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There are a few things that confuse me about this potential acquisition: 1. You won't govern it. Greenland has it's own Self-Government Act. [0] 2. You won't

• spaniard89277 9mo ago
  What I wonder is about the second order effects. I mean, I'm pretty far from Denmark but here the talk is pretty much like an existential crisis. Even if the US does nothing about it, seems that many people has finally realized that Europe has no allies. This has a lot of implications regarding the Pax Americana, the US/EU financial system, Eurasia, and many others. I don't see any positive outcome for the west in general. Europe in particular is screwed but besides short-term gains I don't think the US is going to be able to sustain anything but very fragile and transactional alliances, if any.
  • owebmaster 9mo ago
    > Even if the US does nothing about it, seems that many people has finally realized that Europe has no allies. Indeed. But just because EU thinks too high of themselves and is turning down their last natural allies that is the South American/Mercosur countries. So whatever happens to EU is their own fault
    • spaniard89277 9mo ago
      Europe and the EU are two different things. The EU is already having it's own credibility crisis inside the EU, and there are already heavy pushes for reform. The conversation is completely different in Germany, Poland, Italy and Spain, for example. The EU has enacted pretty stupid policies but I don't think the status quo was about to last a lot. Now with the Greenland issue things are about to speed up. My guess is that, because they shaked hands with conservative leaders in Europe, the White house thinks this is going to benefit them. I don't think this is going to be the case mid term.
    • tuwtuwtuwtuw 9mo ago
      Can you give an example of natural ally in south America that has been turned down?
    • torlok 9mo ago
      What are you talking about. There's little real opposition to the EU-Mercosur trade deal. It'll be ratified this year. The EU is the largest source of foreign direct investment in Mercosur.
  • logicchains 9mo ago
    >I don't see any positive outcome for the west in general. Europe in particular is screwed but besides short-term gains I don't think the US is going to be able to sustain anything but very fragile and transactional alliances, if any. Europe became the forefront of human civilization, the home of the renaissance and the industrial revolution, because of internal competition between states (as opposed to the large centralized autocracies of Asia and the Middle East). In the long term more competition will ultimately be a good thing for Europe, forcing it to stop resting on its laurels, to start innovating and growing again.
    • munksbeer 9mo ago
      > In the long term more competition will ultimately be a good thing for Europe Leaving aside the deaths of millions of people through warfare, then, maybe, but still doubtful.
    • spaniard89277 9mo ago
      Now we compete with the whole world. I don't see much "resting in its laurels" nowadays. Have you traveled across Europe the last decade? There's no resting, just a declive.
• bigmealbigmeal 9mo ago
  The blind spot causing your confusion is that you “imagine none of this change under a new owner”. I’m almost flabbergasted by it. The owner decides the rules.
• adastra22 9mo ago
  > It seems like that's exactly what it would have to do post acquisition--unless of course the US also plans to bulldoze Greenland's sovereignty. That is how acquisition of territory works. When it becomes US land, US laws apply. Not whatever laws were in place before. What were you expecting?
• ivan_gammel 9mo ago
  They are probably thinking of Alaska or Louisiana Purchase, i.e. not just buying the land within Denmark, but territory transfer.
• benrutter 9mo ago
  > unless of course the US also plans to bulldoze Greenland's sovereignty. It's probably not helpful for me to speculate, but surely this? If the US is truly prepared to invade another ally's territory for material gain, I'd assume the idea that they'd honor other existing laws is unlikely.
  • verzali 9mo ago
    I don't see how it would actually work in practice. Can Trump really destroy Greenland's democracy via executive order? Surely Congress or the courts would have something to say about it? And even if not, how are you going to deal with all the people there? If Trump is ruling Greenland via executive order, then he is just a dictator, what happens to the people? It would end up as a long running sore and a terrible blemish on America's reputation.
    • benrutter 9mo ago
      Yeah, for what its worth I agree. But I can't see how those arguments would apply to abolishing Greenlands law, but not to invading and claiming ownership in the first place. If the US doesn't have checks and balances to stop it invading a democratic ally with no cause, then I don't know what checks and balancing meaningfully can be said to exist. Hopefully we won't find out.
