As a U.S. citizen, I’m beginning to ask myself how to take more meaningful measures to help bring an end to this behavior. I’m not a political activist and generally try to mind my own business, but that mindset only worked when I felt I could trust the system to self-correct. It seems our judicial system can barely keep up, and Congress is doing next to nothing.
That strategy may be cathartic, but it will have the opposite of the desired effect. If there's any hope of changing someone's mind, it has to start by respecting their opinion no matter how wrong you think it is. If you start a fight you'll get a fight.
I agree. Trying to punish will just deepen resentment, and they will live in their echo chamber while you live in yours. Then it's just side vs side, with the pundits leading the dialog.
We have to remember that we aren't all working from the same perceptual or moral framework. This is a struggle for me, as I love my parents but our believes have diverged considerably.
I think the challenge right now in the U.S. is that for many, it doesn't feel socially safe to question your own side. In reality, we need to feel free to judge actions individually, and judge leaders as a true accumulation of their actions. If we fear rejection from our party/family/friends for not walking in lock-step with the official party stances, that influences a lot of our thinking. No one wants to feel continually guilty about their own views (especially when there are social consequences for changing them), so we often shove aside conflicting details, make jokes, and signal to others that we're still a part of the tribe.
To what end? I think this has become the “feel good that I am doing something about it” approach but it literally has almost zero effect beyond creating rhetoric from the politicians.
You need to hold your political leaders responsible with your vote. Don’t just automatically vote for the politicians that are “saying” the right things. Find out what your representatives are “doing” and hold them responsible for their actions or more importantly, inactions.
One thing that could help would be for Democrats who live in congressional districts where there is no way a Democrat will ever get elected because there are too many people there who just vote for the candidate with the 'R' by their name on the ballot without actually looking into either candidate's positions to switch their registration to Republican.
That way they could vote in Republican primaries. Many if not most of those districts actually have Republican candidates in the primaries who are center right but they lose because primary turnout is very low, largely consisting of just the most extreme voters.
For example consider Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG). In the primary the first time she ran against a perfectly normal Republican. I don't remember all the details, but I believe he was a decorated military officer who after the military was a successful businessman and who had server in state offices.
MTG was a full on QAnon and other conspiracy theorist believer. But it is mostly the fringe that votes in primaries so she won. And it is a heavily Republican district with many people who don't really follow politics so she got their vote in the general election because they always vote R.
Register as a Republican if you are in such a district and vote in the primaries and then maybe we can get back to having sane Republicans winning those districts.
For safe Republican districts where they do elect sane Republicans, it is still worth switching registration. Let the current representative from that district know that you are doing this, and promise that if Trump gets upset at their vote on something and bankrolls a primary challenge, you will vote for them in the primary.
I live in a district like this and the primary is determined by who is endorsed by the President.
Also these voters are dumb but they aren't that dumb. Unless you know a person who actually has presented as a Trump supporting republican for the last decade and is secretly willing to switch sides after the election, you're not going to trick them.
The point is that center right Republicans (the kind that used to win most Republican districts before 2012) could still win if they could make it to the general election. They often can't because most Republican voters, like most Democrat voters, aren't into party politics enough to bother voting in the primaries.
It is the voters who are most likely to be to be farthest from the center who vote in the primaries, and these are the ones who don't want a normal center right representative.
If Democrats switched parties and voted in the primaries they might be able to counter the usual extreme primary voters so a center right Republican could win.
Getting involved at the local level is a good place to start. Local governing bodies, city councils and other civic organizations represent meaningful opportunities for change.
Congress is too beholden and scared of Trump on the GOP side to do anything meaningful. The democrats are generally spineless.
The federalist society and GOP have created a severe ideological imbalance on the supreme court that will have serious ramifications for years to come unless there's a serious effort to pack or reform the institution.
I think we have to acknowledge the grievances of people who got us into this position in the first place and don't stop making those grievances and the tangible steps being taken to solve them known on every public platform available.
Some people are just so stupid they are beyond all help. They are eternally offended and will always have made up "grievances". For example one really funny "grievance" is that intermarriage is equal to violent murderous genocide. Its best to laugh these "grievances" out the room.
