Trump aide says no-one would fight US over Greenland | Hacker News Reader

Trump aide says no-one would fight US over Greenland

bbc.com

33 pointsvinni234 comments

Is anybody else getting "nobody fought Germany over Austria" vibes here?

"all I want is peace": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64DCO2sI7fI

Quote:

In his interview with CNN, Miller said it was "the formal position of the US government that Greenland should be part of the US".

He went on: "By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is their basis of claiming Greenland as a colony of Denmark?"

Does that sound like a threat to you? I'd say the Danes already have sufficient grounds to invoke NATO Art 4:

> The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity ... of any of the Parties is threatened.

https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/official-texts-and-resource...

What will the US Government longitudinally lay claim to next? The ESA Spaceport?

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Eu...

(on the other hand, unlike Denmark, France does have two legs of a triad, so maybe they're waiting a bit before pressing that one; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46506749 )

I think they will, they just want to wait for the right time. You could argue that the right time is now but I think they are waiting until there is more proof on the ground (and not just talk) that the US is ready to act.

I am glad to see https://stm.dk/media/qo2dyzxy/erklaering-gl.pdf

Perhaps I am just paranoid*, but given the chatter concerning spheres of influence, I would not rule out a DJT/VVP version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact#:~:tex...

* other unusual logistics: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/05/us-planes-moni...

My father speculated about a Molotov-Ribbentrop variant being played out not long ago. I never even considered it but I am no longer surprised it is speculated about. What we are seing feels eerily similar.

It just occurred to me that invoking Article 4 would put Ambassador Whitaker on the spot sooner rather than later: either he shows solidarity with DK, or he provides proof of his intent to filibuster.

But I guess the reason they aren't bothering is because we all already know the answer.

Another reason not to bother: https://www.government.se/statements/2026/01/joint-statement...

With IS and NO on board, the only non-EU NATO members left are AL, CA, MK, TR, and UK. I don't think AL and MK have much in the way of force projection; CA is a pity* (what about TR?); and Airstrip One would have danced to the Great Nation Builder's tune anyway.

* a joke I once heard back in the States:

— So, what do you think of Canada, eh?

— We don't. But wait until we run out of natural resources; then we'll think of you...

I was very unkind to Starmer et al; UK's already signed up. Sorry.

Countries standing shoulder-to-shoulder with DK, so far:

  DE
  ES
  FI
  FR
  IS
  IT
  NO
  PO
  SE
  UK

Notably, one of the rights by which Denmark asserts control over Greenland is the Treaty of the Danish West Indies:

> During 1916, the two sides agreed to a sale price of $25,000,000, and the United States accepted a Danish demand for a declaration stating that they would "not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_the_Danish_West_Indi...

By what right does the US assert control over Greenland?

For that matter, by what right does the US assert control over Venezuela?

The classic rule of "might makes right".

I'm so tired of these criminals. They're these black holes of immorality and intellectual deficiency with no insight sucking in the rest of civilization.

Pretty sure NATO would be required to fight the US over Greenland.

Required to... but would they?

I think they would. They'd have to as a matter of self-preservation. If the US could get away with such a thing unopposed, then it unambiguously poses a direct and immediate threat to everyone else (even more so than our warmaking on Venezuela).

If the US really did do this, yes they would.

Look, I don’t think there’s a good reason to attempt to take it in the first place, especially when a friendly ally already controls it without any threats of any kind happening (compared to say, the Cuban Missile Crisis for the opposite situation).

However, the rest of NATO has nothing to gain from throwing their whole military at the US in the Western Hemisphere. They certainly can’t win that conflict, so what would be the point? Just to kill hundreds of thousands of their troops?

They should know that the Americans aren’t going to kill the residents anyway, so it’s really just an idiotic dick-waving contest that Trump wants. The smart move would be to diplomatically retaliate and just screw with the US economically, to extract a concession from the next US President, who won’t have such obtuse ideas and will be eager to make the consequence of this self-inflicted jackassery (like no Americans allowed to visit the EU, EU regulators banning Google and Apple devices, etc) go away.

> the next US President

One nice thing about US Americans: they're always so optimistic!

One day Rabinovich is browsing the local news site, as is his habit, and he clicks it away but somehow a chatbot still pops up on his screen:

— Moishe :tada:, we notice that you only come to our site once a day, and not only do you not doomscroll, you don't even scroll past the fold. :-( Is there anything we could do to improve your engagement?

— No, no, I only come to check the obituaries.

— But the obituaries are in their own section, linked from the footer. You never even see the footer!

