Time is running out, his private storm troops are already flooding the cities of the opposition.
I don't understand how you can defend this, a supposedly smart person on Hacker News is advocating for the invasion of an allied nation. It's flabbergasting to watch this kind of opinion appear even here.
I don't agree with rayiner's opinion, but it's a completely rational point of view. Every empire thinks like that. Which part of it is so flabbergasting that is has no precedent many times over in our human history?
Of course, if the USA no longer wants those bases all around the world, the US government is entirely free to withdraw them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...
I suspect the military misadventures will have to end, but that’s a good thing. In terms of reserve currency and trade deals or whatnot—I’m not persuaded it matters for economic growth.
Can you point out on this chart of U.S. GDP per capita at which point we began enjoying the economic benefits of being the reserve currency? https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/peth_09-72016....
It's an ally as much as it could be, the US's presence in Greenland is entirely because it is in US's interests, and for that, as an ally, Denmark has always allowed the US to deploy as many troops as it wanted. Also as an ally it allowed Americans to do business in Greenland.
What else do you want? You aren't even American for the Trump administration, do not understand how you got so entangled in this bizarre worldview.
And what does my background have it do with my point? What Trump thinks of me has nothing to do with my analysis of any particular policy.
It's fucking bonkers that's even an argument to be had, it seems it's never enough for the empire.
The US's expenditure on its military was never to protect anyone from the Soviets but to impose its own world order against the Soviets, it's been always self-serving and for someone so educated it's a bit ignorant to not understand that.
> And what does my background have it do with my point? What Trump thinks of me has nothing to do with my analysis of any particular policy
It has to do with you aligning with the agenda, repeating the rhetoric about US's allies as not being worthy even though it built the USA as it exists today in 2026. The same applies to your background, it helped to build the USA as it exists today but given how you look [0] you'll also be considered not worthy when it's convenient by the agenda of the same administration you're aligning with to betray allies.
Good luck thinking the USA as it exists can do so without allies, it's a shame that "when education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor".
The U.S. was already the richest country in the world before either world war, coming out of a long period of economic isolation.
US GDP per capita growth has been about 2% per year continuously since 1830: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap.... It wasn’t notably higher after World War II than before World War I.
> The same applies to your background, it helped to build the USA as it exists today
The U.S. was already the richest country in the world before mass immigration from countries like mine.
The real reason the U.S. is so rich is that it was already the richest country in the world in 1900. The U.S. had almost 50% higher GDP per capita than western europe in 1900: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-GDP-and-GDP-p.... Today, its still about 50%.
Nobody's denying that the US-created world order has been good for its partners but that doesn't mean the benefit was at the US's expense. International trade is not a zero-sum game - the lifting tide and all that.
If the U.S. obtained such a special benefit, it should have grown faster than western europe from 1950 to 1990, but it didn’t. If that growth comes from peace, not being the hegemon—as you put it, a rising tide lifts all boats—then the U.S. is disproportionately bankrolled a peace that western europe equally benefitted from.
Part of the story here is that international trade just isn’t that important to the U.S. 90% of U.S. GDP is domestic. Just 1.1% is exports to Europe.
Not necessarily; the US could have extracted that benefit by staying ahead of the rest of the world in terms of its citizens' wealth, with all the benefits this entails.
We can't know the "what-if" (would the US have become even richer by being an isolationist MAGA dreamland), but we know for a fact that the world order was created and maintained by the US, so it must have had its benefits all this time.
Article 6 of the United States Constitution says international law is United States law. US courts are the enforcement mechanism as far as the United States Constitution is concerned. "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-6/
In the Treaty of the Danish West Indies (so according to the US Constitution, the law of the USA unless Congress withdraws from the treaty) the US will "not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland" https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-39/pdf/STATUTE-3...
Why do you so carelessly and reckless disregard the Constitution of the United States, especially being a lawyer?
> Why do you so carelessly and reckless disregard the Constitution of the United States, especially being a lawyer?
We have an entire generation of jurisprudence based on the idea that “emanations from penumbras” are constitutional law and you’re lecturing me about Article VI?
Quite obviously. Just like robbing a bank is an objective win in terms of increasing one's own money. But maybe not in terms of not going to jail.
