[fatbird]

What America got, by being the heavyweight in NATO, was the greatest economy the world has ever seen. America got rich by selling Europe a nuclear umbrella, which kept the peace, and let Europe go cheap on defense and long on developing their own economies in tandem. The USD as global reserve currency means the world loans money to the US at the lowest possible interest rate; the US extended that credit to its businesses and education system and infrastructure.

What America loses by gaining Greenland is that worldwide market and those close defense relationships forming a common bloc. The US dollar stops being the reserve currency; America's cheap credit line dries up. American soft power in Europe is gone, and Europe aligns itself with China or Russia for stability, and becomes an American adversary. All so you can have, what, a bunch of melting glaciers?

[nec4b]

USA was already the richest nation before both world wars and way before NATO was established. Europe can't align with Russia, because Russian Empire wants pieces of Europe. It can't align with China, because trading with China is more or less one way and that can be taken away anytime China feels like it.

[disgruntledphd2]

> USA was already the richest nation before both world wars and way before NATO was established. Europe can't align with Russia, because Russian Empire wants pieces of Europe. It can't align with China, because trading with China is more or less one way and that can be taken away anytime China feels like it.

In a world where the US is not a trusted partner, I'd expect the EU to do partial deals with the US and China while maintaining pressure on Russia.

Lets not forget that the US imports vast amounts of EU capital, and in the new world that makes less and less sense. And the US market having 60% of global equity value is not sustainable in this world either.

[Jackson__]

It's not just any pile of melting glaciers, its a pile of melting glaciers that looks really big in mercator projection!!

[rayiner]

> What America got, by being the heavyweight in NATO, was the greatest economy the world has ever seen. America got rich by selling Europe a nuclear umbrella

But this just isn’t true! The U.S. overtook the UK in per capita GDP in 1880, near the peak of the British Empire: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap.... At that point the UK was already significantly richer than the rest of europe.

If you look at GDP growth rate, the US has consistently averaged 1.7% GDP per capita growth over the past 200 years. The mass industrialization during the war itself spike growth and helped recovery from the Great Depression, but America didn’t grow dramatically faster during the NATO era than it did before that.

The U.S. is rich because its been one of the richest countries in the world since the 18th century and has been extraordinarily stable. It was considerably richer than western Europe even going into the 20th century: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-GDP-and-GDP-p.... In 1900, U.S. gdp per capita was almost 50% higher than western europe. In 1990, it was also about 50%. There was a temporary period right after the war when the U.S. was much richer than western europe, but europe actually grew faster during this 1950-1990 period.

[fatbird]

Okay. What will the stability be like after NATO is shattered and the EU is no longer a market open to the US?