> Might Greenland be better off as a U.S. territory than as a Danish territory? Quite possibly!
That there are Americans with this line of thinking just showcases how out of bounds the US have become. This isn't the way of thinking for a peaceful and cooperative world, this is the thinking of imperialism.
I'm ashamed of sharing this same space with people with no respect or regards to sovereignty and actual humans living in places. I'm happy you can freely express it, and I'm happy people have different opinions and perspectives, but some perspectives are so fucked up I lose hope sometimes. I truly hope you can eventually see things from a less violent perspective, god speed.
I'm talking specifically about Greenland.
You're arguing in bad faith.
It was through American arrogance and aggressive attitudes that relations soured to the point where the Cubans thought they needed a deterrent.
It seems you guys still haven't learned your lesson.
[0] https://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/this-day-in-politics-...
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Greenland is already a colonized asset by Denmark. It is not a sovereign country, it has some forms of autonomy granted to it by Danish government. It can vote to go independent and there's a strong chance it will at some point.
As for the U.S. looking out for its own best interests, that is only natural. The U.S. is not an empire. Were Greenland to join the U.S., it would be through approval of Greenland citizens and U.S. Congress and would surely involve a financial incentive package that would be great for everyone involved (Greenland today is dependent on Danish subsidies). Greenlanders would become full U.S. citizens, not imperial subjects.
At any rate, the cost of running a global military and hedging against World War 3 for the last 80 years is pretty expensive. Most of Europe has gotten complacent with Pax Americana and have completely lost touch with the real risks of the real world. Russia would dominate the European continent were it not for U.S. military. How quickly could Russia take Greenland if it wanted to, were it not for the threat of retaliation by U.S. military assets?
France can protect Greenland though and they've signaled they will, including from the US. Attitudes like yours demonstrate why that is needed. Americans are a threat, not a partner.
Superpowers aren't super because of their inherent qualities. They're super because of their alliances.
When a country is misbehaving globally, their loss of superpower status is good for the rest of the world.
The truth is: Europeans don't trust the US anymore (except maybe Hungary).
With fewer friends the super power ends up simply being a power. A more volatile world.
Brilliant minds thought up the Marshall plan. It secured the world. Nothing less! The world.
Did it come with a price? Yes. But what the protectionist do not get today as they dismantle the system is that is might actually have been cheaper than the alternative while remaining the leader.
Those who think that governments should be run as a business are delusional. They think we buy F35 because they are the best. The sales proves it! They will never realize that SAAB had better and more fitting options for us. They will never understand that we did pay some protection money. It is not a simple Luca Brasi situation. It is more subtle.
Ou friend is gone so we will try to do that. We have to. Now you understand that might not actually be to your advantage.
The arrangements made after WWII came at a time when U.S. was over 40% of the global GDP. That's no longer the case. Now, globalism has gutted our own labor market, and many formerly proud manufacturing hubs in the U.S. are saddled with methamphetamine and fentanyl problems. Our veterans have a very high incidence of suicide, and we have a lot of them, because we have had to maintain a large military for a century. Unchecked immigration has diluted national cohesion and inflamed tensions domestically (and from what I understand, Europe's got its own internal tensions with this problem). The world as it existed in 1948 no longer exists.
Sorry you think the SAAB is better than the F35. It's really not, and lacks the same thrust, payload, stealth, etc but it's a perfectly good jet. That being said, I don't think fighter jets are going to win 21st century warfare. Drone tech is likely to be the deciding factor.
Check your biases.
I don't know where to start with this, there is so much space here you could drive a country through it. So citizens (not government officials) "linked", what does that mean? What activities exactly? "Fear could be" again, what does this mean, people are fearful, over what? People are afraid all the time.
Is this it?
With the notable exception of dealing with Russia...
See the recent threat to allow Ukraine use of Tomahawk missiles. Taken off the table after Putin made a hurried call, and now Putin has lost interest in negotiations, again.
Trump has success "negotiating" with a regional terror group already almost bombed out of existence. He seems to blink first rather a lot when faced with an actual danger to the US.
... based on the fact that the US did quite a lot of questionably legal invasion campaigns over the last decades and Trump having signed an EO to "rename" DoD to Department of War. It's not an unrealistic interpretation.
> This is the same guy that just negotiated peace between Gaza and Israel.
He re-hashed Biden's negotiations and takes credit for it. Classic Trump.
> He doesn't take options off the table because it automatically weakens your negotiation position.