Start holding the opposing party responsible to run good candidates for office and adopt a platform that can appeal to independents.
The knee jerk reaction is to run your party’s candidates and platform to the opposite extreme. Instead you should move towards the center. I really hope the democrats realize this (some do and are speaking out) soon.
The Euros doesn't need tariffs, because their extremely high VAT taxes and non-tariff trade barriers always hurt the US worse, and the EU rebates VAT on its own exports (a border adjustment), U.S. goods entering the EU face this added cost without a similar U.S. mechanism, which some argue creates an imbalance
The EU applies a 10% tariff on U.S. cars, while the U.S. applies 2.5% on most EU cars
The EU underpaid NATO while passing the buck and funding extensive social programs
The EU enabled the Dutch Sandwich and Irish offshoring trade scams which has become a tax haven
What happened to Harley is the commonly shared example
U.S. MSRP: ~$28,000 (base model, pre-shipping).
After EU Tariff (at 50% peak proposal): Adds ~$14,000, bringing landed cost to ~$42,000.
Plus 25% VAT: Applied to post-tariff value, adding ~$10,500 → ~$52,500.
Plus 150% Luxury Tax (on value above threshold, but effectively inflating the whole): Adds ~$71,500 (based on full calculations accounting for the threshold and compounding).
Total Retail Price in Denmark: Up to $124,000 (more than 4x the U.S. price).
The imbalance comes from how VAT and US taxes work differently. A European car comes to the show floor free of VAT. A US car likely has sales tax still embedded into the costs, and tariffs get multiplied on top of it. I'm not saying that it's anyone's "fault", but it is an advantage for countries that have VAT.
Actually the european car comes to the show floor with VAT already paid by the store selling the car. VAT is end user tax, it's paid by last one in the chain. So it's only after the shop sells the car when they get the VAT back from the sale (and they get back only what VAT they paid before).
If the US feels practices are unfair they can go to the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organisation, or they could do whatever this madness is
EU is protecting American business and especially big tech with it’s anti-circumvention laws that US lobbied for. Abolishing those would be more affecting than tarrifs and would allow a de-enchittification movement to start chipping off profits from US companies.
> because their extremely high VAT taxes and non-tariff trade barriers always hurt the US worse, and the EU rebates VAT on its own exports
Your post is yet another example of how USians don't understand how VAT works.
There is no VAT rebate on exports, there is a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any export. There is also a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any B2B sale. That way VAT is a tax only on goods that are sold to consumers in the EU, no matter where they came from and no matter where they were manufactured/processed/...
How this works as an example: You mine iron ore, sell a ton for 1000€. Buyer pays 20% VAT. But since it's B2B, buyer can get those 20% back immediately in his monthly VAT declaration. Buyer makes 500kg steel from that iron ore, sells it for 2000€. Buyer of the steel can get those 20% back, since it's B2B. Let's say the buyer makes paperclips from that steel and sells those. Now the buyer of those paperclips is the interesting thing here, because the buyer pays 20% VAT on those paperclips. He might be their end-user (either business or customer) in which case he won't get 20% VAT back. He might be a reseller, in which case he will get the VAT back. End-users don't get their 20% VAT, resellers and processing industry do. It's always only the last step in the chain who really pay VAT, everyone else doesn't.
And any border-crossing is treated as a sale, so the you get the VAT rate (different EU contries have different rates) from the country that the goods are leaving paid out, and you have to pay the VAT rate of the country you are entering on those goods. If you are exporting to non-EU, and there is no VAT in the destination country, you don't pay any, you just get the VAT back from the country you are exporting from. So it is totally symmetrical, totally fair, and totally neutral, independent from whether it is US, EU, Chinese or whatever the origin might be.
And if you think it's complicated, you might be right. But then again, look at the complete and utter mess that US sales taxes are. Every other town might have a different tax rate, system, catalogue of goods every other week. USians shouldn't complain about trade barriers as long as that mess is still in place.
