At the risk of speculating at the top of an article as opposed to working though a lot of arguments first, it would, based on Trump’s temperament and the seeming great success of knocking off Venezuela, or at least Maduro and his wife, seem to no-brainer that he will move sooner rather than later in seizing, as opposed to merely raiding, Greenland. Douglas Macgregor just described the Caracas romp as a vanity project. Trump will have considerable need for big splashy news-dominating distractions, based on the certainty of losing the war in Ukraine, Epstein not going away, and more and more economic pain for the bottom 90% in the US, starting with rising health care costs. And Trump loves the idea of leaving his stamp on history. The idea of a massive territorial acquisition is an even better monument than getting his face added to Mount Rushmore.
🇬🇱 The true size of Greenland pic.twitter.com/k4W3fI1uyS
— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) January 5, 2026
As many have noted, Greenland would be trivially easy for the US to take. It has fewer than 60,000 people, with over 1/3 in its biggest city, Nuuk. The US already has a base there. As we’ll unpack below, Denmark (much like Maduro apparently did before his capture) has offered the US every conceivable concession save handing over or selling Greenland.
For the moment, EU member states are making noises about solidarity with Denmark when they are in no position to stop a US grab.
Perhaps Denmark will do the rest of Europe a big favor and agree on a price. But there is one consideration that might lead Trump to hold back, which is not the “death of NATO” which seems like a certain result. Aurelien is probably best able to describe what that might look like operationally. But a more immediate result would be European states redirecting arms buys away from the US as fast as possible and actually having to put muscle and industrial strategy behind building up their arms industries.
Given the lack of managerial skills in elites all across the West, all the Europeans can do is yet more noise-making. At the end of this post, we have embedded a freshly-released Joint Statement as an illustration.
For starters, how do they quickly wean themselves of dependence on intel and targeting from US satellites? And what about all those bases in Europe? Even though the US under Trump has been making noises about reducing US forces there (now 84,000) and even closing some, several, particularly Ramstein in Germany, are key to force projection in the Middle East. And unlike Incirlik in Turkiye, where Turkiye has preserved some veto rights over US operations, Ramstein is a “permanent US military installation“.
But will the US military industrial complex be wiling to take that risk? Will a parade of ex-generals now on the boards of defense contractors tell Trump that taking Greenland could be very bad for their business and he needs instead to keep pressure on Denmark to cinch a sale?
A new story in the Financial Times describes the panic at top of Europe over Trump directly and via his chief of staff Steve Miller of doubling down on threats against Greenland.
The US will "de-colonize" Denmark by annexing Greenland. Stephen Miller will not rule out military force, and points out the weak Europeans will not fight back. After decades of enthusiastic support for US imperialism, Europe now finds itself on the receiving end. pic.twitter.com/pbYybUpBrg
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) January 6, 2026
However, keep in mind that Trump has yet to do anything muscular, like flying more soldiers into the Pituffik Space Base.
Nevertheless, European leaders seem to be in denial about the possibility that Trump is likely to proceed absent domestic impediments, despite having been verbally abused in person at the Munich Security Conference last year and rubbished in the recent National Security Strategy paper. Among other wee problems, many unpopular leaders have hitched what remains of their fortunes to Russophobia, when Europe is not and will not any time soon be able to stare down Russia alone. From the pink paper:
“It’s a fine line,” said one senior European official. “The solidarity with Denmark is crystal clear for everyone. But then there’s Venezuela where nobody is sorry [Nicolás] Maduro is going, but there are legal questions. And we want to keep the US onside for a dignified outcome in Ukraine.”
A second EU official said: “We know who our allies no longer are. It’s just we are still hoping we are wrong and the problem will go away,” referring to Trump’s disregard for the generation-old transatlantic alliance and the need for Europe to reduce its reliance on Washington. “We know what needs to be done, we just need to bloody do it.”
One Financial Times reader tartly shredded that view:
Androcydes
The lesson is that if you outsource your security to someone else, you can’t defend yourself from those that provide your security.
Notice that fear of Trump is so great that he has assumed the status of He Who Must Not Be Named:
But few explicitly denounced the US, and none referred to Trump by name despite the US president again saying “we need Greenland” just hours after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told him to stop issuing threats over the vast Arctic island.
