[rpiguy]

Yes the US has the same rich people in charge but the President is willing to defy them. He defied them on tariffs and secure arctic access and mineral rights probably align with their interests.

The US is unified with one military, one economy, one budget, one State Department, etc. Europe is not. Internal division here is not the same as internal division in Europe.

UK, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc. will not substantively move away from the US even if they are hopping mad about Greenland.

Russia wouldn’t try because we are too strong. If the EU were strong we wouldn’t be trying to take Greenland.

That’s the whole point - if there is a race for control of the arctic with China and Russia the EU couldn’t do anything. You’d depend on the US to police the arctic for you and to enforce whatever treaties are signed with China and Russia. Better deal for us to do it ourselves.

[ben_w]

> The US is unified with one military, one economy, one budget, one State Department, etc. Europe is not. Internal division here is not the same as internal division in Europe.

I give 50-50 you'd have a military coup if they were given the order to invade an ally.

More than half of your own government knows that invading an ally is not OK.

If Russia isn't enough of a threat to take advantage of this, they're absolutely not enough of a threat to take Greenland either.

The rest of us doing nothing is a direct signal to Russia to Blitzkrieg Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and as much of Poland as it can, and to know that "as much as it can" is as far as the tanks roll without refuelling.

Doing nothing about you invading our land, means our own death.

> UK, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, etc. will not substantively move away from the US even if they are hopping mad about Greenland.

Which guns do we need to show you before you back down?

Do we need to fire a missile at Mar-a-Lago before you take us seriously?

If this were civ, I'd be saying "Back off, we have nukes."

Because we do, in fact, have nukes. Pretty much the only substantial military thing the UK has at this point, but it has them.

> You’d depend on the US to police the arctic for you and to enforce whatever treaties are signed with China and Russia. Better deal for us to do it ourselves.

Not for you, not for us.

For us: As a nation, by the election of Trump, you have proven yourself as untrustworthy as Russia. Which is really really bad.

For you: you now have twice as many hostile nuclear powers with the means to hit you, combining to more than twice your GDP backing up those nukes.

Any attack you make on us, your treaty-bound allies, causes whatever treaties you sign with anyone anywhere in the world to be not worth the paper they're written on. China and Russia will immediately know this. Everyone will. Nobody will trust you.

You could've built bases in Greenland for free at any time without threatening us. You chose the threat. You're now going to face the counter-threats. We'll see how far those escalate. This is a game you never needed to play. You call it theatrics, we're not laughing, we're arming.

China is much more trusted right now than you are. Like, sure, we know they see Taiwan as their own, but we also know they're not going to screw us over. Even when it was the British Empire handing over Hong Kong, China understood that while they could take it at any time, it was bad to be seen as one who would do so dishonourably.