I am not from the US. If I was I wouldn't be very thrilled for it, no.
I live in the EU, and I think it will actually be very positive in the medium to long term that the EU sheds its dependency on the US and starts treating it for what it is - a hostile foreign nation.
The Mercosur trade agreement, for example, is something great that came out of this. Trump finally pushed the EU to look for good partnerships elsewhere.
So, in a sense, this whole bullshit with Greenland may have positive outcomes still. I am hoping that the EU uses the anti-coercion instrument against the US and their companies.
What America loses by gaining Greenland is that worldwide market and those close defense relationships forming a common bloc. The US dollar stops being the reserve currency; America's cheap credit line dries up. American soft power in Europe is gone, and Europe aligns itself with China or Russia for stability, and becomes an American adversary. All so you can have, what, a bunch of melting glaciers?
But this just isn’t true! The U.S. overtook the UK in per capita GDP in 1880, near the peak of the British Empire: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap.... At that point the UK was already significantly richer than the rest of europe.
If you look at GDP growth rate, the US has consistently averaged 1.7% GDP per capita growth over the past 200 years. The mass industrialization during the war itself spike growth and helped recovery from the Great Depression, but America didn’t grow dramatically faster during the NATO era than it did before that.
The U.S. is rich because its been one of the richest countries in the world since the 18th century and has been extraordinarily stable. It was considerably richer than western Europe even going into the 20th century: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-GDP-and-GDP-p.... In 1900, U.S. gdp per capita was almost 50% higher than western europe. In 1990, it was also about 50%. There was a temporary period right after the war when the U.S. was much richer than western europe, but europe actually grew faster during this 1950-1990 period.
"The selection of the 11th Airborne Division has immediately drawn scrutiny. Reconstituted and reoriented in recent years, the division is widely regarded as the Army’s premier Arctic and cold-weather formation, optimized for sub-zero operations, austere airfields, glacier movement, and high-latitude logistics.
Military planners note that for domestic crowd-control or security missions in the Midwest, National Guard units or conventional active-duty formations are typically preferred. “This is an Arctic hammer being readied for an urban nail,” said a retired logistics officer familiar with force-generation planning. “That mismatch is what’s raising eyebrows.”"
it's about to get really effing cold in Minnesota.
Just another click/rage bait article...
If you still believe the president at this point, sure. That's the current spin.
If you don't, it's very weird to need (what is taken from their website) the division that " conducts Multi-Domain Operations in the Indo-Pacific theater and the Arctic." to come down to the continential US to control a few protestors in Minnesota. I think only Hawaii is a father set of troops to deploy in comparison.
You say this like it's better?
FTFA> "Adding to the unease are unconfirmed reports of increased Special Operations Forces activity linked to Arctic training and reconnaissance."
Narrator> it's Winter in the US..
It would, at best, be a domestic show of force to further an ongoing campaign of violent, including lethal, state terrorism directed against the civilian population, in violation of the Constitution and laws and direct judicial orders; and at worst a direct addition of the military to the federal paramilitary forces actively engaging in that campaign, rather than merely a show of force in support of it.
Can't think of any Trump action that has manifested in the way that would have been described as “at best” in advance, but I guess it is theoretically possible this could be the first.
The thing Trump's spent months "hinting" at? Yes.
Are we still giving the BOTD after what happened at Venezuela, and how they are trying to push the "Donroe Doctrine"? Do we REALLY need this to escalate to WW3 before we stop defending Trump?
No, people died in COVID defending their stances. People will never admit out loud that they regret their vote. Will be burning in radiation and still trying to put up a front that Trump was good for America.
This is what everybody hopes for, myself included.
I.e., the quote attributed (falsely) to a CSIS analyst, "A domestic mission provides legal cover to load aircraft, marshal equipment, and place units on short notice. The moment of truth is the flight plan", is unique to this domain.
And: "This is an Arctic hammer being readied for an urban nail" has no results anywhere else on the internet. Nor do the substrings, "arctic hammer" + "urban nail".
If the article isn’t booted from this site for being too political, it would probably be beneficial to edit the headline somewhat, to note that it is speculation.
