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Those Danes should study the Falklands war. Using F35 in this situation is like brining in a billion dollar paperweight to the battle.s

jacquesm 7mo ago
That doesn't matter. It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. It is about gross miscalculation of consequences. Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU. So you don't attack Greenland. Because that would be wrong. Unless all that stuff about shining cities on hills was nonsense. Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.
- ericmay 7mo ago
  The US wouldn’t even need to “attack” Greenland. What is there to even attack? 50 Danish soldiers? They could just say “that’s ours”, ignore whatever Europe says, and start doing whatever they wanted to do and instead force the EU to attack American forces or civilian business interests. I’m not suggesting this is a good idea or anything but there’s a ton of other ways that something like this could play out which involves more difficult ways to counter than you might think. > Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China. What power has the US ceded?
  - ta20240528 7mo ago
    The UK only had to send a single officer to Greenland to stop Trump's previous attempt to annex Greenland. That was a signal, thankfully there are still adults in the USA who recognised it.
    - ericmay 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      - ta20240528 7mo ago
        You clearly don't know British understatement. Firing on one British officer would be as bad a firing on 10000. It's about lines.
        ericmay 7mo ago
        This kind of stuff masked you feel good to say but the UK isn’t going to stop the US if it (somewhat foolishly in my opinion) decided that it was going to take Greenland. Neither is the EU.
        ta20240528 7mo ago
        You are mistaking the battle for the war: Denmark / EU would no doubt lose the BATTLE for Greenland. Within hours. But the sun would rise the next day and the USA won't like the 'non-kinetic' consequences. Too many to enumerate. Eventually the adults in USA would just return it.
        ericmay 7mo ago
        No it would be a point of no return. But the "non-kinetic" consequences would go both ways. It's not an exercise we should entertain, though the EU needs to step up in a very serious way and spend billions of Euros adding new equipment to Greenland to beef up detection and defense.
        Jensson 7mo ago
        EU has more arctic warfare equipment than USA does, USA doesn't do much arctic warfare so the war would likely be much more expensive for USA than EU. Most regular equipment doesn't work in -40C temperatures, to take Greenland USA would need to develop more arctic enabled weaponry just for that.
        ericmay 7mo ago
        How will the EU get this arctic warfare equipment to Greenland? If the EU is so ready and willing to use this equipment, maybe they should deploy it to Ukraine instead. The US literally has bases in Alaska and Greenland and deals with these temperatures regularly.
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    > What power has the US ceded? Seriously? You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally. The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you). That doesn't translate into ownership and it doesn't in any way give you control but it ensures that things will, at least most of the times, go your way because of momentum and because it makes sense by default. Just like you may disagree on some stuff with your friends but you're not going to rob their homes, just because you can (and maybe just because they gave you the key to the back door). You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are. I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it. The US maximized its post-war power on the 10th of September 2001. Since then it has gone down hill very steadily and the fall rapidly accelerated with Trump. I see no reason to believe this will change, all institutions that were supposed to provide checks and balances have failed. And all China has to do is to look sane in comparison, that's not super hard.
    - ericmay 7mo ago
      > You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally. We live in a multi-polar world. Sure. But I disagree with your assertion that there are three major power blocks. The US and China are the only two. Europe has a decent sized and advanced economy but it lacks military power and is politically fragmented and always will be. China is building military power but lacks the ability and will to project that power. Manufacturing and economic powerhouse rivaling the United States. No doubt about that. Russia isn't a pole in this world. As President Obama said back in the 2010s I believe "Russia is a nuclear armed gas station". That was true then, and it's still true today. > The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you). Well, I don't think this is true for one. And secondly if it takes just a year or so to throw away that power then it was just a matter of time until the EU got mad at the US for doing something and threw it away anyways. > You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are. What soft power is the Chinese capitalizing on? Is it their support for Russia and supplying money, weapons, and equipment for their war in Ukraine? Or is it the soft power they had in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran that they have just lost because of US military action? > I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it. The US ability to project power isn't being diminished by the Iran war, only being exercised. Talking heads for some reason think that when you launch an aerial assault against a country that is amassing ballistic missiles, drones (which they build and sell to Russia to go bomb innocent Ukrainians), and more that it should be over within 24 hours and that the enemy shouldn't be able to fight back. It's unrealistic. Nevermind Iran launching these missiles at civilian targets in countries throughout the Middle East. I get the argument that if you hose a US military base that the base is a target, but there's no excuse for attacking civilian apartment complexes and such. It also misses the fact that, we've seen this movie before with North Korea. Except if Iran gets a nuclear weapon they also have control over your oil supply and it would kick off a nuclear arms race in the region because Saudi Arabia and others certainly aren't going to let Iran be the only one with nuclear weapons. These are tough problems to deal with, and from the sidelines it's easy to think about how simple the solution is or point out all the mistakes, but the alternative headline here is the US does nothing, all of these Middle Eastern countries get nuclear bombs, Iran loads up on ballistic missiles, and then who knows exactly what will happen? Do they nuke Israel and Israel nukes them back? Do they extract a toll on oil passing through the Straight of Hormuz like they are as of today declaring they will do?
