Danish Armed Forces expand their presence and continue exercises in Greenland

Wow that seems really strange to me to bring up that body count as some sort of guilt trip mechanism in your criticism. But if we are going to play that game, how about we also list how many Danish and US soldiers died in Europe during WW2.

Honestly I think he's right. This is all for one man's vanity and the Republicans are fine with letting him do whatever he wants as long it means they get their policy wins and, more importantly, he doesn't post something nasty about them on Truth Social.

Dumbest fucking timeline ever.

Take it? You mean go to war with NATO over Greenland?

About 0%. China really has no serious interest in Greenland, and Russia isn't going to trigger direct confrontation with NATO. At least, unless NATO splinters, which is looking somewhat likely now with this foolish US administration.

Russia and China are just made-up excuses for Trump to do what he wants to do: steal territory, at gunpoint if needed.

Zero. Denmark belongs to the EU and NATO, and Greenland has always had a significant NATO military presence to deter any possible threat.

We already have military bases there and I'm sure Greenland wouldn't have cared if we asked for a few more. This is all to stroke someone's ego and get their name in a history book.

1. The U.S. has multiple bases in Greenland. Denmark, and NATO are also present.

2. Russia can't even expand their presence to Ukraine (not a NATO memeber).

3. China has no access.

So, 0%.

Today, the US can defend Greenland as part of NATO, and would have the support of the other NATO nations.

They do not really care until the United States takes Greenland. Or NATO outright attacks Russia. Then they do care.

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.

In modern world if you want to estimate validity of the message it's a better heuristic to consider the source than the message itself.

Lets just say that Russia or China does some surprise attack and lands a bunch of troops in Greenland.

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?

Out of curiosity, what do you think they should have done?

As a European (but not Danish), I feel like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_Denmark is quite proactive.

> President Trump is a great wake up call for Europeans.

This is not a wake up call. This is more like being stabbed while sleeping over at your best friend's house.

Agree, under threat of coercion.

Greenland and Denmark have always been encouraging minerals deals etc, they just haven't materialized.

> Nobody is going to war over this and Denmark/EU wants to save face.

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.

> Nobody is going to war over this

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 wouldn’t put anything past the current administration.

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”.

The thing is:

- 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.

Yeah, maybe this will make the case for converting France's arsenal to an EU arsenal.

How would nuclear deterrence work for small entities like Denmark or Taiwan against huge entities like US or China? it only works at similar sizes

There is a French tripwire force on the ground now as well. Denmark has allies.

Because the hacker community is worried about it, and because it is such a nonce thing to do yet it is still being threatened.

It's about what happens globally after an occupation

> The issue won't come to military action.

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...

> Not sure how this is relevant to anything.

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.

Taking Greenland by force against a NATO (supposed?) ally would be the end of "the West" as a largely aligned block since WWII. The effects would be felt by everybody, including technologists.

Sure the US could para a few soldiers in and raise the flag, but then what? US equipment and training isn’t designed for a country where the average temperature is above freezing for only 3 months of the year. When it’s minus 30 Celsius, lubricants gum up, batteries die and you need ice-breaker ships to resupply forces (which the US doesn’t have many of). Denmark and the other Nordic countries do have equipment and training designed for those conditions, and they know the (vast) landscape well, since they train there.

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.

Seema like you don’t want to be bothered about the ugly side of what you voted for.

> it would still last about ten minutes. Not sure how this is relevant to anything.

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".

You're not sure how the potential for the US to go to war with an EU member state is relevant?