[Denmark Prime Minister Mette] Frederiksen warned that repeated US ambitions over Greenland could threaten the future of Nato. “If the United States attacks another Nato country, everything stops,” she said on Monday….
Under a 75-year-old defence agreement, the US already has the sole military base on Greenland and local authorities in recent years have been open to it expanding its presence or opening a new one. But the US has reduced its presence on the Arctic island from a cold war peak of more than 10,000 soldiers to fewer than 200 at present.
Greenlandic ministers have also said that their island is “open for business”. But US investors have been slow to show an interest in the nascent mining industry, officials say.
“The only thing they haven’t yet offered is something they can’t ever offer: for Greenland to become part of America,” said one senior EU diplomat. Another added: “They don’t need to annex it. They can have whatever they want. That is what makes it so puzzling.”
The last remark shows a bizarre lack of comprehension about how Trump rolls. He is an extreme materialist and egoist. He had wet-dream level excitement over the grotesque prospect of a Trump Riviera in Gaza. He was pleased with his new coinage of the Donroe Doctrine. Getting legal rights that are tantamount to ownership is not in the same league as directly expanding US territorial holdings.
Later in the story:
The Greenland issue is particularly sensitive for Nato and its secretary-general Mark Rutte. Any US military action to take the island would result in two allies in direct conflict, throwing the alliance’s fundamental mutual defence clause into question and probably forcing the other 30 members to pick sides….
Officials point to a change in stance from other regional Nato members who are now supportive of the alliance playing a greater role in the Arctic, and the success Canada has had in smothering Trump’s previous rhetoric about making the country part of the US, in part by increasing defence spending.
Trump belittled Denmark’s approach on Sunday, claiming that it had added “one dog sled” to its defence of Greenland. But Copenhagen said in October that it would spend $4.2bn on two military units, a new Arctic Command headquarters, two ships, maritime patrol aircraft, drones and air surveillance radar units, all in Greenland.
Matt Stoller pointed out that there is plenty of precedent for how 1890s-loving Trump operates:
The best way to understand what just happened is to start with history. Because while Trump is unusually explicit about his rationalization for seizing control over a resource-rich territory, U.S. domination of the oil reserves of South America is not new. And neither is the fusion of corporate and state interest.
Ninety five years ago, in 1931, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who owned Gulf Oil (now Chevron), forced the President of Colombia to give his company the Barco oil concession, which borders Venezuela. How? Well Wall Street banks and the U.S. government threatened to withhold vitally needed bank loans if Colombia did not cede the franchise.
The parallels to the situation today are there. When Mellon seized these reserves, in partnership with JP Morgan banking interests, gunboat diplomacy was the norm. In the prior two decades, the U.S. had finished brutally putting down a resistance movement in the Philippines, and had become the global economic and political power after a gruesome world war. Woodrow Wilson had tried to establish a global rules-based order, which the GOP in the 1920s sabotaged.
At the time, Democrats were incompetent and split, as it was an era of deep reverence for the wealthy and bitter culture warring over race and alcohol. For instance, the head of the DNC in the late 1920s, a Dupont executive named John J. Raskob, published a pamphlet titled “Everybody Ought to Be Rich” encouraging Americans to borrow money to invest in the stock market.
Just as there is increasing support for cynical and nihilistic figures today, many in the 1920s felt warmly towards Mellon, Mussolini, and authoritarianism in general. U.S. Steel chairman Judge Elbert Gary encouraged Americans to “learn something by the movement which has taken place in Italy,” while progressive and New Republic founder Herbert Croly called Mussolini as substituting “purposive behavior for drifting and visions of a great future for collective pettiness and discouragement.” Gunboat diplomacy fit in well.
Again, the gaming. or one might say display of hopium, by EU leaders pre-supposes a decent level of rationality as well as restraint from Trump. But recall that he tried again to escalate against China even after Xi dropped the rare earths hammer, via threatening new tariffs in October. He has actually done so via his Venezuela land grab, where China has an estimated $70 billion in investment and was also using oil shipments as a method for repaying about $10 billion of loans.