  - enoint 7mo ago
    It wasn’t even about Greenland, but a distraction from the extent of Trump’s knowledge of Epstein. Anyway, there’s actually an index for soft power. Eliminating USAID halved that index. China built the highways, hospitals and water treatment instead.
  - Eupolemos 7mo ago
    What power? Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency). The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz). All the soft power it ever had.
    - ericmay 7mo ago
      > Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency). As a reminder, reserve currencies are just currencies that are held in large amounts by national banks and other important institutions. The USD, like the Euro, Yen, Pound, and others are all reserve currencies. The USD is the dominant currency, in part because the US is in the Middle East right now doing exactly what it is doing by using the military to enforce trade for oil in USD. But if the US loses that "status" it just.... reverts to being more like the EU? Doesn't seem so bad to me. There's also pros/cons with being "the reserve currency". > The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz). See Europe begging for help in Ukraine. I don't think this is a good argument. If 4 years of Trump being mean was all it took to erase all soft power the US ever had, then it never had it in the first place and it wasn't worth caring about.
      - saulapremium 7mo ago
        >If 4 years of Trump being mean was all it took to erase all soft power the US ever had, then it never had it in the first place and it wasn't worth caring about That's a weird statement. Like all it was were some empty words. The current system, which you don't think is worth caring about, has been exceptionally good for the US. The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Do you think this is simply because Americans are superior human beings? Also, >See Europe begging for help in Ukraine ..what, exactly, are you trying to say here? Other than yes, the US does in fact seem to be siding with Putin in spite of a few attempts at acting neutral.
        ericmay 7mo ago
        > That's a weird statement. What do you find weird about it? > The current system, which you don't think is worth caring about, has been exceptionally good for the US. I'm not against the current system, generally speaking. Critical of it, at times, absolutely. But not against it. Apologies if I gave you the wrong impression there. > The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Do you think this is simply because Americans are superior human beings? I think our culture and policies were superior, and then toss in a gigantic country with access to both oceans, incredible natural resources, and well protected and you have a recipe for an economic and military super power. So it's a combination of things really. I wouldn't be quick to dismiss the cultural attributes though. > ..what, exactly, are you trying to say here? Idk, people are making fun of the US "begging for help" against Iran. I'm going to make fun of the EU begging for US help against Ukraine. > Other than yes, the US does in fact seem to be siding with Putin in spite of a few attempts at acting neutral. US isn't siding with Putin. China and Iran are though. Or have you forgotten that Iran [1] is building and selling drones to Russia who is using those drones to bomb innocent civilians in Ukraine? Or have you also forgotten that China is supplying Russia with equipment and weaponry, often times under cover to evade sanctions? But sure, saulapremium, it's the US who is siding with Putin and we certainly didn't give Ukraine tens of billions of dollars in support, we certainly didn't rush missiles to Ukraine to help them fight against Russia, nor did we sanction Russia to hell, stop Venezuela from skirting those sanctions, and we can't possibly still providing intelligence and targeting support to Ukraine. This is what I'm talking about. If all it takes are a few mean words from our idiot president and now all of a sudden it's the US who is siding with Russia, then what are we even doing here? Why should Americans even bother caring about our allies? You need a recalibration in your understanding of who is doing what here and who the bad guys are. [1] Iran is also funding militias in the Middle East to try and start wars, today is hanging people for peacefully protesting, killed an estimated 30,000 of its own citizens this year over protests, and when the US attacked its military instead of just targeting military bases, or even the oil infrastructure, Iran is lobbying missiles at apartment complexes, threatening to kill people at amusement parks worldwide, and more.
