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1. Denmark does have allies; they're not completely alone, and they're not completely helpless.
2. The US has a track record of invasions, but not one of successfully pacifying states. Resistance works.
You're using the same simplistic logic as Russia invading Ukraine; you can't just compare population numbers and guarantee an immediate victory.
There's also a separate issue here: the US invading Denmark would lead to a lot of death and a loss of freedom for its citizens, even if unopposed. Flip your demurral: if they're going to take everything anyway, why not fight?
Do you really think NATO wouldn't defend a NATO country being invaded? It isn't USA they are fighting against, it is just Trump, and that war wouldn't continue for many days before the congress decides to end it since USA doesn't want it. So I don't doubt NATO would go to defend Denmark there, since they know USA would remove Trump if they did.
Joining NATO means you show the US all of your military secrets and basically embed your military into the US military structure.
> As a source puts it, the French said: "Would you like more soldiers? You could have them. Would you like more naval support? You could have that. Would you like more air support? You could have that too."
This includes Denmark, who would not have fought the US, as much as they tried to put on a show.
The reality would be lots of denunciations, some token measures, followed by Business As Usual. Ireland, Poland, Germany, Spain aren't sacrificing their entire economies for Greenland.
It's profoundly depressing, but such is the world we live in now.
In Ireland specifically, the cost of living is the key political issue at this time for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Neither has any mandate or capacity for military or economic conflict with the United States - our recent diplomatic efforts, in spite of the Greenland and Iranian crises, should highlight that.
Ireland is more dependent than ever before on the US. We would veto any EU efforts against them.
Unlikely. We'd most likely hum and haw for a while and then go along with it.
Like ultimately, we need both EU membership and US investment to maintain the economy we have at the moment. Losing one or the other would be really bad, but ultimately the only one we can really control is EU membership, and I'm relatively certain that the majority of Irish people, if forced to (and not one second before) would choose the EU.
> There is extremely strong and consistent polling across the EU in general, and Ireland in particular, showing that while the public supports Ukraine and moderate defence spending, it does not support direct military involvement or major escalation, and has zero tolerance for armed conflict, severe economic self-harm, or escalation against major powers.
Can you point to this polling please? I'm definitely not in favour of more wars, but the issue is that the choice may not be up to you or me, rather it will be driven by countries starting said wars (cough cough US threatening to invade Greenland).
> In Ireland specifically, the cost of living is the key political issue at this time for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Neither has any mandate or capacity for military or economic conflict with the United States - our recent diplomatic efforts, in spite of the Greenland and Iranian crises, should highlight that.
While I do agree with your core point around cost of living, honestly, the likelihood of any political party in Ireland (but particularly FFG) doing anything about the cost of living is ludicrously small, depressingly.
The two biggest drivers of inflation in Ireland (and the west more generally) are energy costs and land costs. If you ran on reducing land costs you'd become a pariah in Ireland (again, really unfortunately).
And our planning system makes it unlikely (again, depressingly) that any work will be done on grid modernisation or building energy infrastructure. I mean, I would love to see this happen (I'd even vote for FG or the Shinners to accomplish this), but I find it extremely unlikely.
As for the realpolitik within the EU, I'm close enough to the fire that I can see the slow changing trends and I have some hope that once Orban is dealt with we'll see some serious improvements in how the EU is conducting day-to-day business in times of crisis. We simply were unprepared for countries backsliding due to out-of-EU influence. But that cat is out of the bag and now we need to deal with it without alienating the rest of the Hungarian population.
The idea that France was going to engage in armed conflict with the US over Greenland is absurd. The US could probably take Saint Pierre and Miquelon or French Guiana without triggering a French armed response.
What will anyway happen is your life someday ends, what must not happen is that you are remembered in dishonor.
Also, Mearsheimer, what a muppet.
I would expect the territory after a brief economic war to be returned with apologies and reparations by the next president of the USA.
Rich powerful countries could also keep slaves and no one would be able to stop it by force.
But they don't. Civilisation advances.
"The west" is no longer a well defined thing. America is its own thing now, and I don't think it fits in with any traditional notion of "The West" anymore, outside of historical inclusion. And without America the term just means Europe, so you might as well just refer to things directly instead of coming up with a new term: America, Europe, Canada, etc.
It provides no analytical value anymore to talk about "the west" as a shared family of identities or cultures. That concept was more an ephemeral artifact of some colonial history combined with the post WW2 global landscape and the fact that the US was the last industrialized country remaining that didn't have its industrial base bombed to smithereens.
But when I'm talking about is hundreds of years ago. History goes back more than a few months.
What I don't understand is what analytical value the term "the west" holds anymore, OUTSIDE of that historical artifact. What meaningful statement can you make about "the west" as you define it these days?
Judging by ever shrinking middle class, rise of poverty and few rich owning the rest of the world it is heading back to that state. Have nots are not slaves by definition but their lives are getting worse and worse and where does that end?