is no background check (nor licensing) for commercial sales.
- There are only 57k people Greenland. A portion (6%) of which are already friendly to the idea of joining the US, the undecideds are 9%.
- How many converts to the deal would you get if you actually dangled a $100k per person lump sum (Literally this is a tenth of what the federal government claims it has saved closing USAID)? I assume a few. Maybe quite a few. Add to that an Alaska style ongoing PFD that paid out annually. That’s a tasty carrot.
No takers to the deal? Wild, ok though…so we fight instead of fattening the bank accounts. How many will be willing to pull a trigger and risk certain death if they do? Let’s be generous and call it a third of the population (basically half of the hardliners).
But…realize that only 65% of the population are between 13 and 65. So you are talking about maybe 12k people who might be willing and could effectively take up arms. Bear in mind due to disperse population centers…the largest single concentration of resistance would be about 5k people. Let’s go ahead and add in the entire Danish active duty military (17k people).
29k people with 40% of them being civilians with minimal training…against the might of the US military. That seems like terrible odds.
But what about NATO? NATO is pragmatic. It’s highly likely that every other NATO member would decide to just stay out of the conflict because they would rather have a NATO with the US and without Denmark than the other way around.
If we were interested in buying it out from under Denmark, we could have done that before souring relations with some of our strongest allies. If we are only interested in using it for strategic military purposes, we already have effectively unchecked ability to set up bases and such.
I can buy that Greenland valuable to the US for geopolitical reasons. I can't understand what about the status quo of "we get to put our military here, and our close ally Denmark can run the civilian stuff" was so terrible that we needed to undermine our allies' and enemies' confidence in us to seize it.
> they would rather have a NATO with the US and without Denmark than the other way around.
I'm not so sure about that. The US has successfully alienated pretty much everybody that used to think well of us. We now represent a threat to them. We have lost a huge amount of goodwill and respect. Why would they prefer us over Denmark? Because we have big guns that we're willing to use against them? That's all the more reason to distance themselves from us.
Alternative? You take the money and realize that you are not really going to be under a hostile nation at all, you achieved a better benefactor, thats all. That you will be likely be a lot like Marshall Islands, Palau, and Micronesia. A fully sovereign state that allows the US access to your land for defense purposes and get some other economic perks as well. Bring in some companies to harvest your mineral resources and enjoy the wealth that a mineral rich country with only 57k citizens can imbue on its people.
> you are not really going to be under a hostile nation at all
The US is being overtly hostile, though. We're even threatening nations who should be allies with military invasion. Who would look at that behavior and think "yeah, but they'll behave differently once they pay us?"
> allows the US access to your land for defense purposes
We already had that with Greenland without threatening them with violence or taking their country.
> Bring in some companies to harvest your mineral resources and enjoy the wealth
This is a thing that they could already do if they wished it. As of yet, they don't wish it.
When a bully is threatening you, the very worst thing you can do is to give in to the bully. Even if the bully would totally win in a fight. I suspect most nations understand this.
> When a bully is threatening you, the very worst thing you can do is to give in to the bully
Agreed in principle, but in this case there are two bullies to worry about which changes that equation.
You can choose to align with the bigger tougher bully who is periodically reasonable, has a lot of shared values, and generally has been historically friendly to you. They only occasionally get grumpy and have to be placated. This alignment has, can, and will protect against the other bully.
Or…you can chose to not align with them because they went and got grumpy again and the consequence of that is they will just ignore you when the other bully comes calling to kick your ass.
Factor in that you can’t align with the other bully at all because they have never ever been friendly or reasonable to you. They also don’t have hardly any shared values. They cant protect you from the other bigger tougher bully anyway. So its a moot point.
At the end of the day you are faced with a sort of global political version of Pascal’s Wager.
> you can chose to not align with them because they went and got grumpy again
But we didn't just "get grumpy again". We've been actively telling and showing our allies that we're their enemy. That they have another enemy as well is certainly a factor, but it doesn't mean that they will treat us as if we're their allies. We're in the process of burning that bridge, and they can reasonably expect that if they submit to us, they won't come out well for it.