> The EU enabled the Dutch Sandwich and Irish offshoring trade scams which has become a tax haven
That's a fault of Ireland and the Netherlands, the EU is just powerless to stop those practices. Same as the US is powerless to get rid of their own tax haven states like Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. Just to cite Wikipedia, "Andrew Penney from Rothschild & Co described the US as "effectively the biggest tax haven in the world" and Trident Trust Co., one of the world's biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland and Grand Cayman, and into Sioux Falls" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_as_a_tax_haven
> He might be their end-user (either business or customer) in which case he won't get 20% VAT back.
My understanding, dealing with VAT/GST in another country, is that a business customer still gets the VAT back even if they're the end user. If my company (which comprises of 1 person) buys paperclips, or a laptop or whatever for business use, I claim the VAT back. It's only the consumer who pays VAT. If I want to transfer an asset from my business to myself then I have to pay the VAT.
Yes, what I told is a slight simplification. Since any company is usually not an end user and does something with its inventory that will sell to some end user, you can always get your VAT back. The way this works is that you as a company just never pay any VAT in the first place if you have a special VAT tax ID that you have to apply for and give to all your business partners. But that usually only works when not exporting or importing.
The best thing these countries could do would be to increase military spending to protect against Trump (and actual enemies like Putin whom they’ve enabled by their idiotic energy deals and “not my problem” approach to defense spending). I doubt they will, so US will get Greenland ceteris paribus.
How would a standard invasion work? The news about DoD preparing invasion plans for Greenland have an invasion done by Special Operations, not the infantry, armor and air. Special operations probably wouldn't work for the population of Canada.
After a short time, and some casualties, I think the US military would have real problems internally, not counting that popular support would disappear.
In the theoretical case of US actually invading Greenland (whatever that would mean, considering the largest city Nuuk is the size of a middle-sized town), the question isnt about potential casualties on Greenland.
The question is what would happen to the US staff land-locked on NATO bases within the EU. They will automatically become under siege, vastly outnumbered by European counterparts.
Since any attack on Greenland is an attack on the EU country the Kingdom of Denmark, and any attack on any EU countries automatically trigger EU Article 42.7, which mandates the full support from all members, to which all EU countries have committed, it would imply full-scale war.
What are the US ground capabilities in extreme weather? Because from where I stand, I'm under the impression a Greenland invasion is off limit 8 months out of 12, and realistically the window is quite short, no?
Also if any french military asset is present when the US attack, we will see how determined the french military is following it's own doctrine (which dictates a 'warning shot' 24 hours before sending the tactical nukes).
For Canada and the Nordic countries, the weather on Greenland is business as usual, for all branches of the military.
My guess is as yours - the US military's focus on middle east and east Asia is of great disadvantage for them. Do they even get below -20 C for any longer periods at any base located on US mainland? Alaska, and some regions close to Canada, perhaps, leaving them with only some 10.000 personnel having anything near arctic experience, majority of which are based at the bases, not trained for front-action in artic climate.
The US wouldn’t attack in an invasion. It would simply start building bases - it doesn’t need the south of Greenland. Just southern enough for a port that can stay open.
If we build a Rammstein-
sized base the US would already outnumber the native population.
Would the Danes or French open fire on us while the US is setting up shop? Highly unlikely.
Trump is pushing a total takeover but I suspect he would rather leave a small pocket of southern Greenland to the Danes to continue supporting the indigenous people, and then taking the bulk of the rest for mineral rights, arctic sea lanes, and defense.
This is the madness of the whole thing - the US could already build more bases in Greenland if they wanted to.
This isn't about building bases or military strategy or even resources. If it were about those things then the US could take over Greenland slowly with little effort. My understanding is the population there would have welcomed investment. The US could have done some minor leg work and in 10-20 years Greenland would have been closer / keen to join, or whatever.
> The US wouldn’t attack in an invasion. It would simply start building bases
Greenland is an island full of a vast nothingness, there is enough space for those kinds of bases. Greenland and Denmark have repeatedly said as much, and allowed the US to build any number of bases of any size. Building bases is totally possible, and always was possible, because Greenland and Denmark have always allowed it and would have continued to allow that.
I mean, they even turned a blind eye towards the US loosing a nuclear reactor and contaminating quite a bit of ice while trying to build tunnels for their ICBMs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Century
I’ll put myself in the minority here by saying that I think Trump is probably right. Greenland can’t be credibly defended by Denmark, the EU or even NATO. Article 5 is an untested foundation myth. Greenland is far away. Political will matters. We might be heading towards an independent Greenland if we continue following the status quo, which would be influenced strongly by adversaries and would be a US security nightmare.