However, Trump is deteriorating. He has been looking more aged of late and even slurring his speech. IM Doc argued last July that Trump has, not Alzheimers but white matter disease. and one of its major effects is loss of normal social filters. Trump as an obvious narcissist was already weak in that category. He has also chosen to surround himself with toadies. That is likely to mean even less restraint in a President who was already unduly impulsive and recently visibly fond of violence. From IM Doc’s comment:
We as physicians should be very careful to call out diagnoses on videos of patients. That being said, with Joe Biden it was so obvious that my kids could tell something was wrong. His dementia is obviously a part of some kind of neurodegenerative disorder – the symptoms of which were easy for all rational diagnosticians to see as far back as 2019. The open mouth gape, the constant inappropriate whispering, the pigeon toed gait, the peculiar way he fell, the inability to navigate stairs, the constant emotional disruptions, all pointed to that and it was not even closely subtle. Anyone can see it – play a tape of Joe Biden 2023 – and a tape of Joe Biden 2013. This was not simple aging. Anyone that is a true diagnostician that tells you otherwise is a liar or actually does not see patients. The media and political coverup of this has been something for the ages.
Trump is a completely different animal. He certainly does not have Alzheimer’s Disease. He absolutely has personality traits – and just listening to him and watching his behavior – I lean toward Narcissistic Personality Disorder and likely Antisocial Personality Disorder. Having been around wealthy and powerful people for large amounts of my professional life, he is not alone, indeed, he may be less affected with these than the majority I know.
At his age, and with some of the behavior I see, there is a far more common issue that may be going on. It is known as microvascular white matter disease – what used to be known in our culture as “hardening of the arteries”. This is profoundly common in The West. Multiple theories abound as to the cause…..smoking, eating unnatural fats all of our lives ( chips, french fries, donuts, KFC), diabetes and obesity. One may look at this as the brain manifestation of what we call Metabolic Syndrome or Syndrome X.
The white matter contains the billions of conduits going from one neuron to the other in the brain as opposed to the gray matter where the actual neurons reside. As we get older – and some of us are far more prone to this than others – the white matter begins to have large numbers of microscopic strokes. These may take out the CONDUIT for 10-15 neurons, maybe more BUT NOT THE NEURONS THEMSELVES. Our brain can rewire around them but eventually things begin to look like Swiss Cheese and there is no way to repair things. At that point, symptoms begin to set in. This is usually manifested as “filter” deficiencies, sudden emotional outbursts, inability to decide, long diatribes and stories about things from decades ago, inability to recognize one’s own mistakes and deficiencies, some mild memory issues but maybe not, increased impulsive and risk-taking behavior, anger and wrath, inappropriate laughing and crying among many others. This disease process also greatly magnifies the underlying personality disorders. There are more than 20 personality disorders – and it is often a sight to behold as some of these get worse.
This affects so many of our elderly. It is absolutely not Alzheimer’s. But it can eventually become a type of what we call dementia. Unlike Alzheimer’s, these patients can feed themselves, care for themselves, do housework, engage in family and social activities, and be self-aware. They however, are often “kept in the attic” away from the world so as not to embarrass themselves. I try my best with my patients to give them avatars in literature and culture to understand their issues. Literature is full of examples of this – but the most easy to comprehend touchstone for most people is the little old lady Sophia from The Golden Girls – Bea Arthur’s mom.
So if IM Doc is correct, the trajectory of Trump’s deterioration will result in even more ego-driven behavior, as difficult as a further ramping up in that category might be to envision. But if his assessment is correct, that increases the odds of a US seizure of Greenland and all of the huge fallout that would result. So be warned.
00 joint statement on Greenland
Gunna make a prediction here which will be obvious when you look at the map at the top of this post. Trump will move troops into Greenland within the next coupla months under the legal principal of ‘It’s ours. We’re taking it. That is not the prediction. When that is finished, he will then demand to have the island nation of Iceland as well on the grounds of national security as Chinese and Russian ships are swarming it. Between Greenland and Iceland, the US will be able to have the ability to bottle up any shipping coming out of the Arctic and he will be in easy reach of Scandinavia and Europe. At 390,000 people it has a lot more people that Greenland but it virtually has no military. But make no mistake. Iceland is next.