What it means is that they have to distance themselves from us as much as they can. And it shows the nations that would otherwise be friendly to us and that we aren't currently targeting that they need to do the same as well.
> We've been actively telling and showing our allies that we're their enemy
In my opinion that is an exaggeration. Trump has certainly been pressing US interests (as he sees them) and sometimes those interests may not fully align with what some of our allies want. Conversely, sometimes that happens in reverse too, yet we tend to work things out in the end. This will too.
> What it means is that they have to distance themselves from us as much as they can.
Another way of saying that would be “they need to stop being dependent on the US as much as they can.” I am sure any sovereign state would really want that as a goal.
What's the point of a defense treaty with a partner that has demonstrated itself to be completely untrustworthy? Or would you describe a potential betrayal of Denmark in some other terms?
> What's the point of a defense treaty with a partner that has demonstrated itself to be completely untrustworthy?
Some NATO member states until recently were actively avoiding meeting their defense spending commitments as agreed to in the treaty. Would that indicate that they were untrustworthy or unreliable?
> Also, it's spending rather than funding.
Care to explain the difference when it comes to being ready to fight a war?
You responded to my question about the guy that shits on the floor with a question about a guy who breathes loud. Why would I bother addressing your questions?
You are calling someone “untrustworthy” who by their actions so far…hasn’t been. Rhetoric is just words. Not abiding by the terms of your treaty, intentionally…is action.
So your analogy should probably be rewritten to be more like A guy who says he might shit on the floor vs the guy with skid marks in his drawers”
Thank god there are no recent, decades long, examples of the might of the US military having issues with small populations of underequipped people willing to defend their homes from them as an aggressor.
The only language Trump and Putin speak is blunt power. (Except Trump also responds well to flattery. I doubt you'd get very far with Putin speaking that language.)
There is certainty, however, in cost in sending troops to Denmark.
So it allows US to sap the resources of the adversary, making it even more expensive to hold Denmark. And that is ultimately the goal, because the more pain in the ass and expensive it is for Denmark to hold Greenland, the quicker there will be for pressure for Greenland to become independent.
And independence is only a hop, skip, and jump away from foreign influence; given that Greenland is indefensible without alliance and economically heavily subsidized.
Who said anything about actually invading? I'm talking about the threat of invading to make it cost Denmark even more than it currently does to hold. The US doesn't need to invade, only create a bluff to make it more painful to hold it.
And no, 99% of countries on the planet do not get 10-15k of outside subsidies per resident.
Also I think you are ignoring nuance on the importance of alliance; the population density and population is incredibly low and they are situated quite close to the US. The US has disproportionately strong-armed virtually every nation around it of similar size/strength; that's why central America and the Caribbean are chalk full of stories of US meddling. It's not similar to places like Brazil where an invasion of a world power would still cost an adversary a lot more than they bargain for in ground losses even without alliance even if the adversary would doubtlessly win a clear victory. They are far weaker at the negotiation table than, say, Germany, when in comes to foreign influence.
> So it allows US to sap the resources of the adversary
Considering we provide the same amount of benefits to all the citizens in our kingdom, the cost of sending a few extra soldiers up there to accommodate all the other EU troops coming up there... well... you wouldn't even notice it on our national budget. Hell, with how things are going with everyone looking to turn down their dependency on US tech, the Microsoft licenses savings in our public sector will be absolutely enormous.
There is massive public support for defending Greenland though. So I'm not sure cost will ever be an issue for us. Not that we realistically could defend Greenland if the US invaded.
I just can’t imagine NATO countries not strongly pressuring Denmark to make a deal before any sort of military action was even close to actually happening. And knowing Trump, it might not take US ownership either, it might just come down to just the right deal that scratches Trumps itch for rare earth minerals and ability to protect against the perceived Russia threats. Perhaps something like a FAS status.
The reality is this…Is choosing to challenge and not placate Trump control really worth risking losing $980B per year from the military budget designed to defend Europe from Russia? My guess is no.