One thing is for sure: If Trump for whatever reason manages to attack Greenland, there will be some signals beforehand. Like moving any and all US personnel currently in Denmark, out of Denmark. There's a good chance US personnel in neighboring countries would also need to be moved out, like in Norway.
A military attack on Greenland would send the US and Europe into a geopolitical crisis.
I think that the US threatening to invade Europe or Canada already qualifies as some kind of geopolitical crisis, doesn't it?
Action is permanent.
Why? I mean, if this was another president and another scenario, I'd agree. But I can very well imagine Trump taking Greenland by force and at the same time leaving all American units in Europe as they are.
So that might indicate some of the apparent urgency to make this happen now before SCOTUS rules.
Unfortunately a lot of damage is already done, even if we walk it all back our allies will no longer trust us - nor should they.
I for one am tired of 'interesting times'.
What kind of shitty plotline is this? I swear, Call of Duty games were more realistic.
Being assigned to the "premier Arctic and cold-weather formation" sounds like the worst possible posting a young soldier could get. Is this drawing the shortest straw, or do people have any flexibility in getting deployed here? For something so remote/frigid/generally terrible, do you get shorter rotations?
Others join to broaden their horizons and see the world. This unit would check that box too.
Personally I'd love to go to the Arctic or Antarctic as a civilian as it would be an interesting challenge.
This is actually possible! Friends of friends have done it (with NSF I believe).
Research expeditions to the arctic sometimes take civilians as support (janitors, IT, cooks, medics, etc). It can be a cool way to spend a few months aboard a boat in the arctic.
https://betterhumans.pub/how-to-join-a-scientific-expedition...
https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/fjord-phyto/
https://news.airbnb.com/wanted-five-volunteers-to-join-scien...
And for that I am grateful
While I'm not certain of how desirable an Arctic posting is, I do know that Antarctic postings are heavily oversubscribed (more demand than spots available), and I rather suspect that the Arctic stuff is in the same boat. It's not like there's a huge amount of spots that need to be filled, so even if getting an "Arctic soldier" tab appeals to only like 1% of the soldiers, well, that's enough to fill all the slots.
(Hehe, ow, sowwie about triggering someone’s feelings. Fun to see that jingoism should have safe spaces even as the same electorate railed against it on college campuses).
Thanks for coming out.
These are the Arctic Airborne folks (11th division) — above average (which isn’t saying much), but not elite. They are tasked with rapid deployment, and they are good at that, but they aren’t the point of the spear.
There are elite arctic troops who I am confident would sow fear into any opposition troops (arctic or otherwise). If you know any elite Norwegian or Finnish arctic troops, then they have either worked with or know someone who has worked with highly competent US counterparts.
No need to conflate the two.
Although, to be fair, the Trump administration might 'just' be planning a military occupation of some of Minnesota.
I cannot imagine the background (other than never reading a single word about the world between, say, 1800 and 1990) would lead someone to choose that starting point.
(I am willing to credit that one might dismiss the earlier cases that occurred during the revolution as dubious for the label of “invasion by the US”.)
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-n...
He’s clearly educated and articulate, so not much else makes sense.
Yes it's a bad joke
Probably a good time to read up again on Poe's Law[0], which does always pertain to attempted sarcasm in online forums.
I flagged this. There are a million places on the internet talking about it: Twitter, news outlets, Instagram… even my loony relatives have all weighed in on Facebook.
No need to add this forum to that list of places talking politics - it’s against the guidelines for HN anyway.
I think evidence of a potential war escalation falls under the "unless". Are we really going to be starting WW3 and have people like you keep covering your ears because you need a cozy space?
The devaluation of the US Dollar that is likely outcome of this will disrupt our supply chains leading to chaos. I expect 80% or worse.
Also, this will drive interest rates through the roof, drying up funding.
Even if you're not interested in politics, it's interested in you.
> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
The early days of Silicon Valley were literally the product of defense contracts and defense research spending. The whole consumer and business products thing (hardware or software) came much later. Even the early days business computing, the days of mainframes and minis, were largely driven by east coast companies.
But then again, most people on here think yatzees actually still exist.