Damn, you’re probably right.
Hate to think of the land of my beloved Sagas falling to effing Trump, but seems unavoidable if he decides to move in that direction.
I would have too say this would seem logical, especially once NATO is gone.
In related news, Bjork today announced that she supports Greenland independence.
The stranger things get, the more I can’t look away.
We just featured a long video by Mike Benz which includes a long discussion of the use of musicians and music festivals in regime change operations.
I have missed that video, but haven’t missed any of the EXIT festivals back in the early 2000s. Can confirm that the whole thing is a spin-off of a regime change operation. Maybe the only good thing that came out of it.
This makes perfect sense to anyone familiar with the game “Risk”.
That pretty much sums up the depth of US strategy.
Luongo constantly harps on that.
Would Ireland welcome it, too?
You do know that Iceland was occupied by UK in May 1940, right? British forces were replaced by US Marines in July 1941, and I don’t think they never really left…
I think that US troops are there on only a rotating basis-
‘The Iceland Defense Force (IDF) was a military command of the United States Armed Forces from 1951 to 2006. The IDF, created at the request of NATO, came into existence when the United States signed an agreement to provide for the defense of Iceland. The IDF also consisted of civilian Icelanders and military members of other NATO nations. The IDF was downsized after the end of the Cold War, and the United States Air Force maintained four to six interceptor aircraft at the Naval Air Station Keflavik until they were withdrawn on 30 September 2006. Since May 2008, NATO nations have periodically deployed fighters to patrol Icelandic airspace under the Icelandic Air Policing mission.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland#Military
My father was stationed in Greenland; I have many photos of Papa and his plane(s).
In my whereabouts there is a fabulous tv series called Vigdis, about the first female president of Iceland. The American occupation plays quite a significant role in that series.
(with just a dose of sarcasm) Why not? Iceland wouldn’t be any more of a country today if it weren’t for us occupying it during WW2 (and leaving behind plenty of actually American babies) Not to mention, geologically, it is part of North America.
Iceland is not geologically part of North America. It was formed by volcanism from a hot spot under the mid-Atlantic Ridge. It’s actually one of the few places on Earth where the mantle is exposed if I recall correctly.
I stand corrected. I was thinking that it was at the boundary between North American and Eurasian (tectonic) plates, with more of it on the North American side.
Actually, the Russians defeated the Germans in WWII. Without the Americans in Europe likely there wouldn’t have been a division of Germany and maybe not even the imposition of socialism in Eastern Europe. That is a counterfactual to consider, eh?!
I was referring specifically to the occupation of Iceland. It was occupied quasi-legally (or outright illegally) by Britain–Iceland was, like Greenland, sovereign territory of Denmark in 1940–then, w3ith UK needing the troops to help defend Britain after Dunkerque, it was handed over to US who occupied it despite being a neutral power since half a year before the Pearl Harbor, and, basically, illegally set up an Icelandic Republic (since the Danes, the nominal sovereign of the territory, were not consulted.) to which it handed off the power to after the war was over. USSR had nothing to do with Iceland during WW2.
The bottom line: we controlled it illegally once for 5 years, created a phoney government that still controls it. So why not take it over again? (yes, sarcasm intended).
THX
There is one step that Denmark / Iceland can take to effectively defend their sovereignty – not strengthening their military as they can never match the US, and forming alliances to counter the US (would have to be with Russia) would be very difficult and take decades to match the US (against new operation gladios) – and Russia will not overstretch to try to counter the US at this time globally.
Acquire a few nukes – three hydrogen bombs (+3 spares) on the east coast (DC, NYC, Boston) and the US FIRE is gone – and a few subs – five and add Miami and Atlanta and the fall out and nuclear power meltdowns (no grid) will render much of the US economic heartland uninhabitable for centuries. Would N. Korea source (knowing the US is the target) if the price was right? Interesting question!
If I (and Medvedev can suss this), then so can every other nation, and the genie will fully escape the bottle…. I think there was an atomic war in the Star Trek universe…
There are already US troops in Greenland, since WWII. It will be like the Russian takeover of Crimea. Except there won’t be a referendum.