What sort of deal woul they be pressuring us to enter? One where USA has basically free reign to do whatever they want in Greenland militarily? Because we already have that deal. One where US companies can enter agreements with Greenland to extract minerals? Because we already have that. One which blocks Russian interests in Greenland? Because we've been in a pseudo war with Russia for a while, with them seizing Danish assets and companies in Russia. So it would be unthinkable to allow them any sort of presence in Greenland. If the US was so concerned about security in Greenland it's sort of weird that they've gone from 20ish bases to just 1 over the past few decades.
As far as losing an ally goes... We already did that. EU is being diplomatic because we hope the USA comes to their senses, and because why wouldn't we? But internally everything is shifting away from US reliance because nobody actually belives USA would show up to protect Estonia if Russia invaded. So what our NATO allies are doing is sending troop to Greenland to make it very expensive for the US to attack it.
The deals that can be made are also sort of limited. Greenland is not ours to give away. The people of Greenland could democratically decide to leave the kingdom and enter some sort of deal with USA, and they might have, if they hadn't been threatened with invasion. Though it would frankly be unlikely considering they'd trade the Danish welfare and healthcare systems and workers rights for whatever the USA has.
We will see. I think the argument of “it’s not ours to give but we will fight to not give it up” is a little odd. NATO troops in Greenland as a “cost deterrent” is odd too. A NATO civil war where its all against the US, immediately your NATO defense budget decreases by two thirds. That is far more costly to Europe and NATO than to the US.
What kind of deal do you imagine? The US already has full access to expand their military presense in Greenland. About the only thing they aren't allowed to do is place nuclear weapons there. Nobody is stopping American Companies from entering resource extraction there either.
> “it’s not ours to give but we will fight to not give it up” is a little odd.
There isn't a law which would allow Denmark to sell or give away Greenland, but of course we will come to the defense of a NATO member if they are attacked, we've done so before.
If Greenland decides to leave our Kingdom and enter a deal then they can do so.
> That is far more costly to Europe and NATO than to the US.
I'm not convinced. The EU doesn't want to play world police, so we need NATO for defense. We've been very reliant on US companies for this, but every European nation has been building up the EU defense industry and have been avoiding making US purchases for a year.
I don't think anyone in the EU ever wanted a bad relationship with USA. We owe USA a lot for it's role in the post WWII world and up until Trump, but it's not like we're destroying the friendship.
No idea, but Greenland fits in this renewal of the Monroe Doctrine, so my guess is something sort of deal where US has more influence there than it does now, perhaps as a protectorate, but falls short of all the “51st state” rhetoric, which is obvious Trump bloviating to press people to the table and to a deal. Just consider all the tariff back and forths and ups and downs.
> There isn't a law which would allow Denmark to sell or give away Greenland, but of course we will come to the defense of a NATO member if they are attacked, we've done so before.
Except…Greenland is not a member of NATO. Which is probably one of the reasons considering its strategic arctic location and interest to Russia/China that Trump is interested in it. It sits squarely in the Monroe Doctrine area of interest. If Russia were to invade, some NaTO countries may decide to stay out and could according to the treaty.
> but every European nation has been building up the EU defense industry and have been avoiding making US purchases for a year
Which is good, but can you honestly say that in 2026 Europe could economically handle a Russian aggression into a NATO state without the US? It’s important to keep NATO together for Europe’s sake until Europe no longer needs the US for its defense. I don’t think you are there yet.
Greenland is a member of NATO because it's part of the Kingdom of Denmark, the same way they are a mebmer of the EU.
> so my guess is something sort of deal where US has more influence there than it does now, perhaps as a protectorate, but falls short of all the “51st state” rhetoric.
I think Greenland will end up either being an unincorporated territory of USA or entering into a compact of free association with the US. Whether or not it'll be the end of NATO depends on how patient Trump is.
It won't be through a deal with Denmark though, but I guess we can call that semantics. I do think my own politicians are sort of hoping they can avoid "losing" Greenland by giving away the remaining restrictions on what the US military can do in Greenland, but I doubt they will succeed with that.
> I don’t think you are there yet.
I agree. In some ways Trump being the way he is, has been healthy for Europe. I'm personally more worried about tech. Most of my applications on my smartphone wouldn't work without either the Apple store or Google Play. It's sort of silly to have a national digital ID that I can't run on GrapheneOS after all, I do have the physical key thing though, but you get the point.
