They care now.
There’s nothing in your link about what I was talking about, the difference in conscription policy between Denmark and Greenland. There isn’t even anything in your link indicating Danes are serious about war. Contrast with Britain passing the Air Raid Precautions Act in 1937.
Are they digging parkland trenches in Copenhagen and Nuuk, as were dug in Britain in 1938? No, because they aren’t really intending to fight. War seems fantastic and unlikely. It’s a shame, because I think those kind of civil defense efforts (as well as conscription for Greenland) – unlike the idle threats or dares some have proposed in this thread – would give Trump pause.
Nobody does that anymore. This is not 1938. What they DID do was Operation Arctic Endurance - an exercise sending rapid response troops from Denmark to Greenland. France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden also participated. And the Danish Prime Minister stated just a few days ago that Denmark is ready to defend Greenland.
They don’t expect to fight, because an invasion is never going to happen. The idea that Denmark would sit back and do nothing while their sovereign territory is being forcibly conquered and Danish citizens are being murdered is laughable.
I forgot about this. I think if was an example of what is needed, and as this Wikipedia article indicates, it resulted in Trump temporarily rolling back threats:
The fact that the Europeans invited the U.S. to participate (the U.S. declined) illustrates the gap in thinking between American progressives posting on the internet and European leaders. You don’t usually invite the anticipated enemy on your maneuvers.
It’s a guaranteed loss. Very best case from Trump’s perspective is that Greenland “cedes itself” to the US by not putting up a fight; Denmark blusters, but also winks and invokes “the will of Greenlanders”,
It’s all performative. Everything returns back to pre-Trump status within a few weeks of the incoming President’s term. Could even happen before Trump’s term is over if he’s lost enough power by then.
I still think it’s a one-in-a-jillion chance that an American invasion force ever steps foot on Greenlandic soil. But should it happen, it ain’t gonna be what Trump thinks it will be.
You have more faith in Rubio or Vance than I do and/or in the Democrats winning the 2028 general election.
Sure, if the Democratic ticket wins in 2028, and GOP election cheating fails, I see the Greenland coup de main being rolled back in 2029. But if it takes ten years or so for the Republicans to lose power, it is hard to say where we would be on this.
An early indication of whether the U.S. invades Greenland (or Greenland’s civilian towns, as we are already there) will be whether Trump orders ground troops into Kharg Island. If he does, it’s more likely he’ll invade elsewhere.
IMHO, it’s more that Greenland is indefensible, and Denmark doesn’t want to lose people in a hopeless battle.
I think that Trump will almost certainly successfully conquer Greenland, with good odds that he follows up the conquest by deporting the entire present population as “illegals” and ordering that the existing settlements be leveled. It would fit with his pattern of making a point of doing unfixable damage.
Denmark and it’s allies don’t have to fight a conventional war. They don’t have to fight a military war at all.
They could simply crash the US economy by selling US bonds and tanking the markets. Sure this would hurt them as well in the short term. But Trump is known to TACO when there is a threat to “his” economy. A 20% drop in the Dow and Nasdaq would get his attention. Shutting off oil and electricity exports from Canada would get his attention. The rest of the world would need to strike hard and fast - economically.
Which, if he were going to do it, he would have done months ago. He’s terrified by the idea of American military casualties making him look bad.
0% chance of that happening.
Why? Trump is insane and a bigot already engaging in mass deportations, it’s the sort of thing that would appeal to him.
Because if he’s too chickenshit to send ground troops into Iran, there’s no way he’ll send them into NATO territory.
Iran can fight back, but NATO is composed of “weak, effete European leftists” who can’t fight (in the minds of the people surrounding Trump, at least).
And realistically, Iran would be a far harder target for an actual conquest with their vastly higher and more dispersed population. Trump would kill off a third of Greenland’s population just by having the capital flattened.
NATO doesn’t have to defeat Trump on the battlefield. When Musk and Bezos and Altman wake up to find out half their wealth is gone because all their European assets have been seized as "property of the enemy and the Dow is down 40,000 points, the remainder of Trump’s term will be measured in hours. To say nothing of the tens of thousands of Americans stationed in Europe who are all going to become POWs just like that.
Putin is willing and able to tank his economy and feed millions of soldiers into a woodchipper to get at Ukraine. Trump isn’t.
Yes, the U.S. military could do this.
But the furor that would arise from the rest of the world (especially Canada and the EU) would be unprecedented in the post-war era. The U.S. would almost certainly be sanctioned and the baby steps that Canada and Europe have been taking to distance themselves from the U.S. would turn into a rush for the exits. At a minimum, it would crash the world’s economy, including that of the U.S.
I could see Canada actually closing the border between themselves and the U.S., and to perhaps even start mobilizing for war. Because they would surely be thinking they might be next.
The US invading and committing genocide against a NATO ally would be the complete and total end of the world order that has existed since 1945. It might even be enough to get NATO, Russia, and China on the same page. It’s a “Hitler invades Poland” level event.
The idea some people have that the rest of the world would just continue to carry on business with us as usual is just ridiculous.
Please; in real life, if they got in Trump’s face he could and would crush them like insects. Any government of significance is far more powerful than any merely rich man, despite their pretensions.
Don’t confuse government indifference with actual power. When Musk and the government of Brazil actually cam e into conflict he had to entirely back down and do as they said, because he has no tools to deal with a government that simply tells him “no”.
At this point I doubt Trump could crush an insect like an insect. You’re stuck in this November 2024 mentality of “Trump can do anything he wants and nobody can stop him and nobody will try to resist him and his thousand-year reich is inevitable and invincible” mentality when it’s been shown dozens of times since then that he’s a paper tiger who’s full of shit and folds at the slightest pressure and nobody takes his empty threats seriously anymore because he’s shown time and time again that he’ll chicken out when the people he’s threatening call his bluff.
Trump’s presidency, fortune, and life would not survive a war with NATO.
No, this is just another “fill in the blank will save us from Trump” argument.