As for Iceland, I am not so sure. They are there for 1000 years now and prefer their own ways. If there will be some blood spilled of blue eyed blond hair white folks, that will not look good at all…
Visited Iceland last March. Our Icelandic tour guide took great pains to point out that Iceland has no resources to speak of. It was only partially tongue in cheek.
Denmark should appoint Trump as the titular king of Greenland. It would greatly flatter his ego. This wouldn’t be an entirely unprecedented move; the president of France also serves as prince of Andorra. Forget the U.S. Constitution. It’s just a piece of paper.
Genius.
Well this is ominous, but of great explanatory value. Hardening of the arteries, eh? Makes grim sense to me.
I’m still staggered by the nightmare of Biden’s senility and the massive exercise of denial about it.
Trump is, at least, an obvious problem and blight.
First, I detect a non-problem, which is the pretext: Just how many skirmishes are going on in the Arctic? Are we truly to believe that the U S of A is somehow insecure because there aren’t enough troops in Greenland?
Why, next we’ll hear of some drug-running Kartel of the Ice Cube.
From my vantage point here in the grissino-and-rubatà capital of the world, this is the kernel: “Among other wee problems, many unpopular leaders have hitched what remains of their fortunes to Russophobia, when Europe is not and will not any time soon be able to stare down Russia alone.”
It isn’t so much that Europe has traded away its security blanket to the U S of A. As people in Italy keep pointing out, the EU nations collectively spent in 2025 about 380 billion on defense and 150 billion on “R&D” — which means the usual parasitic defense contractors. So that amounts to 530 billion. I’ve seen estimates as high as 800 billion in 2025. We aren’t talking about a bunch of defenseless Europeans waiting for the square-jawed Navy Seals to protect them.
Instead, as noted by Yves Smith, what you have is a thoroughly corrupted and self-serving elite that knows that War Is the Health of the State and that if the goodies run out, they will have to leave the cushy jobs in Brussels.
So: Russophobia gives them a reason for being and something to fear. The genocide in Gaza will go away — who speaks of the genocide of the Armenians? (Let alone the Assyrians?) Venezuela — the public will calm down in a day or two.
Greenland? Denmark can’t do anything against the U S of A. The EU could get tough and cancel its commitments to armaments — which is bad for the war profiteers. Tariffs? Trump used divide and conquer, and Ursula von der Leyen is all punch down and economic austerity for the masses — so you can’t count on her to stand up to Trump.
The burden is on people living in the US of A. Just what do you plan to do to get the U.S. government under control?
Arctic pretensions of Russia, naturally, and China, presumptively, are among the reasons offered, along with resources, for the Greenland Gambit.
What are those countries doing that would provoke such concerns?
Legally, internationally, 2/3 of the Arctic (not the international waters) is under Russian control. As per UNCLOS, Russia has legal control of the maritime area between its territory and the ice shelf. No pretentions there. Yeah, US hasn’t signed UNCLOS and they think there are no rules that will constrain them. The Russian Military will, as well as the climate…
‘The burden is on people living in the US of A’
The world is toast then IMO. Get used to it.
The idea that any part of the western hemisphere has not been under the control of the hegemon for a very long the is ridiculous.
Since the Roosevelt Corollary and the building of a naval fleet and certainly since WWI.
Sometimes the leash is loosened a little, sometime tightened up.
Donny baby is a showman, never really been anything else as far as I can tell.
He does what every good showman does, takes something that already exists adds some razzmatazz,sparklers and fireworks on the stage.
If you disregard the special effects you can see the brick wall at the back.
YTrump’s showman sparklers may be poking into the wooden ceiling of the stage/nightclub as in the recent Swiss nightclub fire with the subsequent catastrophic results. If I may mix metaphors. Unlike the Swiss case, the owners will not be charged. https://nypost.com/2026/01/04/world-news/owner-of-swiss-nightclub-where-deadly-fire-broke-out-was-known-pimp-who-did-time-for-fraud-kidnapping/
Another known pimp! Courtesy phone for Jeffrey Epstein.
