Hacker News Reader

Comment by ferguess_k | Hacker News Reader

> However, the European Nato deployment consists of only a few dozen personnel as part of Danish-led joint exercises called Operation Arctic Endurance. While heavy in symbolism, it was not immediately clear how long they would stay.

Like, we came, we saw, we gone? How many ppls can they deploy in the long term?

View on HN

Europe isn't the US and it isn't China, but it is collectively one of the preeminent military and economic powers in the world. So, as long as they'd like.

One of the more stupid things here is that there's almost certainly many more US personnel already in Greenland in their internationally-agreed bases.

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

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/brief-history-...

I suspect the main limit is that nobody wants to be deployed in a dull frozen wasteland for very long.

This is a tripwire to spike cost of taking by force. Europe doesn't have the blue-water navy or air power to fight a peer war with America but also does not need to.

Europe cannot fight a peer war with America: on day one the Americans cut off our cloud services, and all government administration falls over.

(logical consequence of this is that the US invading Greenland is really bad for any US startups, such as one might find on HN, because it makes the EU much more likely to respond with "local only" rules)

That's a two way street. Tens of thousands soldiers on European soil becoming PoWs. US Equipment in European bases like Air Force or Preposition Army Stocks impounded by Europeans. Logistics going further east via Ramstein - effectively whole Middle east cut off from US reach. Access to early warning radars in Europe also gone. Ability to rearm and refuel ships pushed all the way back to USA.

We switched their email off would be a political joke compared to tens of thousand soldiers stuck behind enemy lines. And that's all working with assumptions that EU won't nationalize European part of AWS/Azure/GC/(other US cloud providers) to force it to continue its operation.

Don't forget things like cutting off trade with the US, or trying to organize a dump of their debt to attack the currency. Or, trying for hack-attacks on key US network components. None of these involve "traditional military" but they'd affect the randos at home quite a bit.

Sounds like some of Trump's handlers' ideal outcome.

The only real question is if the US establishment wakes the fuck up in time.

Western Europe/Non-US-NATO has two nuclear powers. If hell breaks loose, Europe may not win, but it can absolutely make sure the US loses.

Our British friends depend on American Trident missiles; only France is completely autonomous and sovereign in terms of its nuclear strike force.

Sure, but the UK already has those Trident missiles.

That said: https://news.sky.com/story/trident-missile-misfired-and-cras...

> How many ppls can they deploy in the long term?

How many "ppls" did Afghanistan deploy, long-term, against TWO different superpowers, with only discreet, behind-the-scenes support from other nations?

Invasion and control of another country that has more than paleolithic technology is pretty damned hard. Harder than anyone who attempst it ever guesses. ("They will welcome us as liberators!" - the stupidest thing ever said by a pre-Trump POTUS.)

It's even harder if a majority of the invading population hates the idea, and a significant part of the military doubt the constitutionality of their orders.

Oh, and two nuclear powers would be openly defending Greenland.

It would be cheaper and more popular to pile $9B in bills on the National Mall and set them ablaze.

Err, at least 3 superpowers as they started with the British back when it was an Empire.

Ironically, the US military has historically had more military personnel deployed in Greenland than Denmark. The US has continuously operated a military base at Thule for the better part of a century.

These kinds of joint exercises are pretty common and largely symbolic.

(The wikipedia page about this contains blatant partisan propaganda. Gross.)

>These kinds of joint exercises are pretty common and largely symbolic.

Danish Air force Hercules are doing their best impression of the Berlin air bridge to transport as much as they can to Greenland, airlines have transported personnel, several countries are sending navel ships, planes have already been doing exercises. While this isn't the first exercise there this is absolutely not common and just symbolic. Sure it isn't a force that can fight the US, but it is historic and unprecedented in Danish/Greenlandish history and it is a tripwire.

To put that into perspective the US has around 150-200 staff in Greenland.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com