  - KaiserPro 7mo ago
    > What power has the US ceded? Before this, we (large multinational infra company) were happily using AWS, microsoft and a bunch of other US based companies. Now we are beginning the migration away, not because its cheaper or better, but because we just don't think that we can trust the contracts we have with them any more. This isn't a sudden thing, we are not going to do it over night. But we are not renewing multi-million dollar contracts in the coming years for stuff that would have been a no brainer last year.
    - traceroute66 7mo ago
      > not because its cheaper or better Actually, in a number of cases EU cloud is cheaper and better. In terms of "better", spec wise it is not uncommon to get more bang for your buck in the EU cloud, especially around compute. In terms of "cheaper", that too. AWS, Azure etc. will happily sit there all day nickle and diming you through obscure pricing structures with all sorts of small-print. Good luck, for example, figuring out if you're going to go over your "provisioned IOPS-month" on AWS EBS, whatever the hell that is. And have fun with all the nickle-and-diming on AWS S3. Meanwhile on EU providers a lot of stuff is free that the US providers nickle and dime you for, and the stuff that is charged is done in a manner where you actually CAN forecast your spend. And then of course there is the real EU sovereignty. Not the fake US-cloud-in-Europe which despite what the US providers salesdroids try to tell you is still subject to CLOUD, PATRIOT and everything else.
    - ericmay 7mo ago
      It’s interesting how these conversations always start and end with “my company isn’t buying XYZ American cloud provider services” while ignoring other incredibly important products and services that you can’t or are unwilling to boycott. Are you turning in your MacBook Pro and iPhone, or are you putting a bumper sticker on it saying you bought it before you knew America was crazy? Similarly, while it's great to take a principled stand here (it's yet again interesting how it's always a principled stand against American companies but never others), while you are busy spending time and money migrating away from AWS to a competing product that has worse features and is more expensive as you said, you should hope your competitors are too because if not, they're going to be delivering features faster and more cheaply. Something worth thinking about there. I don't think Microsoft losing some European contracts is an example of the US ceding power.
- petterroea 7mo ago
  Living in Japan, I meet and talk to Chinese when out drinking. Many of them are almost literally ROFLing about how the US practically just gave away everything they had to China. It's as if the US is playing poker with their cards facing up on the table. Chinese already consider themselves the defacto superpower. If mainstream media in the US showed this, I bet the politics would look different.
  - steinvakt2 7mo ago
    Seems weird. China is definitely falling behind. India is not.
    - petterroea 7mo ago
      They are pretty happy with having superiority on high tech manufacturing and robotics. You basically cannot manufacture something without using China - even if you try. I don't think they consider the TSMC EUV monopoly a long term threat. Doing good on AI as well, you bet the OSS chinese models causing stock panic in the US makes them laugh. On the topic of manufacturing outside China, the YouTuber "Smarter Every day" (Destin Sandlin) has a series on manufacturing and feels strongly about manufacturing having moved out of the country. As an experiment he tried to manufacture something without China, but was unable to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
      - jacquesm 7mo ago
        I have some friends who are doing things 'China free' and it is possible but it comes at a very substantial premium.
        petterroea 7mo ago
        I think the most interesting takeaway from this video in question is that he tried to buy material from an Indian seller, who promised it was Indian. When the box arrived, it had the name of a Chinese factory on it.
- 1over137 7mo ago
  >It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. Um, lots of us have doubts about that. The USA couldn't win against Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; why do you think it could win against Greenland? Greenlanders actually have a lot of guns; and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA.
  - Quothling 7mo ago
    I'm Danish. There are 56k people in Greenland and almost half of them live in Nuuk. The USA could frankly "take" greenland simply by putting a warship there and saying it was theirs. Not really sure why it was ever on the table though. The USA has basically free reign to expand it's military bases there, aside from the ban on nuclear weapons. Sure it would need approval by both Greenland and Denmark, but up until recently we were frankly more allied with the USA than the EU, and I doubt we've ever really said no before. We even bought the damn f35's despite them being so much more expensive than the alternatives, primarily because our history with the F16's. Which would probably have been a possiblity considering we're now debating whether or not to have french nuclear weapon carrying planes stationed on Danish soil in the fallout of the USA no longer being a trusty NATO ally. If it was because of resources, then American companies are frankly free to extract them as long as they reach deals with Greenland about it. If the USA had waited a few years for Greenland to gain more independence then it would have been even easier.