    • fumblebee 9mo ago
      > Surely Congress or the courts would have something to say about it? my sense is that Trump feels to be above the law right now, having ordered the operation to seize Maduro without Congressional approval (illegal under U.S. constitutional law). Trump's reasoning was that "Congress has a tendency to leak", and so to him congress seems little more than background noise.
    • anonymousab 9mo ago
      > Surely Congress or the courts would have something to say about it? The entire mode of operation for the current administration is to ignore such things whenever they don't blindly rubber stamp or get out of the way. It has been very successful for them.
• joakleaf 9mo ago
  It may not just be about the minerals.... It could be about leaving NATO. US (Trump) feels they need Greenland for "security". They currently have (almost complete) access to use Greenland via NATO and the existing agreements with Denmark. So there is no need to extend this. However, if the US would want to leave NATO, they would no longer have access to Greenland under existing agreement. Therefore, if the US wants to leave NATO and still use Greenland (both militarily and for resources), they need to acquire Greenland. Acquiring Greenland would allow the US to control the entire western hemisphere, leave NATO, and abandon the eastern hemisphere entirely.
• ablation 9mo ago
  > > It seems like that's exactly what it would have to do post acquisition--unless of course the US also plans to bulldoze Greenland's sovereignty. I don't want to repeat what others are saying, but how on earth could you not consider that all of the existing rules, laws and agreements just go in the trash under a new "owner"? Of course the US plans to bulldoze Greenland's sovereignty, goodness me.
  • mothballed 9mo ago
    To be fair the US acquired American Samoa and kept a lot of their law in place even to the point you can do stuff in American Samoa that would be unconstitutional like limit power of women in some of the tribal councils (sorry they have a better name but I've forgotten), do not provide 2nd amendment protections required inside the USA, and limit ownership of land based on ethnic lines. The USA also for instance rehabilitated Philippines from Japanese rape islands into an independent nation by taking them as a territory.
• throw__away7391 9mo ago
  You're overthinking this. These are just stupid people. Think of the dumbest uncle you have ranting online over some ridiculous story. These are the people making these decisions, and they're putting about the same amount of planning into them.
• vivagreenland 9mo ago
  The man in charge has said in the past that he admired dictators. Many did not pay attention to this. Congress is easy to takeover by a political party and this happens cyclically, so no one was surprised by that. People also ignored gerrymandering because both major political parties do that, and historically it can be undone. However, the takeover and stacking of the judicial branch with political cronies was another definite warning sign. People that were paying attention noticed this came first, because it’s the brakes that can slow an administration from getting out of control. The brake lines were effectively cut. If you’ve studied German history and World War II, you know that Hitler didn’t just happen. There was an imperialist history. Though not typically stated in this way, the U.S. has historically been an empire for much of the 20th century, if you consider bases around the world and involvement in world conflicts (and the same could be said about some other countries, NATO, UN, etc.) The American people cannot rise up against its own government in any substantial way when (1) families are split with half of the people are brainwashed, and (2) they think that things can be undone after N years by voting that party out (but the opposing party can not pivot to undo the economic and world political damage done by the current administration). Most dictators were not known from the beginning of their reign as evil incarnate. Americans keep hoping to see in the news that someone will stop this, but they suspect that if they were to try to stop it, they and their families would eventually be punished or killed. So, they’re all just waiting a few years hoping that it will be undone, and that surely the military will not let the U.S. takeover a country that does not have a despotic leader; that would break the longstanding U.S. trend of only getting very involved publically at least if they are taking the stance of the respected jock defending the little kid getting beat up.
• throw0101c 9mo ago
  > 1. You won't govern it. Greenland has it's own Self-Government Act. [0] It may be governed the way of the Gambino family governing New York city: by receiving envelopes.
• TMWNN 9mo ago
  [flagged]
• K0nserv 9mo ago
  Everything that's been said publicly is just pretence, just like Maduro's/Venezuela's supposed drug trafficking. This is about Trump being and old man in his waning days who wants to create a legacy. Those around him have ambitions of empire.