With our public sector dependence on Microsoft and to some degree Amazon, Trump could frankly order a complete shutdown of our entire society by telling Azure and AWS to shut down everything in Denmark.
The fact that we're even talking about this shows how far the US has gone off the rails. Trump has said and done a bigly amount of insane things, but the idea of invading Greenland has to be in the top 5.
I maintain my conspiracy theory that a lot of the politically-motivated flagging on this platform is from the moderators, not the users. Y Combinator the company has shown to be openly pro-Trump.
2/3 of those articles are tech related, the other not obviously so, and the current not at all. Of course, the HN guidelines don't state "only tech news." They say submit stories which "gratify one's intellectual curiosity" and to avoid most political stories; I think this one fails on both counts. Scoring this charitably 3 to 1 nonetheless yields no significant insight.
Personally, I followed HN for news about hacking. I'd prefer all offtopic submissions flagged, or at least demoted. What's the point in a _hacker_ news Front Page RSS feed if I get dupes of major global stories?
PG isn't the boss any more. Last I heard, the current YC CEO was applauding Larry Ellison's plan for pervasive monitoring of American citizens, for example.
Trump is not long for this world, MAGA might crumble or more probably fall under the control of one of the possible successors in the WH. Establishing diplomatic ties with his wranglers pre heart attack is smart.
As for how this is seen internally for Danes, at least in my part of the world the US admin has already achieved crackhead with a knife status. I suspect that trying the dog whisperer shtick (like Mamdani) will not be seen negatively.
Sure but why should they request a meeting? The Americans should go to Copenhagen if they want to discuss something.
You go to the King, the King does not go to you. The party that travels is the weaker one. Maybe that's childish but it is the standard power play even in daily life and business.
I cannot imagine how things would play out if Trump went through with the invasion. Things are getting increasingly grim here in the states locally and a combination of martial law + a clearly illegal invasion I think would lead to the immediate collapse of the US as well as NATO.
It's clear that Stephen Miller in all of his fascist eggheaded brain thinks that he can just do a real quick annexation and is one of the key people pushing for this. But I don't think any of them are prepared for the fallout.
That's definitely my favourite conspiracy theory as otherwise the Ballroom expansion seems a bit random although that fits in with his general behaviour. The existing bunker getting expanded and redeveloped seems like the kind of self-serving behaviour that would fit in with the plans to isolate USA and start wars, including civil.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg have invested in the mineral exploration company KoBold Metals in 2019, and the company began drilling in Greenland in August 2022.
Peter Thiel backed Praxis, a startup that envisions building a semi-autonomous, low-regulation "network city" in Greenland. The vision is led by Praxis co-founder Dryden Brown, who sees Greenland as an ideal testing ground for a future Mars colony. Praxis has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, however, the proposal faces significant opposition from unexpectedly Greenlandic and Danish politicians.
And then there's this:
Ibtimes reports that MAGA Supporters Urge Barron Trump to Marry Princess of Denmark and Claim Greenland as Dowry
MAGA wants Barron Trump to marry Princess Isabella of Denmark to claim Greenland
US could just threaten to withdraw from NATO if it can't get Greenland. What then will remain of NATO that can defend itself from Russia and China? Besides the US, only the UK and France have nukes.
Seems a bit subtle when Trump could just send invading troops and see how it pans out (assuming that the military remains loyal to him). That could then lead to NATO kicking out USA, so what would threatening to do it achieve?
At this point, I don't think anyone in NATO thinks the US will aid them if anything were to happen so the US is kinda out of NATO anyway (at least until Trump/MAGA is gone).
Trump's behavior is (once more) ridiculous. There are many arguments against it (military/diplomatic inside NATO and economic). I believe the reasons behind a hostile takeover are a push from billionaires who control the government and want to get into extraction business and the urge to throw out the ongoing presence of China and Russia.
Now Iran is only slightly more concerning than Greenland..
(Has The Man rescinded (threats of) secondary sanctions yet? [Insert modern geopo chengyu])
Hope the CH pundits, if any, are more level-headed than EU ones?
Btw..