  - gregw2 7mo ago
    Not the parent poster but, while I acknowledge your point on Canada and Europe entering the conflict (and I'd add that the highly motivated Dutch punch well above their weight in intelligence and economic spheres and this whole scenario of US invasion is a Putin dream), when you ask "why do you think it could win...", the 50k population of Greenland is smaller than Granada (100k) and three orders of magnitude smaller than Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq (~40m). So I find its insurgency potential hard to compare to those examples you give.
  - iso1631 7mo ago
    Doesn't need to. America can just leave the towns alone and do whatever it wants elsewhere. It will cost a fortune, but nobody is going to go 500 miles over an ice pack to raid a US mining settlement.
- eunos 7mo ago
  > Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU. Rhetoric and public support aside, I honestly very much doubt that there will be a solid EU military response. For many countries like Baltic, Eastern Europe and Nordic countries (ironically DK included). US military support means life or death of their countries. I imagine they'd stall response like what Hungary did and hope that Greenland annexed become fait accompli.
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    > US military support means life or death of their countries. Meant. They have begun to realize that this has changed and realize that if this were put to the test that the US military would likely not hold up their end of NATO. What you wrote would have made good sense in 2015, but today it makes a lot less sense and with every passing day that gap is widening. The Baltics have become the voice of reason and ethics in Europe, Poland is much stronger than parties outside of Europe seem to realize, France is always going to be a force to be reckoned with and we have no doubt about where the UK stands, then there are Finland, Sweden and Norway who all are automatically on the side of anything that Denmark is involved in and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Canada would become part of it, because they too have a lot to lose. There is a good reason why Putin has not risked engaging the EU and that's not just because the United States is still formally part of NATO.
- fulafel 7mo ago
  From military consequences pov, EU isn't a military alliance but it would of course also be attacking NATO.
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    The EU absolutely is a military alliance as well.
    - fulafel 7mo ago
      That's a heterodox interpretation. Something akin to it was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Union but it's no more.
      - jacquesm 7mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_defense_pacts_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_defense_pacts_of_... https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/collective-defence.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/collecti...
        fulafel 7mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_alliances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_alliances The EU treaty has a clause that calls for assistance for part of the members (who are not neutral) but there's no military structure outside NATO. There's also a perpatual public debate about whether EU should become a military alliance. eg https://theloop.ecpr.eu/can-the-eu-form-an-autonomous-military-alliance/ https://theloop.ecpr.eu/can-the-eu-form-an-autonomous-milita... In practical terms, in event of a invasion, only NATO has a organisation set up for coordinated response.
        jacquesm 7mo ago
        You are really completely clueless, I have no idea why you keep posting comments that contradict your own comments but fine, whatever. There are four different mutual defense pacts in Europe and there is an umbrella one and they all operate independently of NATO. And then there is NATO, with or without the USA.
WinstonSmith84 7mo ago
Argentina didn't lose the war because they came with fighter jets, but because their fighter jets were throwing scrap metal at British boats. Had these detonated, the outcome would have been different, and expensive for UK. I don't doubt that F35 are working very well in comparison to the junk Argentina was using.
- throwa356262 7mo ago
  Wasn't there a kill switch in the missiles? Didn't UK get really really annoyed with France in the one instance their kill switch Didn't work?
  - zelos 7mo ago
    Argentina only had 6 Exocets. I think the parent is referring to the failure of the fuses in the bombs the Argentinian pilots dropped on British ships.
KaiserPro 7mo ago
They did study the falklands war, thats why they were planning to blow up the runway should shit go wrong. The idea was to make it as difficult as possible to invade, not to stop it, because that’s largely impossible.
IAmBroom 7mo ago
I'm sure they'd be grateful for your expert analysis. Maybe you could offer to teach at their war college?
tim333 7mo ago
I'm not sure what lesson they are supposed to learn from the Falklands. It was somewhat swung when we sank the Belgrano using a nuclear sub. Sometimes these billion dollar high tech things work.

