Comment by chvid
Comment by chvid 17 hours ago
The US is trying to squeeze the Danes to get hold of Greenland.
Comment by chvid 17 hours ago
The US is trying to squeeze the Danes to get hold of Greenland.
It's not really a "squeeze".
The Danes agreed that Greenland can become independent if supported by a national referendum. Apparently there is a decent amount of interest in that idea.
So the US can come in and say "hey, instead of independent, you could be in a union with the US". There is enough interest in that that it's a serious concern for the Danes.
The Danes aren't concerned because there's enough interest, they're concerned because a violent, hegemonic imperialist superpower run by an unstable authoritarian regime has decided Greenland should be theirs, apparently just because, and historically speaking having something the US wants means your cities get liberated into smoking rubble.
> they're concerned because a violent, hegemonic imperialist superpower
To be fair we learned it from watching Dad (England).
> unstable authoritarian regime
How is it unstable?
> apparently just because
Territorial waters and exclusive economic zone claims grant amazing access to the arctic.
> something the US wants
It's really just the moneyed interests inside of it. China and Russia seem to have the same bent for the same reasons. It was recently unusual in Iraq since the federal corruption had risen to such a level, enabled by 9/11, that lackies for these interests somehow found themselves directly employed by government.
I prefer nuance over hyperbole.
This particular thing was always in the works but we should ask the Greenlanders where they’d rather be and pay them if they choose otherwise than us. The land is too strategic and Denmark cannot hold it usefully.
There is no functional difference in likely effectiveness between the present EU, of which Denmark is a member state, or the present US holding Greenland against a Russian attack. The Russian attack would be smashed either way.
That seems unlikely. Peace in Europe exists because the United States threatens its absence with a fist by its heart. America had to save Europe from destroying itself once and now the US has pacified Europe by placing its troops and weapons there lest the nations turn on each other in uncivilized violence again. And then again, when they dragged their feet, the US had to blow up their gas pipelines pour encourager les autres. The continent is incapable of protecting its own shipping lanes without US support and NATO acts as a deterrent solely because the US is in it. Take it out and the Europeans will spend the majority of their time telling everyone how it's not a big deal that Ukraine will fall to Russia, and Poland, and so on.
What you're writing has very little to do with reality.
When we recently made agreements with the US to allow them to store some of their weapons here in case of a crisis we did this, the mutual concern was Russia. The weapons stored are presumably also of types useful for dealing with Russia.
We Europeans have nuclear weapons as well, so there's no possibility of the US preventing any uncivilized violence-- we do in fact have very real autonomy.
The US probably did blow up Nordstream; but this is very simply that it's easy to make the right choice when you're not paying for it, so this isn't some example of better American morality. Poland has a formal alliance with us and we would have to defend them by all means at our disposal.
But, taking into account the sale of oil fund assets by Azerbaijan and the corresponding increase in military spending I assume more pipelines will soon have to be blown up, only this time it'll be the UK who adds its complaints to those of Germany and the other gas dependent countries. The Armenians might even have to do it themselves, rather than relying on help from others.
Maybe we should start asking very single tribe/minority across the world if they want to be independent. We would very quickly find that current states are rather fragile conglomerates sometimes holding together by surprisingly weak forces.
I can see few parts in US for example wanting independence under certain conditions. Or US could have given kurds Kurdistan in the middle east with all that crap it caused in past 2 decades, largely stabilizing (big part of) the region. Clearly not policy US cares about much, so lets stop pretending actual wants or needs of Greenland population are anybody's concern here.
It is front page news in dk - leaders from major Danish companies have been called in by the government … novo is the biggest exporter to the us and the most obvious squeeze.
Technically this is done by the Biden admin but obviously coordinated with the incoming Trump admin who has made their attention of using trade to squeeze Denmark in order to get full control of Greenland very clear.