Greenland’s prime minister has said “we choose Denmark” before high-stakes talks at the White House as Donald Trump seeks to take control of the Arctic territory.
Amid rising tensions over the US president’s push, Jens-Frederik Nielsen on Tuesday told a joint press conference with his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, that the island would not be owned or governed by Washington.
“We are now facing a geopolitical crisis. If we have to choose between the US and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark, Nato and the EU,” Nielsen said, adding that the island’s “goal and desire is peaceful dialogue, with a focus on cooperation”.Trump’s pursuit of the island was also a matter of “international law and our right to our own country”, he said.
But afterwards. Ukraine was prepared.
This won’t happen. Ukraine happened to split Europe from Russia.
China would make Europe reconcile with Russia.
The US won’t take Greenland if the EU would turn to China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Chessboard
Greenland also has plenty of guns, the natives are very accustomed to cold and snow, and the people there increasingly hate the US. The logistics would also be difficult for the US because they don’t have a land border. If Greenlanders decide to fight back, and Europe backs them up even the same amount as Ukraine, it might be a long and bloody affair for the US. You don’t actually need advanced military tech to fight imperialist invaders from afar on your home turf, look at Vietnam.
China is not some staunch ally of Russia, I can see why that connection is usually made, but it’s just not true. They are simply non-interventionist and will trade with whoever trades with them. China refuses to sell most military equipment or dual-use commodities to Russia, and they are Ukraine’s biggest trade partner.
Allying with China is the most logical thing for the EU as a whole to do right now. They are a predictable, reasonable, stable partner with a huge industrial base. They are also leading the world in fossil fuel alternatives for energy generation, which is urgently needed to fix the climate crisis, and is especially poignant for Europe because it needs to shake off the dependency on Russian gas.
The only reason it’s not happening right now is that EU oligarchs are scared shitless of actual socialism, because they correctly surmise that it will be the end of their dictatorship on people. US is already doing their best to force their hand, let’s hope it hastens their demise.
With the current fascists in charge I’m not so sure. They think they can replace soft, economic imperialism with sheer military might, this is what is being said verbatim by Miller and implicitly by Trump, and all their other actions point to it as well. I hope it backfires badly.
Think it through. Greenland has nowhere to hide, no way to deliver weapons and only 60,000 inhabitants.
Why would you believe anything at face value during times of hybrid war?
The US have one objective: contain China.
While it’s not as big as it looks on Mercaator-projected maps, it is still pretty huge and full of empty nothing covered in snow. There is plenty of space to hide if you know how to survive.
Both of these are true, but you shouldn’t underestimate what a determined guerilla force of 30000 can do with small arms and explosives. The US won’t be able to send 2 million able-bodied men there either, it’s not the 60s anymore.
The only question is whether Greenlanders hate the US enough. For now I don’t think they do, which is why I also believe that a one-day “special military operation” is the most likely outcome.
They are not only words. Look at the massive budget cuts to propaganda ops/USAID, and the damage to supply chains and trading partnerships done by tariffs (and especially the way they were negotiated). Even the words themselves do matter, they are destroying what’s left of the so-called “rules-based order” in the minds of people around the world. They clearly gave up on soft imperialism.
Those are not mutually exclusive. The current government thinks they can contain China militarily. The general direction can be seen quite clearly. Enhance domestic oil extraction and get a reliable supply from South America as a complement (oil is the prime energy source for war, after all). Get their european vassals back in line with a show of force. Pump their asian vassals full of weapons to project power. Destroy Chinese economic influence (belt&road or otherwise) by invading/couping anyone who dares to ally with China (unless they have nukes).
I hope it doesn’t work out that way but this seems to be the plan.
I agree with the rest but at least Germany is covered and much of the rest of the EU. The politicians are pro US. There was no need for this conflict. It’s unnecessary with huge risks.
It’s also strange to imagine that all of the billionaires went along.
It doesn’t add up for me. If the US take Greenland, Ukraine cannot be justified anymore. If Putin is making Trump do it then why should we support anything the US does? Taking Greenland costs Europe.
On second thought, maybe that’s it. Make the Europeans accept Greenland and everbody else falls in line.
I do agree that it is all very novel and weird. However, the show of force for European oligarchs is the most convincing reasoning to me.
From a purely financial standpoint it’s a big investment with unclear returns. Natural resources there are difficult & expensive to extract (first of all, there’s no infrastructure), expensive to transport, and it will take a very long time to recoup the costs of a full-blown invasion; neither fascists nor capitalists think on such timescales. In terms of projecting power on Russia, it’s also dubious because US already has a military base in Greenland and could probably expand it quite a lot before Denmark would start seriously opposing it. And in any case I don’t think Trump’s admin is too worried about Russia at this point.
Meanwhile, European oligarchs are not happy about Trump trying to meddle directly on their political turf, supporting far-right parties and so on. As a result, EU is currently slowly distancing itself from US. There have been some mildly worded letters about the Gaza genocide and the Venezuela thing. EU is already trying to decouple from the US tech-wise, it has been trying to build its own defense pact, etc.
A drone strike campaign, Navy blockade, 1-day special forces operation to depose and kidnap the government, an amerikkan flag over Trumptown (previously known as Nuuk), and an island-sized military base with ICBMs 10 minutes away from any European capital sound like convincing arguments to stop even thinking about disobedience. It would also help with scaring everyone else too - as a russian saying goes - beat up your friends to instill fear in your enemies. Again, I’m not sure this is how it would work out were it to happen, but the fascists tend to think this way.
To me it feels like the least improbable of all reasons.
Of course it’s also possible that this is just Trump and Miller blabbering about their wet dreams and the oligarchs won’t let them do it.
With Blackrock the US are also the European Oligarchs. Which European Oligarchs are opposing the US?
The craziest explanation that I have seen is the following. With Venezuela, It sounds almost reasonable, especially since Trump said that it makes him feel better:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement#The_technate