jacquesm 7mo ago

That doesn't matter. It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. It is about gross miscalculation of consequences. Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU. So you don't attack Greenland. Because that would be wrong. Unless all that stuff about shining cities on hills was nonsense. Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.

ericmay 7mo ago
The US wouldn’t even need to “attack” Greenland. What is there to even attack? 50 Danish soldiers? They could just say “that’s ours”, ignore whatever Europe says, and start doing whatever they wanted to do and instead force the EU to attack American forces or civilian business interests. I’m not suggesting this is a good idea or anything but there’s a ton of other ways that something like this could play out which involves more difficult ways to counter than you might think. > Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China. What power has the US ceded?
- ta20240528 7mo ago
  The UK only had to send a single officer to Greenland to stop Trump's previous attempt to annex Greenland. That was a signal, thankfully there are still adults in the USA who recognised it.
  - ericmay 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ta20240528 7mo ago
      You clearly don't know British understatement. Firing on one British officer would be as bad a firing on 10000. It's about lines.
      - ericmay 7mo ago
        This kind of stuff masked you feel good to say but the UK isn’t going to stop the US if it (somewhat foolishly in my opinion) decided that it was going to take Greenland. Neither is the EU.
        ta20240528 7mo ago
        You are mistaking the battle for the war: Denmark / EU would no doubt lose the BATTLE for Greenland. Within hours. But the sun would rise the next day and the USA won't like the 'non-kinetic' consequences. Too many to enumerate. Eventually the adults in USA would just return it.
        ericmay 7mo ago
        No it would be a point of no return. But the "non-kinetic" consequences would go both ways. It's not an exercise we should entertain, though the EU needs to step up in a very serious way and spend billions of Euros adding new equipment to Greenland to beef up detection and defense.
        Jensson 7mo ago
        EU has more arctic warfare equipment than USA does, USA doesn't do much arctic warfare so the war would likely be much more expensive for USA than EU. Most regular equipment doesn't work in -40C temperatures, to take Greenland USA would need to develop more arctic enabled weaponry just for that.
        ericmay 7mo ago
        How will the EU get this arctic warfare equipment to Greenland? If the EU is so ready and willing to use this equipment, maybe they should deploy it to Ukraine instead. The US literally has bases in Alaska and Greenland and deals with these temperatures regularly.
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  > What power has the US ceded? Seriously? You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally. The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you). That doesn't translate into ownership and it doesn't in any way give you control but it ensures that things will, at least most of the times, go your way because of momentum and because it makes sense by default. Just like you may disagree on some stuff with your friends but you're not going to rob their homes, just because you can (and maybe just because they gave you the key to the back door). You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are. I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it. The US maximized its post-war power on the 10th of September 2001. Since then it has gone down hill very steadily and the fall rapidly accelerated with Trump. I see no reason to believe this will change, all institutions that were supposed to provide checks and balances have failed. And all China has to do is to look sane in comparison, that's not super hard.
  - ericmay 7mo ago
    > You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally. We live in a multi-polar world. Sure. But I disagree with your assertion that there are three major power blocks. The US and China are the only two. Europe has a decent sized and advanced economy but it lacks military power and is politically fragmented and always will be. China is building military power but lacks the ability and will to project that power. Manufacturing and economic powerhouse rivaling the United States. No doubt about that. Russia isn't a pole in this world. As President Obama said back in the 2010s I believe "Russia is a nuclear armed gas station". That was true then, and it's still true today. > The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you). Well, I don't think this is true for one. And secondly if it takes just a year or so to throw away that power then it was just a matter of time until the EU got mad at the US for doing something and threw it away anyways. > You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are. What soft power is the Chinese capitalizing on? Is it their support for Russia and supplying money, weapons, and equipment for their war in Ukraine? Or is it the soft power they had in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran that they have just lost because of US military action? > I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it. The US ability to project power isn't being diminished by the Iran war, only being exercised. Talking heads for some reason think that when you launch an aerial assault against a country that is amassing ballistic missiles, drones (which they build and sell to Russia to go bomb innocent Ukrainians), and more that it should be over within 24 hours and that the enemy shouldn't be able to fight back. It's unrealistic. Nevermind Iran launching these missiles at civilian targets in countries throughout the Middle East. I get the argument that if you hose a US military base that the base is a target, but there's no excuse for attacking civilian apartment complexes and such. It also misses the fact that, we've seen this movie before with North Korea. Except if Iran gets a nuclear weapon they also have control over your oil supply and it would kick off a nuclear arms race in the region because Saudi Arabia and others certainly aren't going to let Iran be the only one with nuclear weapons. These are tough problems to deal with, and from the sidelines it's easy to think about how simple the solution is or point out all the mistakes, but the alternative headline here is the US does nothing, all of these Middle Eastern countries get nuclear bombs, Iran loads up on ballistic missiles, and then who knows exactly what will happen? Do they nuke Israel and Israel nukes them back? Do they extract a toll on oil passing through the Straight of Hormuz like they are as of today declaring they will do?