One way for reasonable people to justify the existence/organization (albeit-- not methods/training!!) of the US counterpart(s) of Basij, if the following is any accurate:
I'd guess some of those countries rank highly because they're counting parents disappearing with non-sole-custody children as kidnappings?
I'll also note that while former Yugoslavs seemed to have no trouble playing "one less sentient one less vote" in their home countr{y,ies}, they also seem to have no trouble getting along with each other here. Set and Setting?
Goog (sorry!)
Monumentalist cultures see success as internal talent and failure as bad luck, while flexhumble cultures attribute success to external factors and failure to internal ones, influencing everything from national pride to economic behavior.
Which, I mean, yes it is. Kingdom of Hawaii was a thing. The real difference is that Greenlanders are legally able to vote for independence whenever they feel like it, and have chosen not to, for economic reasons. So by that logic, Hawaii is more oppressed than Greenland.
That's where political pressure comes in. For example, Denmark is making many billions of dollars each year from the sale of GLP-1 drugs to the US. The US could just choose to negate those patents, stop those sales, and manufacture the drugs domestically with immediate effect. Other such levers like these probably also exist.
> The US needs Greenland to better protect the North Atlantic.
They already have forces there, and, at least until this admin's reckless imperialistic proclamations, Denmark would've almost certainly been amiable to leasing more space to the U.S. for whatever else they wanted to do.
> determine the minimum amount of money that they will be willing to accept to voluntarily align with the US
It is cheaper to do it by force, because so far Trump offered 100k USD/person. That's laughable lowballing when we consider that it would be gone within few visits in a hospital.
It seems weird for Denmark to be defending Greenland from US threats while also leasing land on Greenland to the US for Pituffik Space Force Base. European states seem to be doing everything by half measures in the hope that Trump loses interest in Greenland.
Months ago, the US was an ally of Denmark and Greenland. Greenland allowed an ally to have their military stationed there, because it served both (through NATO).
From one day to the other, the US behave like an enemy. And the US behave erratically. So NATO still exists on the paper because the US haven't invaded anyone yet, but the US are behaving like enemies and threaten to invade.
Seems more than rational, from the point of view of the rest of NATO, to prepare for an invasion, but at the same time hope that NATO still exists and that the US are not actually an enemy (probably not an ally anymore, but "partner" is better than "enemy").
That indeed seems to be what is happening. Here are the pledges of support which I have seen so far: DE ES FI FR IS IT NO PO SE UK, and I have heard of at least two countries with concrete plans to second troops for a NATO Greenland force.
If they rescinded that lease, then Trump's so called reasoning actually becomes valid. The US does actually have a geopolitical/strategic/military interest in being able to operate from and around Greenland. The reason this entire activity is a farce is because the US can already do that.
It's clear that Trump acts alone in foreign policy - formal channels and structures can barely check him. However, informal resistance still appears to exist. Trump apparently still takes into account the vibes of the people he surrounds himself with into account. In a haphazard way yes, but it's clear that Trump can be swayed to some degree by those around him.
The Trump administration is not a unified bloc, and there are likely many elements that see annexing Greenland as ridiculous. However, if they lost access, then they would be forced to concede that there was something actually valuable to gain.
This Greenland saga is particularly stupid because the US can achieve essentially the same aims by doing the right thing, occupying the moral high ground.
The majority of Greenlanders want independence. That percentage would possibly increase if they knew that they had solid support for statehood with good security agreements and trade agreements from the US.
Strong pressure on Denmark from the US would likely get Greenland their independence. If Greenlanders want it, then many Danes would feel obligated to give it to them. US pressure would help turn that into reality.
Once Greenland is independent, then those trade & security agreements mentioned would provide the US with the minerals or whatever it's truly after.
In the abstract, yes. In the specifics, maybe not so much:
> A poll in 2016 showed that there was a clear majority (64%) for full independence among the Greenlandic people,[25] but a poll in 2017 showed that there was a clear opposition (78%) if it meant a fall in living standards.
Greenland gets about 700m/year subvention, so about 15k per capita. Without that it would be very serious trouble, making actual independence (vs self-rule, which it largely already has) difficult. Realistically it's difficult for such a small country to be truly independent.
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