I’d say that I prefer him to go about it a different way, except that I can’t see what that different way looks like when you want territory from another country that doesn’t want to give it to you.
And I say this as a European. Europe is not credible from a defense perspective and lacks the will to do very much of anything quickly or effectively. The best you can expect is a series of talking shops and some policy documents to be drawn up while the ice continues to melt.
If trump is actually deranged enough to use military force against Greenland we'll see how capable the EU is of defending it - and I suspect they'll put on a good show.
What the EU wouldn't be able to handle, I suspect, is would be a full ground invasion by China, not that China would/needs to do that.
If the US was genuinely concerned about the security of Greenland they should have discussed this with the EU and encouraged them to reinforce the island, and/or offered a joint base.
As a U.S. citizen, I’m beginning to ask myself how to take more meaningful measures to help bring an end to this behavior. I’m not a political activist and generally try to mind my own business, but that mindset only worked when I felt I could trust the system to self-correct. It seems our judicial system can barely keep up, and Congress is doing next to nothing.
As in any region's system: pay attention, vote, donate, organize even protest. Not voting votes for the winner, which might not be what you want.
We are rapidly approaching the point where that isn’t enough.
Protest is ill-defined and open-ended. The other alternative I didn't mention the first time is to get outta Dodge.
Oh you didn't hear? They're also cancelling the midterms.
And when this happens, about half the country still will support this demagogue.
Depending on your state you vote for the winner regardless who you vote for since its winner takes all.
Have you called your members of congress yet?
Don't let the people in your life casually get away with promoting fascism. Punish them socially.
That strategy may be cathartic, but it will have the opposite of the desired effect. If there's any hope of changing someone's mind, it has to start by respecting their opinion no matter how wrong you think it is. If you start a fight you'll get a fight.
I agree. Trying to punish will just deepen resentment, and they will live in their echo chamber while you live in yours. Then it's just side vs side, with the pundits leading the dialog.
We have to remember that we aren't all working from the same perceptual or moral framework. This is a struggle for me, as I love my parents but our believes have diverged considerably.
I think the challenge right now in the U.S. is that for many, it doesn't feel socially safe to question your own side. In reality, we need to feel free to judge actions individually, and judge leaders as a true accumulation of their actions. If we fear rejection from our party/family/friends for not walking in lock-step with the official party stances, that influences a lot of our thinking. No one wants to feel continually guilty about their own views (especially when there are social consequences for changing them), so we often shove aside conflicting details, make jokes, and signal to others that we're still a part of the tribe.
It sucks.
Protest
To what end? I think this has become the “feel good that I am doing something about it” approach but it literally has almost zero effect beyond creating rhetoric from the politicians.
You need to hold your political leaders responsible with your vote. Don’t just automatically vote for the politicians that are “saying” the right things. Find out what your representatives are “doing” and hold them responsible for their actions or more importantly, inactions.
Call your senator and congressman /s
One thing that could help would be for Democrats who live in congressional districts where there is no way a Democrat will ever get elected because there are too many people there who just vote for the candidate with the 'R' by their name on the ballot without actually looking into either candidate's positions to switch their registration to Republican.
That way they could vote in Republican primaries. Many if not most of those districts actually have Republican candidates in the primaries who are center right but they lose because primary turnout is very low, largely consisting of just the most extreme voters.
For example consider Marjorie Taylor Green (MTG). In the primary the first time she ran against a perfectly normal Republican. I don't remember all the details, but I believe he was a decorated military officer who after the military was a successful businessman and who had server in state offices.
MTG was a full on QAnon and other conspiracy theorist believer. But it is mostly the fringe that votes in primaries so she won. And it is a heavily Republican district with many people who don't really follow politics so she got their vote in the general election because they always vote R.
Register as a Republican if you are in such a district and vote in the primaries and then maybe we can get back to having sane Republicans winning those districts.
For safe Republican districts where they do elect sane Republicans, it is still worth switching registration. Let the current representative from that district know that you are doing this, and promise that if Trump gets upset at their vote on something and bankrolls a primary challenge, you will vote for them in the primary.