- enoint 7mo ago
  It wasn’t even about Greenland, but a distraction from the extent of Trump’s knowledge of Epstein. Anyway, there’s actually an index for soft power. Eliminating USAID halved that index. China built the highways, hospitals and water treatment instead.
- Eupolemos 7mo ago
  What power? Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency). The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz). All the soft power it ever had.
  - ericmay 7mo ago
    > Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency). As a reminder, reserve currencies are just currencies that are held in large amounts by national banks and other important institutions. The USD, like the Euro, Yen, Pound, and others are all reserve currencies. The USD is the dominant currency, in part because the US is in the Middle East right now doing exactly what it is doing by using the military to enforce trade for oil in USD. But if the US loses that "status" it just.... reverts to being more like the EU? Doesn't seem so bad to me. There's also pros/cons with being "the reserve currency". > The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz). See Europe begging for help in Ukraine. I don't think this is a good argument. If 4 years of Trump being mean was all it took to erase all soft power the US ever had, then it never had it in the first place and it wasn't worth caring about.
    - saulapremium 7mo ago
      >If 4 years of Trump being mean was all it took to erase all soft power the US ever had, then it never had it in the first place and it wasn't worth caring about That's a weird statement. Like all it was were some empty words. The current system, which you don't think is worth caring about, has been exceptionally good for the US. The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Do you think this is simply because Americans are superior human beings? Also, >See Europe begging for help in Ukraine ..what, exactly, are you trying to say here? Other than yes, the US does in fact seem to be siding with Putin in spite of a few attempts at acting neutral.
      - ericmay 7mo ago
        > That's a weird statement. What do you find weird about it? > The current system, which you don't think is worth caring about, has been exceptionally good for the US. I'm not against the current system, generally speaking. Critical of it, at times, absolutely. But not against it. Apologies if I gave you the wrong impression there. > The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Do you think this is simply because Americans are superior human beings? I think our culture and policies were superior, and then toss in a gigantic country with access to both oceans, incredible natural resources, and well protected and you have a recipe for an economic and military super power. So it's a combination of things really. I wouldn't be quick to dismiss the cultural attributes though. > ..what, exactly, are you trying to say here? Idk, people are making fun of the US "begging for help" against Iran. I'm going to make fun of the EU begging for US help against Ukraine. > Other than yes, the US does in fact seem to be siding with Putin in spite of a few attempts at acting neutral. US isn't siding with Putin. China and Iran are though. Or have you forgotten that Iran [1] is building and selling drones to Russia who is using those drones to bomb innocent civilians in Ukraine? Or have you also forgotten that China is supplying Russia with equipment and weaponry, often times under cover to evade sanctions? But sure, saulapremium, it's the US who is siding with Putin and we certainly didn't give Ukraine tens of billions of dollars in support, we certainly didn't rush missiles to Ukraine to help them fight against Russia, nor did we sanction Russia to hell, stop Venezuela from skirting those sanctions, and we can't possibly still providing intelligence and targeting support to Ukraine. This is what I'm talking about. If all it takes are a few mean words from our idiot president and now all of a sudden it's the US who is siding with Russia, then what are we even doing here? Why should Americans even bother caring about our allies? You need a recalibration in your understanding of who is doing what here and who the bad guys are. [1] Iran is also funding militias in the Middle East to try and start wars, today is hanging people for peacefully protesting, killed an estimated 30,000 of its own citizens this year over protests, and when the US attacked its military instead of just targeting military bases, or even the oil infrastructure, Iran is lobbying missiles at apartment complexes, threatening to kill people at amusement parks worldwide, and more.
