But are there any signs that they have taken over the military? Iran and Venezuela was something they had in mind for decades. But are there any generals itching to test themselves invading Greenland against European military? They don't have to obey the civilians. Rule of law is a thin veneer that this president stripped clean. Now personal interests of the people in power is what matters. Are there any generals with personal interest to invade Greenland and fight Europe? They obviously can develop some but it should take few years at least, right?
And if you think it's ridiculous to focus on a random twitter troll to explain this admin, then you don't understand this admin, because impressing these guys (and this guy in particular) is largely all they do.
Dumbest fucking timeline ever.
If serious: agree, Russia or China won't take Greenland.
2. Russia can't even expand their presence to Ukraine (not a NATO memeber).
3. China has no access.
So, 0%.
Because controlling Greenland means whoever has it gets excessive control over the Arctic Sea. And both parties, but especially Russia, do not want a party like the United States to have this amount of control given the Arctic is in their backyard.
The US had military bases in Greenland when Soviet nukes had to be delivered with bombers flying over Greenland.
When ICBMs became a thing, those bases weren't as important anymore.
Something you can already see in Venezuela as we speak: The Trump Administration has essentially blocked countries like Russia and Iran to ship oil from Venezuela.
If they capture Greenland and can build a big Naval presence there they are in a great position to confiscate every cargo ship destined to Russian harbors in the north, and close off China's trading route in the Arctic aswell.
What's the problem? Denmark would have welcomed a big Naval presence in Greenland. It benefits them too.
It should have been:
America: can we have a big Naval base in Greenland?
Denmark: sure. 100 year agreement?
America: give us big Naval base in Greenland or we will annex you!
Denmark: Eh... sure, are you alright?
America: we will annex you.Russia and China are just made-up excuses for Trump to do what he wants to do: steal territory, at gunpoint if needed.
OK, great, they've got troops in Greenland. Now they have to keep them supplied. How are they going to do that? Well, either through the air or by sea.
Does either have a navy that can do that? No. Does either have an air force that can do that against US opposition? No.
So it's really unlikely. Even if China or Russia were stupid enough to do that, they could never hold it.
Now, perhaps the more interesting question: How likely does Trump think it is? Does he think it's real, despite the absurd impossibility of it? Or is he just saying fact-free stuff that he hopes some people will believe?
Let's hope it's respected
Denmark apologised to the indigenous people of the country.
Frankly if you voted for Donald Trump, you're a traitor to America.
If I were to guess, probably all of the months (four to twelve) in units that are in the Arctic, and (very close to) zero months in other units. I also don't know how well military experience from other Danish regions translates to the Arctic. Probably quite well, I'd imagine.
This is not a wake up call. This is more like being stabbed while sleeping over at your best friend's house.
Nobody is going to war over this and Denmark/EU wants to save face.
I disagree. I think that the US could very easily trigger a war here (I suspect that's the intention), and not a war that would be contained to Greenland. It's not just about Greenland or Denmark, after all.
I'm not so sure. Between all of Trump antics, and Russia's invasions, I think they're starting to realize that if you let the bully take the small things you don't especially care about, they're just going to demand bigger things.
list of countries offering some form of allied support, so far: CA DE ES FI FR* IS IT NL NO PO SE UK* (*P5 seat)
Growing up I couldn’t imagine people being interrogated by masked armed men for daring to … go for a walk in the US. But that’s a thing now.
Trump threatened to use the insurrection act just today for other “problems”.
- Greenland has always been open for companies starting mining resources under fair terms. But while they have a lot of resources Greenland is mostly cliffs and glaciers, worse increasingly melting glaciers and permafrost in cliffs, i.e. increasingly unstable terrain. Little infrastructure you can take advantage on. Few places you can safely build harbors. Wetter so cold that a lot of equipment simply would fail. So it's not nearly as profitable as it might look. Maybe you can make some decent profit if you run it like the soviet union ran many things, i.e. forced labor with 10s of thousands of people dying.
- The US has one military outpost in Greenland, and AFIK they don't need more to a) protect the US from that direction and b) project power to arctic shipping routes and similar. And realistically if this where to actually need some expansion then any past president probably could have come to an reasonable agreement with Greenland. I mean it's land they don't use and can give for some monetary benefit to one of their closest allies while implicitly gaining some added protection, like why would you say no to that. Except maybe the past Trump presidency as he had already been eroding checks and balances then and that is a red flag for trusting that an ally will stay an ally.
> Nobody is going to war over this and [..] wants to save face.
This is what people also said about:
- Hitler starting WW2 (like seriously he said he would start war, neighbors countries where like: "Nah no way he is just barking")
- Same, but after Hitler had already rearmed Germany and sized some boarder territory (he -> war, other countries -> na, no way he actually want to start another large scale war)
- heck even after he invaded Poland many still insisted that there is no way he would go beyond that as that would be just supper dump
- a Wall being build around west Berlin to prevent people from entering it (there is a famous citate: "Nobody intends to build a wall." (after rumors started that they might want to do that, many people believed them as build a wall would just be too absurd))
- during WW2 most Germans (in cities) knew something really bad is happening to Jews, many approached it like "there is no way he is literally killing all of them" (even trough he kinda wrote exactly that in his book)
- etc. etc.
The point is humans are very very prone to make them-self believe that there is no way some very unpleasant possibilities will happen.
Also if person who as repeatedly shown to act unreasonable, sometimes outright despotic, with clear autocratic tendencies, who has shown to be fully fine with civilians suffering or dying as consequence of his actions says "I want to size your country", and has the military might to do so, you should assume that they want do _exactly that_ (at least in the moment when saying that).
Historically speaking claiming that "nobody wants that, because it's supper dump" has rarely ended well.
Lets hope it wont happen anyway it would likely spiral into WW3 as it's a pretty clear signal for China that the the US has lost most of its allies and Nato is disfunctional and the EU is weaker and more likely to work with or at least unlikely to antagonize them then ever before (in recent times). If not now when else is a better time to size Taiwan. China increasingly doesn't need TSMC, the rest of the world including the US do. China might even profit from it being destroyed in the war... Really don't give them a reason to believe Nato is weak it will screw over the quality of live/cost of living/etc. of pretty much all western countries for years to come.
https://bilder.deutschlandfunk.de/72/d7/aa/c5/72d7aac5-be14-...
https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/17070508372...
France has a first-strike doctrine. It's unique in the world, and it scares the shit out of everybody. An EU arsenal would be a typical retaliatory-strike doctrine.
It works as long as the harm that can be threatened is sufficient to outweigh any perceived gain of winning. Small states may not be able to sustain as large of an arsenal, but they also rarely offer as much value to a victor.
In every war, eventually, one side will be about to lose.
It is still risky of course and not advisable.
You are not sure how it's relevant the main pillar of NATO is openly talking about military action against one of the founding members of NATO?
It's relevant since everything in your life right now if you live in any Western country is reliant on this partnership since the end of WW2. If it changes you'll live in a different world, not sure how this is not relevant to you.
I don't think there's much doubt about a US success if it came to that. The relevance—and yes, this is highly relevant—is to determine what would be left of the current world order after those "ten minutes".
How can you be so certain with that diaper-filler in chief?
Deploying troops looks like an attempt to dissuade invasion by highlighting that the optics of US troops capturing (hopefully not shooting at) NATO troops would be real bad...
Imagine Afghanistan but against a modern, professional army and with the weather trying to kill you.
Which isn’t to say that it would be impossible, but certainly it would cost more in terms of casualties and money than most Americans realise.
The US understands cold.
The US may have some understanding of the cold, but the nordic countries have far more, and are far better prepared.