I live in a district like this and the primary is determined by who is endorsed by the President.
Also these voters are dumb but they aren't that dumb. Unless you know a person who actually has presented as a Trump supporting republican for the last decade and is secretly willing to switch sides after the election, you're not going to trick them.
The point is not to trick anyone.
The point is that center right Republicans (the kind that used to win most Republican districts before 2012) could still win if they could make it to the general election. They often can't because most Republican voters, like most Democrat voters, aren't into party politics enough to bother voting in the primaries.
It is the voters who are most likely to be to be farthest from the center who vote in the primaries, and these are the ones who don't want a normal center right representative.
If Democrats switched parties and voted in the primaries they might be able to counter the usual extreme primary voters so a center right Republican could win.
Move to a swing state and vote.
Getting involved at the local level is a good place to start. Local governing bodies, city councils and other civic organizations represent meaningful opportunities for change.
Congress is too beholden and scared of Trump on the GOP side to do anything meaningful. The democrats are generally spineless.
The federalist society and GOP have created a severe ideological imbalance on the supreme court that will have serious ramifications for years to come unless there's a serious effort to pack or reform the institution.
I think we have to acknowledge the grievances of people who got us into this position in the first place and don't stop making those grievances and the tangible steps being taken to solve them known on every public platform available.
What does Greenland have to do with anybody's grievances? That's a serious and non-rhetorical question.
Some people are just so stupid they are beyond all help. They are eternally offended and will always have made up "grievances". For example one really funny "grievance" is that intermarriage is equal to violent murderous genocide. Its best to laugh these "grievances" out the room.
Start holding the opposing party responsible to run good candidates for office and adopt a platform that can appeal to independents.
The knee jerk reaction is to run your party’s candidates and platform to the opposite extreme. Instead you should move towards the center. I really hope the democrats realize this (some do and are speaking out) soon.
The importance of military development in sovereign states with reference to China.
Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46669025
Has that one been kicked out from the homepage?
It’s a pure political discussion. It will get flagged by enough people who don’t want to see politics to remove it from the page.
That's as diplomatic as it gets
The Euros doesn't need tariffs, because their extremely high VAT taxes and non-tariff trade barriers always hurt the US worse, and the EU rebates VAT on its own exports (a border adjustment), U.S. goods entering the EU face this added cost without a similar U.S. mechanism, which some argue creates an imbalance
The EU applies a 10% tariff on U.S. cars, while the U.S. applies 2.5% on most EU cars
The EU underpaid NATO while passing the buck and funding extensive social programs
The EU enabled the Dutch Sandwich and Irish offshoring trade scams which has become a tax haven
What happened to Harley is the commonly shared example
U.S. MSRP: ~$28,000 (base model, pre-shipping).
After EU Tariff (at 50% peak proposal): Adds ~$14,000, bringing landed cost to ~$42,000.
Plus 25% VAT: Applied to post-tariff value, adding ~$10,500 → ~$52,500.
Plus 150% Luxury Tax (on value above threshold, but effectively inflating the whole): Adds ~$71,500 (based on full calculations accounting for the threshold and compounding).
Total Retail Price in Denmark: Up to $124,000 (more than 4x the U.S. price).
Fact: European VAT (20-25% depending on country) is same for all companies; domestic, EU, US and Asians alike, added to end customers.
It's not EU's fault US manufacturers can't keep manufacturing costs down.
Neither is it EU's fault Trump believes slapping tariffs hurting US consumers will improve US standing in the world.
The imbalance comes from how VAT and US taxes work differently. A European car comes to the show floor free of VAT. A US car likely has sales tax still embedded into the costs, and tariffs get multiplied on top of it. I'm not saying that it's anyone's "fault", but it is an advantage for countries that have VAT.
Actually the european car comes to the show floor with VAT already paid by the store selling the car. VAT is end user tax, it's paid by last one in the chain. So it's only after the shop sells the car when they get the VAT back from the sale (and they get back only what VAT they paid before).
I was referring to European cars sold in the US compared to US cars sold in Europe.