- KaiserPro 7mo ago
  > What power has the US ceded? Before this, we (large multinational infra company) were happily using AWS, microsoft and a bunch of other US based companies. Now we are beginning the migration away, not because its cheaper or better, but because we just don't think that we can trust the contracts we have with them any more. This isn't a sudden thing, we are not going to do it over night. But we are not renewing multi-million dollar contracts in the coming years for stuff that would have been a no brainer last year.
  - traceroute66 7mo ago
    > not because its cheaper or better Actually, in a number of cases EU cloud is cheaper and better. In terms of "better", spec wise it is not uncommon to get more bang for your buck in the EU cloud, especially around compute. In terms of "cheaper", that too. AWS, Azure etc. will happily sit there all day nickle and diming you through obscure pricing structures with all sorts of small-print. Good luck, for example, figuring out if you're going to go over your "provisioned IOPS-month" on AWS EBS, whatever the hell that is. And have fun with all the nickle-and-diming on AWS S3. Meanwhile on EU providers a lot of stuff is free that the US providers nickle and dime you for, and the stuff that is charged is done in a manner where you actually CAN forecast your spend. And then of course there is the real EU sovereignty. Not the fake US-cloud-in-Europe which despite what the US providers salesdroids try to tell you is still subject to CLOUD, PATRIOT and everything else.
  - ericmay 7mo ago
    It’s interesting how these conversations always start and end with “my company isn’t buying XYZ American cloud provider services” while ignoring other incredibly important products and services that you can’t or are unwilling to boycott. Are you turning in your MacBook Pro and iPhone, or are you putting a bumper sticker on it saying you bought it before you knew America was crazy? Similarly, while it's great to take a principled stand here (it's yet again interesting how it's always a principled stand against American companies but never others), while you are busy spending time and money migrating away from AWS to a competing product that has worse features and is more expensive as you said, you should hope your competitors are too because if not, they're going to be delivering features faster and more cheaply. Something worth thinking about there. I don't think Microsoft losing some European contracts is an example of the US ceding power.
petterroea 7mo ago
Living in Japan, I meet and talk to Chinese when out drinking. Many of them are almost literally ROFLing about how the US practically just gave away everything they had to China. It's as if the US is playing poker with their cards facing up on the table. Chinese already consider themselves the defacto superpower. If mainstream media in the US showed this, I bet the politics would look different.
- steinvakt2 7mo ago
  Seems weird. China is definitely falling behind. India is not.
  - petterroea 7mo ago
    They are pretty happy with having superiority on high tech manufacturing and robotics. You basically cannot manufacture something without using China - even if you try. I don't think they consider the TSMC EUV monopoly a long term threat. Doing good on AI as well, you bet the OSS chinese models causing stock panic in the US makes them laugh. On the topic of manufacturing outside China, the YouTuber "Smarter Every day" (Destin Sandlin) has a series on manufacturing and feels strongly about manufacturing having moved out of the country. As an experiment he tried to manufacture something without China, but was unable to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      I have some friends who are doing things 'China free' and it is possible but it comes at a very substantial premium.
      - petterroea 7mo ago
        I think the most interesting takeaway from this video in question is that he tried to buy material from an Indian seller, who promised it was Indian. When the box arrived, it had the name of a Chinese factory on it.
1over137 7mo ago
>It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. Um, lots of us have doubts about that. The USA couldn't win against Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; why do you think it could win against Greenland? Greenlanders actually have a lot of guns; and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA.
- Quothling 7mo ago
  I'm Danish. There are 56k people in Greenland and almost half of them live in Nuuk. The USA could frankly "take" greenland simply by putting a warship there and saying it was theirs. Not really sure why it was ever on the table though. The USA has basically free reign to expand it's military bases there, aside from the ban on nuclear weapons. Sure it would need approval by both Greenland and Denmark, but up until recently we were frankly more allied with the USA than the EU, and I doubt we've ever really said no before. We even bought the damn f35's despite them being so much more expensive than the alternatives, primarily because our history with the F16's. Which would probably have been a possiblity considering we're now debating whether or not to have french nuclear weapon carrying planes stationed on Danish soil in the fallout of the USA no longer being a trusty NATO ally. If it was because of resources, then American companies are frankly free to extract them as long as they reach deals with Greenland about it. If the USA had waited a few years for Greenland to gain more independence then it would have been even easier.