What "negotiations"? We don't live in times any more where kings can distribute pieces of land and the people living on it at will - no matter what Trump thinks he is.
The U.S. is a sovereign country, and Congress approved all the actions in Iraq and Afghanistan for better or worse, and it was bipartisan.
Renaming Department of Defense to Department of War is something like the opposite of doublespeak. It's more honest, isn't it?
> He re-hashed Biden's negotiations and takes credit for it. Classic Trump.
No. The entire Gaza situation erupted under Biden's presidency. As did the Ukraine invasion. The Biden presidency was completely powerless to stop any of this from occurring. Biden, the same guy that bumbled through sentences and lost track of topics in the presidential debate and was replaced by his own party's superdelegates in 2024 after he won the state primaries, had nothing to do with this.
> What "negotiations"? We don't live in times any more where kings can distribute pieces of land and the people living on it at will - no matter what Trump thinks he is.
There's 185 countries on planet earth. Many of them are run by literal kings and some of them are run by king-like figures. The U.S. absolutely isn't one of them, but when it comes to international politics, the duly elected President is the negotiator-in-chief. This follows in a long history of deal-making, going all the way back to President Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase from France.
Ironically, Denmark itself does have a king!
The Danish king has zero power. Yes, he needs to sign the laws. Should he refuse, the next law he would see was his removal.
We have been lucky enough to have reasonable people give up power without bloodshed.
Have a word with the French how it goes if not. Can we find other examples of revolutionary wars? Something more close to home?
I sadly see no irony. None at all.
You love a strong man. A negotiator-in-chief. You think that is a president. Learn from the Germans. They replaced a monarch with a toothless head of state (look how I gracefully avoided the Austrian Painter). Most Americans do not even know the difference between the German President and Bundeschancellor.
What you are arguing for is a litteral king. Call it what you want. You will soon enough find out how hard it is to get rid of cetralized power.
Great, can you just get rid of the role now? What is the point in the role? Why give nobility and all this heritable nonsense even the slightest auspice?
> We have been lucky enough to have reasonable people give up power without bloodshed. > Have a word with the French how it goes if not. Can we find other examples of revolutionary wars? Something more close to home? > I sadly see no irony. None at all.
I don't know what to tell you. America kickstarted the whole monarchal upheaval movement in 1776 and we had to fight the world's largest empire for it with our own guns. It's unfortunate that the French did not have the same success in 1789.
> You love a strong man. A negotiator-in-chief. You think that is a president. Learn from the Germans. They replaced a monarch with a toothless head of state (look how I gracefully avoided the Austrian Painter). Most Americans do not even know the difference between the German President and Bundeschancellor.
No I'm not going to learn from the Germans, there's nothing to learn there. We have been doing democracy for 250 years, longer than anyone, our Presidents have generally been strong men, including General Washington himself. 32 of our 47 presidents have been ex-military. Some notable examples are General Ulysses S. Grant, General Eisenhower, Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Colonel Thomas Jefferson, Major General Andrew Jackson, Captain Abraham Lincoln, Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, etc etc. In that 250 year time frame, the U.S. conducted war, negotiated expansions of territory, settled conflicts, negotiated treaties, and defeated numerous empires. That could only happen because our Presidents were strong men with strong leadership.
Our duly elected president is the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military and the Chief Diplomat. It has always been the case. U.S. Presidents are powerful. It has always been the case.
However, U.S. citizens are also powerful. We have real freedom of speech, not some feckless version of it that europeans flirt with. We have guns to defend our human rights, including our lives, our liberty and our property. We have a robust legal system, 50 independent state governments with broad powers, a bill of rights that can't be overturned except by a large supermajority of states (75%), balances between branches of government, etc.
We have a long deep cultural history of fighting for liberty, it will never be taken from us, you have to understand. We demand strong leaders, because we are strong people. But our leaders know they are in power for a short time. We have Constitutionally limited terms (can't be overturned except by 3/4 of state legislatures and 2/3 of Congress).
We are never arguing for a king. We will never accept a king. But we will also never accept a weak President. Hope you can understand.
Your internal implementation details are not pertinent when something is illegal in international law.
Bases as in multiple? Didn't they shut down all but one?
> was never a threat. It was an offer
Is this a joke? The president has literally said they're not ruling out military force to annex Greenland, in what world isn't that a threat? Especially when said to a military partner no less.
When the US purchased Lousiana from the French, did the bid also come with a "if you don't agree, we might take it by force" addendum?