Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

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> NATO would likely do nothing substantive. No economic repercussions.

At best, you still lose all your allies.

At worst, why are you willing to make this gamble? You go immediately go from two nuclear armed nations who "threaten" US interests in Greenland, to four.

> Any kind of financial maneuver any country would try against the US would mostly hurt them more.

The former allies could cost you in the order of $1.3 trillion fairly directly.

Worth it, to defend their sovereignty. Especially as the other half of that trade is things they're already saying they want to move away from.

> All the rich people who run the world behind the scenes don’t want their assets to deflate.

And you think the US doesn't have this exact category of rich people, who will pull the US back from this seppuku?

There's a reason "TACO" was coined WRT Trump.

> The EU could fracture over any kind of major retaliation.

1. And you think the US is unified right now?

2. And you think the EU wouldn't be concerned about fracture over failing to retaliate?

> Don’t you feel the pantomime of it all?

No.

I am reorganising my assets on the assumption of a total, 100%, trade blockade. All potential backdoors in hardware and software being activated. All goods, all services, being subject to escalating tariffs to split the economies apart as fast as possible in order to show preparation and readiness for a hot war. With nukes being an open question by both sides, and MAD being relevant again, but preparing for that is beyond me.

How would the US respond to Russia trying this BS to get Alaska back?

Yes the US has the same rich people in charge but the President is willing to defy them. He defied them on tariffs and secure arctic access and mineral rights probably align with their interests.

The US is unified with one military, one economy, one budget, one State Department, etc. Europe is not. Internal division here is not the same as internal division in Europe.

UK, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc. will not substantively move away from the US even if they are hopping mad about Greenland.

Russia wouldn’t try because we are too strong. If the EU were strong we wouldn’t be trying to take Greenland.

That’s the whole point - if there is a race for control of the arctic with China and Russia the EU couldn’t do anything. You’d depend on the US to police the arctic for you and to enforce whatever treaties are signed with China and Russia. Better deal for us to do it ourselves.

> The US is unified with one military, one economy, one budget, one State Department, etc. Europe is not. Internal division here is not the same as internal division in Europe.

I give 50-50 you'd have a military coup if they were given the order to invade an ally.

More than half of your own government knows that invading an ally is not OK.

If Russia isn't enough of a threat to take advantage of this, they're absolutely not enough of a threat to take Greenland either.

The rest of us doing nothing is a direct signal to Russia to Blitzkrieg Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and as much of Poland as it can, and to know that "as much as it can" is as far as the tanks roll without refuelling.

Doing nothing about you invading our land, means our own death.

> UK, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc. will not substantively move away from the US even if they are hopping mad about Greenland.

Which guns do we need to show you before you back down?

Do we need to fire a missile at Mar-a-Lago before you take us seriously?

If this were civ, I'd be saying "Back off, we have nukes."

Because we do, in fact, have nukes. Pretty much the only substantial military thing the UK has at this point, but it has them.

> You’d depend on the US to police the arctic for you and to enforce whatever treaties are signed with China and Russia. Better deal for us to do it ourselves.

Not for you, not for us.

For us: As a nation, by the election of Trump, you have proven yourself as untrustworthy as Russia. Which is really really bad.

For you: you now have twice as many hostile nuclear powers with the means to hit you, combining to more than twice your GDP backing up those nukes.

Any attack you make on us, your treaty-bound allies, causes whatever treaties you sign with anyone anywhere in the world to be not worth the paper they're written on. China and Russia will immediately know this. Everyone will. Nobody will trust you.

You could've built bases in Greenland for free at any time without threatening us. You chose the threat. You're now going to face the counter-threats. We'll see how far those escalate. This is a game you never needed to play. You call it theatrics, we're not laughing, we're arming.

China is much more trusted right now than you are. Like, sure, we know they see Taiwan as their own, but we also know they're not going to screw us over. Even when it was the British Empire handing over Hong Kong, China understood that while they could take it at any time, it was bad to be seen as one who would do so dishonourably.

That’s delusional. The EU won’t even deploy economic countermeasures against the US, let alone military resistance. The US could take Greenland by force tomorrow and the EU response would be a poetry recital.

> The US could take Greenland by force tomorrow and the EU response would be a poetry recital.

If that's the best the EU can manage, the EU ends the same day, and all of the EU knows that. Ergo, they won't let that happen.

Likewise, all of NATO except apparently part of the US, knows that the US taking Greenland by force means the end of NATO.

I don’t think these things work the way you think they work.

Nobody really cares about Greenland.

Nobody is willing to allow there to be real consequences, or even real inconveniences, as a result of anything to do with Greenland.

The EU is primarily an economic and regulatory structure, not a military alliance.

NATO is a paper tiger anyway, people will invent some justifications and keep doing business as usual.

> I don’t think these things work the way you think they work.

Perhaps, but nobody reasonable would have forecast this situation in the first place, what Trump is doing here already wildly outside of any recent precedents for the USA's behaviour.

> Nobody really cares about Greenland.

Nobody should, the inhabitable parts are tiny, the rest is a massive ice sheet, the population wouldn't even half-fill the largest single stadium.

> Nobody is willing to allow there to be real consequences, or even real inconveniences, as a result of anything to do with Greenland.

Tell that to Trump, he's the one threatening military force to get an island he's already allowed to build whatever bases he wants on. There's no good reason for him to have burned his bridges like this. Even if he doesn't invade, he's already severely weakening relations with people who thought they were American allies, who have already come to American aid when asked.

> The EU is primarily an economic and regulatory structure, not a military alliance.

Primarily, yes, but it does also have a mutual defence clause. Never been tested, of course. Why would anyone be dumb enough to threaten an EU member state with military conquest?

And yet, here we are.

> NATO is a paper tiger anyway, people will invent some justifications and keep doing business as usual.

Article 5 has been invoked exactly once, to aid the USA. NATO-minus-USA is going to be wild, almost certainly forces a lot of other members to rapidly develop nukes of their own even if this all goes "peacefully".

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