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Comment by Throaway3126 | Hacker News Reader

They are the red lines. There is no going back. The USA is too dangerous to rely on, that's quite clear.

People don't quite realize how big a deal "invading" Greenland would have been. That's literally an act of war! What's next, occupying France? Saying that it's at all a possibility is far beyond any red line that the EU thought it would have to deal with.

Not only would the rest of the world ditch the USA, but the Democrats themselves would take the opportunity to publically announce that they do not recognize Donald Trump's government.

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> People don't quite realize how big a deal "invading" Greenland would have been. That's literally an act of war! What's next, occupying France? Saying that it's at all a possibility is far beyond any red line that the EU thought it would have to deal with.

Yes, absolutely, I agree.

Thing is, in the end he backed off, so the result was all talk. He TACOed.

For everyone's sake (including Americans'), I absolutely 100% want the EU to disentangle as much as possible and as fast as possible from the US so that we don't even feel the need to be polite to Trump in the future: he obviously sees the world as only predators to be scared of and prey to consume, so it's better for us (everyone, not just the EU) to become big and scary really fast so he doesn't even try anything.

If he were to invade (anywhere, not just Greenland), that place and their allies basically have two options: fight or die.

> Not only would the rest of the world ditch the USA, but the Democrats themselves would take the opportunity to publically announce that they do not recognize Donald Trump's government.

I wish, but humans aren't like that.

The Democrat leadership keep pulling defeat from the jaws of victory, and people are the same everywhere so an external threat is more likely to pull everyone together than to split them apart (same for everyone else is why the EU and Canada are warming, or at least thawing, their relationships with the rest of the world).

What might have happened before an invasion was enough Republicans finally kicking him out (with Democrat support), or a US military coup (I'd say 50% if it got that far, but with high uncertainty).

A military coup would also be a crossed Rubicon.

But the military don't like traitors, and betraying an ally by invading it is an act of treachery.

> Thing is, in the end he backed off, so the result was all talk. He TACOed.

But for a few days (and probably still now), many people considered it was a real possibility.

I don't think it matters whether the US meant it or not. What matters is whether the Europeans believed it or not. Trust is about belief.

I agree.

I think I'm being misunderstood here.

All the stuff you said, that's why I want to make sure we (Europeans) *don't* go "phew!"

I think some of us might be doing that, which I think is bad for us.

No, the Democrats would do it precisely because of cynical human interest (they are like that). Donald Trump Republicans invading a Western nation plays right into their hands. They may as well just hand Gavin Newsom the next election. The overwhelming majority of US citizens do not approve of USA invading Greenland.

I'll bite.

Nothing would have come of it. Ehe EU would have been upset for 3-6 months, then it would have got onboard with the idea that Greenland is now a US territory and that's that.

France has a too good of a cuisine to be invaded. I think Germany would be next, they are running their mouth more than they should and they suck at food.

Unless the mid-terms change the political majority in the US, the Democrats can wine all they want and recognize or not recognize whoever they want as president. It will not change the actual situation.

Sorry but you're just wrong. This isn't a situation to be upset about. Its war. There's no universe where the USA invasion of Greenland doesn't end in disaster for Trump.

There's already been articles in Politico where USA lawmakers admit that there would have been a War Measures Act passed if Trump invaded Greenland. Unlike Venezuela.

It would definitely change the political situation if the state governments of California, New York et al stopped recognizing the federal government.

This is some top notch r/ShitAmericansSay material, especially Germany "running their mouth" and having bad food. Add in democrats "wining" and I'm pretty sure this post belongs on a Confederate cooking blog rather than HN.

Mm.

One of the criticisms I hear of Merz is that he's not tough enough on Trump; therefore the choice to target Germany at this time, matches a pattern of the target being painted on whoever wants to play nice.

Except that he might be right... if you think there is no chance he's right, you aren't paying attention. These are strange times.

Europe can’t defend itself without the US. That’s not the Us saying it that is coming from Europe itself.

All this stuff is mostly grandstanding

> Europe can’t defend itself without the US.

It depends on what exactly Europe needs to defend itself against.

And Europe is quite rightly starting to regard this US-dependence as a problem to be solved without further delay, rather than an eternal and immutable fact of the world.

> This is some top notch r/ShitAmericansSay material, especially Germany "running their mouth" and having bad food.

I'm not American and please, please, please tell me about a german dish that is actually on par with what the French make.

All of that is why I want Europe to take it seriously, even though I think they might be cooling off now that Trump has backed off.

We (both of my "we"s given I'm a British citizen but live in the EU) sent in tripwire forces to defend Greenland. Their purpose is that getting shot is a casus belli for us to go to war with the USA.

Also remember: NATO has two other nuclear powers besides the USA, and the biggest flaw with one of those nuclear arsenals is how when the UK test-fired the missiles it bought from the USA, they went the wrong way or didn't launch properly at all.

I don't know what the order of events would have been given how heavily tied together EU and US (and UK) economies are, but essentially the EU banning the purchase of new US treasuries by itself would cause something in the order of US inflation going to 10% for several years; this, plus any economic departure (I'm thinking emigration more than internment camps like Japanese-Americans in WW2, much worse if that) from all the European migrants on visas (and some or all of the naturalised ones, but that number will be less… unless Trump also strips that like he's been suggesting), the US could loose 2-5 million people's worth of useful economic labour from the workforce. (Even if they're put in work camps, they're not getting good work out of them).

In the other direction, if the US cuts off cloud computing today, the EU is almost immediately screwed. Hence article.

But if the EU's screwed, then we don't have the money to buy the US treasuries, so screwing us also screws the US. That 10% inflation I mentioned, that's just from not buying T-bills; screwing the EU like this would also mean no more trade with the EU, which basically doubles the US unemployment rate on top of that, budget deficit goes to $3T/year, and costs the US 5% GDP relative to the baseline (i.e. what it would have been without invading) forever. Without a shot fired. But France has enough nukes that even if the USA's anti-missile defences can stop 80% of them, it could by itself destroy every US state capital and still have several left over.

And if you're worried about Russia taking over Greenland, oh boy you should worry about what they do to a catastrophically weakened Europe that isn't just a hard-to-mine sheet of ice supporting a population that wouldn't even half-fill these seats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Narendra_Modi_Stadium_vie...

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