There are distressingly few precedents where militaries refused the dictator’s order to invade. International law violation, national law violation, or just a dumb idea, when ordered to invade, they do. The closest exception I can think of is when Stanislav Petrov refused to launch nuclear weapons in violation of Soviet doctrine. But that’s more like refusing to do exactly what AI said rather than refusing invasion orders direct from the caudillo.
They might refuse an order to torture prisoners. I think they usually would. But an order to invade Greenland or Panama would be obeyed.
This is a paraphrase, but I remember Henry Kissinger once saying something like this: Before entering government, he thought that wars were caused by social, economic and political considerations rather than the actions of an individual leader. But when in power, he found that Nixon, with his guidance, could issue orders as desired and have them obeyed.
US Troops have acted against US Citizens on orders, so I wouldn’t count on anyone refusing to invade Canada/Greenland/Panama if ordered by the CIC.
Kent State (1970) and Jackson State (1970) come to mind. US Army troops used tanks and bayonets to forcefully evict veterans and their families from the Bonus Army camp in 1932.
Social, political, and economic forces argue against invading Greenland. It polls poorly, Republicans in congress do not want it, and it would waste a lot of money with no significant possibility of making it up later. Does this make it less likely that Trump will do it? Yes! But social, political, and economic forces argued against the Iran war, and what happened?
Trump’s threats against Greenland, over time, create their own historical forces making a Greenland invasion possible. And paucity of Trump threats against Panama push historical force the other way there.
As for Canada, the social, political, and economic arguments against it are even greater than with Panama and Greenland. Plus Trump’s threats against Canada are more on the side of economic warfare. So that’s why Greenland is to me the bigger worry.
I generally agree with this analysis. I don’t think there would be any pushback from Congress or the American public if Trump invaded Greenland on some pretext.
But I don’t think there is any way an invasion could possibly succeed without ground forces. And there is no a way a ground invasion would be bloodless on either side. And casualties, I think, would create an uproar, both domestically and internationally.
Refresh my memory: why exactly is Trump sour on NATO? The main complaint I’m aware of is other NATO members not spending a proportionate amount of their GDP on defense, which is true. But in exchange for the USA “carrying the team” we got a stupendous amount of hegemony in return. What is neo-isolationism supposed to accomplish?
First and foremost, Putin. But beyond that, Trump thinks he is a mobster and runs the US like it is a protection racket. As far as Trump is concerned, NATO hasn’t been paying their share (and the part he does not say out loud is that there is indeed no way that they could every fulfill this condition). So because NATO is “ripping the US off” they become contemptible to Trump, who can only be soothed by flattery and bribery.
I don’t even think most Americans rallied around the attacks on Venezuela and Iran, authoritarian countries who openly declared themselves enemies of America. Greenland would be worse than that since they aren’t even nominally the enemy.
I do think Canada would get way way way more pushback though.
Canada is not going to use drones to take on Russia or China. Canada is going to use drones to take on problems closer to home. Panama and Greenland may wish to look at making a similar deal.
That is an impressive link. I think the Canadian drone program has significant deterrent value because of the unstated but obvious threat to U.S. territory.
As for Panama, they abolished their military in 1990. And the distance between Panama and the United States means an implied threat to attack U.S. territory in invent of invasion is so implausible as to have no impact on Trump’s thinking. Hoping for the best, and appeasing if Trump seems close to invasion, may be their wisest strategy.
Canada is big and strong enough to gently poke the bear. Panama is not.
Greenland and Denmark have been taking admirable actions to deter as documented earlier in this thread. But because of distance and other factors that would make this post too long, I do not see a drone program being as good a deterrent for Greenland as I think it is for Canada.
P.S. I hope there aren’t any American swing voters reading this post, because they might think it awfully unpatriotic towards my own country. Of course, I do not want the U.S. to be attacked in event of war – I want to prevent war. And the stars and stripes do fly on a pole attached to our house
They don’t need to fly to the US, the Canal is close at hand.
Bingo! @Dewey_Finn ! What could a few Panamanian guerillas with drones do to the Canal? I bet Panama (and the other potential victims) are carefully studying the helpful tutorial provided by Ukraine and Iran
And in some cases with a few nations, his point is close to being correct- Spain, Belgium and a couple others barely meet their 2% of GDP shares, and not every year. But overall, NATO does. That is typical trump- some pundit will point out to him- maybe a couple years ago, it does not matter- that one smaller nation has missed their share, and he takes that and over- generalizes it to some incredibly wrong assumption.
But trump is not gonna invade Greenland. Or Canada.
(Cross posted from Trump clusterfuck thread in the pit.)
This bit from the Politico article stuck out to me.
A 1951 agreement between the U.S. and Denmark already gave Washington wide latitude to expand military bases and deploy troops to the island, something that NATO diplomats have pointed out with some frustration since the start of the Trump administration. It is not clear how this new agreement changes that agreement which already gave Washington much of what Trump has been demanding.
So is this a real thing? Does it matter? Or is this Trump once again trying to lie things into existence?
Is the BBC then mistaken that the Danish PM said that
?
They may have gotten that info wrong (such as by relying on a mistaken Xit). And of course the details have not been released, so whatever 4547 says about the details can be assumed to be embellished at the very least.