- gregw2 7mo ago
  Not the parent poster but, while I acknowledge your point on Canada and Europe entering the conflict (and I'd add that the highly motivated Dutch punch well above their weight in intelligence and economic spheres and this whole scenario of US invasion is a Putin dream), when you ask "why do you think it could win...", the 50k population of Greenland is smaller than Granada (100k) and three orders of magnitude smaller than Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq (~40m). So I find its insurgency potential hard to compare to those examples you give.
- iso1631 7mo ago
  Doesn't need to. America can just leave the towns alone and do whatever it wants elsewhere. It will cost a fortune, but nobody is going to go 500 miles over an ice pack to raid a US mining settlement.
eunos 7mo ago
> Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU. Rhetoric and public support aside, I honestly very much doubt that there will be a solid EU military response. For many countries like Baltic, Eastern Europe and Nordic countries (ironically DK included). US military support means life or death of their countries. I imagine they'd stall response like what Hungary did and hope that Greenland annexed become fait accompli.
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  > US military support means life or death of their countries. Meant. They have begun to realize that this has changed and realize that if this were put to the test that the US military would likely not hold up their end of NATO. What you wrote would have made good sense in 2015, but today it makes a lot less sense and with every passing day that gap is widening. The Baltics have become the voice of reason and ethics in Europe, Poland is much stronger than parties outside of Europe seem to realize, France is always going to be a force to be reckoned with and we have no doubt about where the UK stands, then there are Finland, Sweden and Norway who all are automatically on the side of anything that Denmark is involved in and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Canada would become part of it, because they too have a lot to lose. There is a good reason why Putin has not risked engaging the EU and that's not just because the United States is still formally part of NATO.
fulafel 7mo ago
From military consequences pov, EU isn't a military alliance but it would of course also be attacking NATO.
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  The EU absolutely is a military alliance as well.
  - fulafel 7mo ago
    That's a heterodox interpretation. Something akin to it was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Union but it's no more.
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_defense_pacts_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_and_defense_pacts_of_... https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/collective-defence.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/collecti...
      - fulafel 7mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_alliances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_alliances The EU treaty has a clause that calls for assistance for part of the members (who are not neutral) but there's no military structure outside NATO. There's also a perpatual public debate about whether EU should become a military alliance. eg https://theloop.ecpr.eu/can-the-eu-form-an-autonomous-military-alliance/ https://theloop.ecpr.eu/can-the-eu-form-an-autonomous-milita... In practical terms, in event of a invasion, only NATO has a organisation set up for coordinated response.
        jacquesm 7mo ago
        You are really completely clueless, I have no idea why you keep posting comments that contradict your own comments but fine, whatever. There are four different mutual defense pacts in Europe and there is an umbrella one and they all operate independently of NATO. And then there is NATO, with or without the USA.

WinstonSmith84 7mo ago

Argentina didn't lose the war because they came with fighter jets, but because their fighter jets were throwing scrap metal at British boats. Had these detonated, the outcome would have been different, and expensive for UK. I don't doubt that F35 are working very well in comparison to the junk Argentina was using.

throwa356262 7mo ago
Wasn't there a kill switch in the missiles? Didn't UK get really really annoyed with France in the one instance their kill switch Didn't work?
- zelos 7mo ago
  Argentina only had 6 Exocets. I think the parent is referring to the failure of the fuses in the bombs the Argentinian pilots dropped on British ships.

KaiserPro 7mo ago

They did study the falklands war, thats why they were planning to blow up the runway should shit go wrong. The idea was to make it as difficult as possible to invade, not to stop it, because that’s largely impossible.

IAmBroom 7mo ago

I'm sure they'd be grateful for your expert analysis. Maybe you could offer to teach at their war college?

tim333 7mo ago

I'm not sure what lesson they are supposed to learn from the Falklands. It was somewhat swung when we sank the Belgrano using a nuclear sub. Sometimes these billion dollar high tech things work.