Comment by renewiltord 3 months ago
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.
It actually appears that Ukraine blew up Nordstream.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/...
It's very possible that they did, it's very feasible and to some degree a simple matter. However, I still believe that it's more likely that the US did than that the Ukrainians did. My initial assumption, right after it happened was Ukrainians or the US, but I have always leaned to that the US is more likely, and there's at lot of reasons for that.
However, I mostly think you did it because you said you would, and I kind of trust you when you do things like that. When your leaders try to communicate their intentions, they usually mean what they say and it's not terribly complicated.
The US talk about agreement with the EU view that this is somehow a brazen and dangerous sabotage is pretty funny though, because this kind of thing is absolutely legal-- completely, not like 'Oh, this is disputable', but completely. The useless German arrest warrant that was issued was funny too. Neither of these two mean anything, but I get the impression that everybody knows it's legal and wish it weren't. They know that the Armenians can blow up Turkstream and the Georgian pipelines, even with the slightest provocation, since there's no ceasefire agreement and all their big investments can be destroyed in an instant with unhappy Brits as a likely result.
You don't even need an order. If your country is occupied by another country or at war, and you can damage infrastructure useful for the enemy war effort, whether in export of energy or the electrical grid or anything like that, you don't need an order, you should just do it. Attacks on things in international waters is obviously permitted. If it belongs the enemy and you can attack it, you probably should. It's more complicated if it's in a neutral country, and then it might actually be illegal, but otherwise-- do the work and put on some distinctive marking for the attack itself, and there's nothing to complain about.
It's something that anyone who has lived in a smaller country with a neighbour that could possibly make war upon them drills into their own heads when they first read their grandparent's old 1950s military manuals.
Of course, if the US really did warn, then it may be as you say-- after all, why warn of what one would oneself plan to do, but people can be tricky, so there isn't a guarantee there either, especially if the explosives are pre-planted.
I'm reminded of the weird US accusations against Russia right after the event though, now that I read the article again, and that's another reason to suspect the US. Imagine that you're in an Agatha Christie novel and somebody says stupid things to you. There's only one conclusion-- he wants you to think stupid things. The article also contains some of this kind of stupid about 1/3 in and it's right when it starts discussing this kind of thing, so, no it's 100% the US. You don't talk like this, or reason like this, unless you did it. It even has one of those 'how did you know the parts you weren't there for' problems.
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.