— Believe you me, this obituary will be above the fold.

> what would be the point?

a Danish poem from 1940:

  Losing one glove is certainly painful, but nothing compared to the pain,
  of losing one, throwing away the other, and finding the first one again.

> in the Western Hemisphere.

(a) we've heard "spheres of influence" before, and seen Fall Blau happen anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpE_xMRiCLE

(b) distances:

  1'400 km  Nuuk <-> Reykjavik*
  3'300 km  Nuuk <-> Washington DC

Just saying, dude.

* I saw a map in a major US paper last night that somehow was missing Iceland completely. Do you all even have fact checkers anymore?

Indeed this concept of hemispheres to justify military action is total nonsense, the Prime Meridian could have been placed anywhere. Strictly speaking, the whole of Ireland may be invaded by the USA according to this "doctrine".

Thanks to HN, a little time ago I learned that my original conception of the Monroe Doctrine (donroe mocktrine?) was overly simplistic. Yay HN!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41564406

(who'd want to invade IE anyway? They have no culture beyond a pair of shite gaelic rappers and they're so backward they still travel on horseback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8 )

> hemispheres to justify military action

I didn't mean to imply that. I was only speaking of how pragmatic it would be for European powers to handle the logistics to fight a land war in Greenland. The US can project power basically anywhere, but it's harder for smaller navies to pull that off.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46539021 for the pragmatics.

As far as the logistics go: in 1982 the UK managed to land several regiments on the Mal^W Falkland Islands (13'000 km); surely it'd be easier to do similar, over much shorter distances?

Note: if AR (a client state* of the US at the time) had been hoping the Monroe Doctrine would be put into practice for them, that hope was in vain.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War

Regarding hemisphere - Sorry, I just meant that countries that aren't the US have limited long-distance power projection abilities and limited sustained logistics capabilities. That's because the US has been policing every ocean for 50 years while the other navies have been mainly sailing around to keep an eye on their territorial waters.

Anyway, does Reykjavik have a big military logistics depot?

Have you heard the joke that ends "I don't have to outrun the bear"?

I went to elementary school in the US, and it was there that I learned how you have to handle bullies. You don't have to be able to beat them up, you only have to make them work[0] hard enough to beat you up[1] that they start picking on someone who is more fun and less work to abuse[2].

[0] when I told my wife how "calling someone out" worked in the States, she was horrified: she said, yes, of course the boys here fight, but they fight in anger, spontaneously — what kind of barbarians make notes in their agendas to kick each others' ass, in cold blood, later?

[1] the better kind of bully only goes to first blood. Worse are the O'Briens (read "Such, such were the joys" and you may understand were that character comes from) who continue beating you up just so others see they can:

> "Even if people stop rebelling against the party, the Party will manufacture new traitors so that it can be seen crushing them."

Either way, even though I lost every single fight, no one picked on me again after I'd called them out. (bullies are not into schlep?)

[2] yes, maybe in hindsight it would have been better to stand up for those they switched to. My wife was also horrified by "snitches get stitches". In practice, JFK tried to create a world in which the strong were just, the weak secure, and the peace protected, but obviously others in the US didn't care for those goals.

The point would be to stop an aggressor before it gets worse. I’m not saying they’d attack the mainland or anything like that, but they would side, militarily, against us.

looks like there's at least some opposition over there:

https://lite.cnn.com/2026/01/07/politics/the-gops-growing-di...

https://lite.cnn.com/2026/01/07/politics/greenland-thom-till...

When the time comes, they will get on board, just like they always do. The only appropriate and convincing response would have come ages ago and went something like “are you a fucking lunatic?”

Tillis doesn't put it quite so bluntly, but he comes close:

> “I’m sick of stupid,” a fiery Tillis declared in the Senate. ... he told his colleagues that Miller’s comments were “absurd.”

> “Mr. Miller said that the US government – obviously Greenland should be part of the US. That is absurd,” he said.

> Tillis also ... “What makes me cranky? Stupid. ...

I mean, he's a politician, so he tries to throw Miller under the bus (instead of admitting the stupid rots like a fish), and he claims he's the only one speaking his mind because of his committee (not because he's retiring and doesn't worry about being primaried), but I find absurd stupidity comes close to fucking lunacy.

Then again, I thought GWB and his posse were fucking lunatics, and now I've had to reevaluate their statesmanship.

See https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2026/01/06/joint-st...

Labelling Stephen Miller as simply a 'Trump aide' feels almost misleading.

He's baby Goebbels.

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