If the US feels practices are unfair they can go to the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organisation, or they could do whatever this madness is
And you could say the same about the tariffs mentioned in the article.
EU is protecting American business and especially big tech with it’s anti-circumvention laws that US lobbied for. Abolishing those would be more affecting than tarrifs and would allow a de-enchittification movement to start chipping off profits from US companies.
Applying extra tariffs on the US is still the correct path forward.
> because their extremely high VAT taxes and non-tariff trade barriers always hurt the US worse, and the EU rebates VAT on its own exports
Your post is yet another example of how USians don't understand how VAT works.
There is no VAT rebate on exports, there is a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any export. There is also a 100% reimbursement of VAT on any B2B sale. That way VAT is a tax only on goods that are sold to consumers in the EU, no matter where they came from and no matter where they were manufactured/processed/...
How this works as an example: You mine iron ore, sell a ton for 1000€. Buyer pays 20% VAT. But since it's B2B, buyer can get those 20% back immediately in his monthly VAT declaration. Buyer makes 500kg steel from that iron ore, sells it for 2000€. Buyer of the steel can get those 20% back, since it's B2B. Let's say the buyer makes paperclips from that steel and sells those. Now the buyer of those paperclips is the interesting thing here, because the buyer pays 20% VAT on those paperclips. He might be their end-user (either business or customer) in which case he won't get 20% VAT back. He might be a reseller, in which case he will get the VAT back. End-users don't get their 20% VAT, resellers and processing industry do. It's always only the last step in the chain who really pay VAT, everyone else doesn't.
And any border-crossing is treated as a sale, so the you get the VAT rate (different EU contries have different rates) from the country that the goods are leaving paid out, and you have to pay the VAT rate of the country you are entering on those goods. If you are exporting to non-EU, and there is no VAT in the destination country, you don't pay any, you just get the VAT back from the country you are exporting from. So it is totally symmetrical, totally fair, and totally neutral, independent from whether it is US, EU, Chinese or whatever the origin might be.
And if you think it's complicated, you might be right. But then again, look at the complete and utter mess that US sales taxes are. Every other town might have a different tax rate, system, catalogue of goods every other week. USians shouldn't complain about trade barriers as long as that mess is still in place.
> The EU enabled the Dutch Sandwich and Irish offshoring trade scams which has become a tax haven
That's a fault of Ireland and the Netherlands, the EU is just powerless to stop those practices. Same as the US is powerless to get rid of their own tax haven states like Delaware, Nevada or Wyoming. Just to cite Wikipedia, "Andrew Penney from Rothschild & Co described the US as "effectively the biggest tax haven in the world" and Trident Trust Co., one of the world's biggest providers of offshore trusts, moved dozens of accounts out of Switzerland and Grand Cayman, and into Sioux Falls" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_as_a_tax_haven
> He might be their end-user (either business or customer) in which case he won't get 20% VAT back.
My understanding, dealing with VAT/GST in another country, is that a business customer still gets the VAT back even if they're the end user. If my company (which comprises of 1 person) buys paperclips, or a laptop or whatever for business use, I claim the VAT back. It's only the consumer who pays VAT. If I want to transfer an asset from my business to myself then I have to pay the VAT.
Yes, what I told is a slight simplification. Since any company is usually not an end user and does something with its inventory that will sell to some end user, you can always get your VAT back. The way this works is that you as a company just never pay any VAT in the first place if you have a special VAT tax ID that you have to apply for and give to all your business partners. But that usually only works when not exporting or importing.
The best thing these countries could do would be to increase military spending to protect against Trump (and actual enemies like Putin whom they’ve enabled by their idiotic energy deals and “not my problem” approach to defense spending). I doubt they will, so US will get Greenland ceteris paribus.
Canadian Prime Minister recently said that he stands by Canada’s NATO Article 2 and 5 obligations with our Eureopean allies.
A subtle signal that war with United States is a possibility.
Trump will use this as a pretext to not only take Greenland but to invade Canada as well.
He has gone utterly mad. Congress needs to act. Yesterday.
The GOP controls congress and will do nothing. They've already caved and prevented any effort at restraint with respect to the Venezuela debacle.
