I saw the above mentioned on another thread and was hoping for it being a fake, or a different Katie Miller. But I suppose CBS News still has some remaining reliability, so, unfortunately, no.
Someone may shout 4D chess at me again, but I’m afraid the likelihood is that Ms. Miller’s threat is planned and authorized from high up in the administration.
They are correct not to insult or taunt Trump. But the message is not good enough. The bully would be more likely to back down if the Greenland government was Churchillian:
If Trump thinks it will be easy, I’m coming to think he will do it.
P.S. On my last post: I don’t literally think Greenlanders (and Panamanians) should quote back Churchill’s words to Trump – that would be a taunt and a dare. Greenlanders should, with different words, commit to a long-term determination to resist U.S. colonialism, giving the U.S. another endless war should it attack.
Is this absurd because of the power disparity? Maybe – but just in the very short run. Outsiders have historically given up on small nations that turned out to be resilient and/or able to bounce back. It is impossible to prove there would be an endless war, but putting the possibility in Trump’s mind may be good enough.
Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. lost no troops in Venezuela, and even mentioned a lack of serious injuries. This is a tell that he is highly casualty adverse. Panama and Greenland should have this in mind as a weakness of the current administration. If Trump thinks even a dozen U.S. troops will die, he will hesitate.
That’s the logic cited by 2nd Amendment proponents in the US… What we need to make America more safe is to ensure that everyone is heavily armed. Experience has shown that the proliferation of weapons and their increased accessibility to more people contributes to more heinous crimes being committed with those firearms as more kooks get their hands on them.
That position is invalid because there’s an effective state that can take care of maintaining the peace and enforcing the laws.
Being no such thing in an international level, and the few norms and sporadically enforced “international laws” being on the wane I think it behooves any nation that values its sovereignty to get nuclear weapons ASAP.
Orrr, we could work to establish an effective international order, but that doesn’t seem to be the way we are going.
No, they push weapons that won’t work, because they won’t work. The authoritarians would hardly push so hard for gun ownership if guns actually helped against the government.
Nukes however will in fact get the US to back off.
I’m pretty sure their try to develop nuclear weapons would fail. If we are talking about an idle threat to develop nuclear weapons, Trump would respond with a conventional invasion.
If you mean Denmark, I have no idea if they could do it. But Greenland wants to get out from under Denmark.
Greenland and Panama need a credible deterrent threat that the U.S. would lose hundreds of troops should it invade.. That means conventional weapons.
But maybe there’s hope that in his veto message, he’d claim never to have wanted to invade Greenland, and then would not.
If they do pass a Greenland resolution, then the Democrats should try a Panama resolution. But do one at a time to get the biggest possible coalition on each.
I’m going to write my House member, and maybe a senator or two.
P.S. Checking further, I see that Gallego introduced the Greenland resolution as an amendment to the defense appropriations bill. So maybe it would be hard to veto:
No, these two together are basically performance art.
Until Trump is removed, and the entire Republican Party as it exists currently is taken to the crossroads and a stake driven through it’s heart and the ground all around salted… I will still be worried.
I’m thinking of stopping one particular Trump crime – the invasion of Greenland – rather than gaining a political advantage.
But I suspect that if Trump vetoed the Defense Appropriations Bill, because of Greenland, that would poll poorly, pay or no pay.
Democrats could also honestly point out that during the shutdown, Trump (illegally) paid the troops. So he could pay them if he wanted. This then comes back to – not paying troops in order to invade Greenland will be unpopular.
I feel a little dirty posting this way because he might then go back to threatening Panama, and the U.S. taking back the Canal Zone seems to me potentially popular in the U.S. at least if our casualties were low.
Re last post, it’s impossible to read someone’s thoughts. My point was that the dictator loses power if unpopular. This is more true with a strongman like Trump who is unable to send people like us to a gulag. See:
But if the above is dismissed, I’d say he cares enough to spend lots of time lying about what the polls say.
It’s not necessarily that everyone important studies the polls. SCOTUS justices would say they ignore them, and maybe they do. But their civil rights rulings rarely, if ever, radically deviate from what the median voter would approve of.
And I expect the elections this November will be a referendum on Trump. When you are a modern dictator in what’s still a hybrid regime, opinion matters.
How much risk is there that China could launch a surprise attack against Greenland?
Gain control in a few days?
The US would be left kicking sand unless we wanted a major war against China.
That’s why there are defense agreements with smaller countries. We may need to strengthen Thule Air base in Greenland to protect Geostrategic interests.
I think any discussion that the US takes over Greenland is absurd. It definitely doesn’t help that Trump is making public threats.
Quiet diplomacy with Greenland’s government makes a lot more sense. Offer to strengthen their defenses with a UN base.