How would a standard invasion work? The news about DoD preparing invasion plans for Greenland have an invasion done by Special Operations, not the infantry, armor and air. Special operations probably wouldn't work for the population of Canada.
After a short time, and some casualties, I think the US military would have real problems internally, not counting that popular support would disappear.
In the theoretical case of US actually invading Greenland (whatever that would mean, considering the largest city Nuuk is the size of a middle-sized town), the question isnt about potential casualties on Greenland.
The question is what would happen to the US staff land-locked on NATO bases within the EU. They will automatically become under siege, vastly outnumbered by European counterparts.
Since any attack on Greenland is an attack on the EU country the Kingdom of Denmark, and any attack on any EU countries automatically trigger EU Article 42.7, which mandates the full support from all members, to which all EU countries have committed, it would imply full-scale war.
What are the US ground capabilities in extreme weather? Because from where I stand, I'm under the impression a Greenland invasion is off limit 8 months out of 12, and realistically the window is quite short, no?
Also if any french military asset is present when the US attack, we will see how determined the french military is following it's own doctrine (which dictates a 'warning shot' 24 hours before sending the tactical nukes).
For Canada and the Nordic countries, the weather on Greenland is business as usual, for all branches of the military.
My guess is as yours - the US military's focus on middle east and east Asia is of great disadvantage for them. Do they even get below -20 C for any longer periods at any base located on US mainland? Alaska, and some regions close to Canada, perhaps, leaving them with only some 10.000 personnel having anything near arctic experience, majority of which are based at the bases, not trained for front-action in artic climate.
For some real-life insides:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Msfrit12u0M&lc=UgwDlvf-UEzzhBzZJ...
https://youtu.be/DygiGQPGDPY?si=qxE5-7X8PC2eIeZS
https://youtu.be/3pwcZx1_KTA?si=d92vf4kqdDow0a-m
The US wouldn’t attack in an invasion. It would simply start building bases - it doesn’t need the south of Greenland. Just southern enough for a port that can stay open.
If we build a Rammstein- sized base the US would already outnumber the native population.
Would the Danes or French open fire on us while the US is setting up shop? Highly unlikely.
Trump is pushing a total takeover but I suspect he would rather leave a small pocket of southern Greenland to the Danes to continue supporting the indigenous people, and then taking the bulk of the rest for mineral rights, arctic sea lanes, and defense.
This is the madness of the whole thing - the US could already build more bases in Greenland if they wanted to.
This isn't about building bases or military strategy or even resources. If it were about those things then the US could take over Greenland slowly with little effort. My understanding is the population there would have welcomed investment. The US could have done some minor leg work and in 10-20 years Greenland would have been closer / keen to join, or whatever.
> The US wouldn’t attack in an invasion. It would simply start building bases
Greenland is an island full of a vast nothingness, there is enough space for those kinds of bases. Greenland and Denmark have repeatedly said as much, and allowed the US to build any number of bases of any size. Building bases is totally possible, and always was possible, because Greenland and Denmark have always allowed it and would have continued to allow that.
I mean, they even turned a blind eye towards the US loosing a nuclear reactor and contaminating quite a bit of ice while trying to build tunnels for their ICBMs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Century
I’ll put myself in the minority here by saying that I think Trump is probably right. Greenland can’t be credibly defended by Denmark, the EU or even NATO. Article 5 is an untested foundation myth. Greenland is far away. Political will matters. We might be heading towards an independent Greenland if we continue following the status quo, which would be influenced strongly by adversaries and would be a US security nightmare.
I’d say that I prefer him to go about it a different way, except that I can’t see what that different way looks like when you want territory from another country that doesn’t want to give it to you.
And I say this as a European. Europe is not credible from a defense perspective and lacks the will to do very much of anything quickly or effectively. The best you can expect is a series of talking shops and some policy documents to be drawn up while the ice continues to melt.
If trump is actually deranged enough to use military force against Greenland we'll see how capable the EU is of defending it - and I suspect they'll put on a good show.
What the EU wouldn't be able to handle, I suspect, is would be a full ground invasion by China, not that China would/needs to do that.
If the US was genuinely concerned about the security of Greenland they should have discussed this with the EU and encouraged them to reinforce the island, and/or offered a joint base.