The US can’t even well control its southern border.
The US does not yet and will not control Venezuela. It might wreck it but that is not control.
To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a wasteland and they call it peace.
I like Vijay Prashad and here his is talking in a video about the events of Venezuela. Lots of good points.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EuWZTgYEkVA&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D%3D
An awful lot of moving parts here but I’ll just touch very briefly on some of the most obvious.
Anything resembling what Trump has been saying would be the end of NATO as a functioning organisation, irrespective of the Treaty situation. For the Europeans, the idea has always been to make use of the US as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union and now Russia, such that in any crisis the US would feel bound to support Europe. This was achieved not only by having US forces based in Europe (there are now almost none) but more importantly by enmeshing the US in a Gulliver-like web of committees, joint HQs, consultation mechanisms, and multilateral agreements such that the US would have no real alternative but to consult its European partners in a crisis. The specific, but unstated, concern was that the US needed as far as possible to be prevented from unilaterally doing things that would affect European security over the heads of the Europeans. Whilst a superpower can’t be prevented from doing that absolutely, you can make the task more difficult. As I’ve pointed out, the European nightmare risks coming true over Ukraine: the US will simply do a deal with the Russians and leave the Europeans stranded.
Anything remotely like the nonsense Trump is spouting will destroy this web of largely unstated assumptions completely, and cause a wholly unnecessary political crisis at the worst possible time. The Russians will be unable to believe their luck. It’s also true that it’s a bad idea from the US perspective because NATO gives the US a great deal of institutional influence, most of which it would lose. It’s one thing to argue and cajole a lot of nations into signing a communiqué or agreeing to an initiative in a committee: it’s effectively impossible to try to do it on an individual nation basis, and the US no longer has, if it ever had, the resources and skills to do so. And all for what, I can imagine many in Washington arguing.
More importantly, paralysis or effective disappearance of NATO could have major implications for the stability of central Europe. Tensions between Poland, Germany, Ukraine, the Baltics etc. etc. would not go away if NATO disappeared: they would be exacerbated. At the moment, what remains of the NATO command system acts as a brake on unilateral military adventurism. Take that away and you are effectively back in the 1930s.
As I indicated, US forces in Europe have vanished almost entirely, and those few left (mostly in Germany and Italy) are mainly for out-of-area operations. Rammstein functions effectively as a way-station to the Middle East, and life would become very difficult for the US if the Europeans decided to create problems there.
Intelligence sharing is not done with NATO as such: throughout history it has been on a bilateral or “close allies” basis. Most actual intelligence sharing by the US involves, so far as is known, the UK, France, Germany and probably Sweden. But intelligence sharing is based on mutual benefit, and so long as that benefit exists, the sharing will continue. Ironically, this would strengthen the position of France, which has its own satellites.
On equipment, most of that is made in Europe and always has been. Pointedly, European nations are now looking to countries like South Korea rather than the US for ground equipment. The only real exception is aircraft, where many European nations have standardised on the F-35, largely because no other aircraft of its type is available. (The Rafale and Typhoon are of a previous generation.) But I can’t imagine the US defence industry will want to lose friends by alienating some of its most important customers. And of course the F-35 is built with components from all over the world, notably Europe, without which it won’t be able to fly. Two can play at that game.
Very much appreciated.
Historically Russia was not really a threat for Europe. Russians were mostly reactive. Yes, they took Tatar lands and expanded south and east, but not so much in the west. In fact their expansion in the west was always the result of western pressure on them to begin with.
To me, this paranoia in the west concerning Russia comes not only from fear of Russia but also from the desire to ultimately brake it and take it, or as much as possible, control it. So what does Europe do? Allies itself with the biggest bully out there, with the mind of an adolescent and with an insatiable greed for power (see IM Doc comments on the rich folks he knows).
I grew up in the shadow of the Soviet Union and I was never really afraid of it. It was clear that bad things in the country happened because of the national character, not because of the temporary soviet occupation or socialism. And it was and is clear that Russians don’t want threats on their borders. Not too much to ask. However, living in Canada now for 30 years, I have always felt the threat and menace of the US. Honestly, I would rather change US for Russia any time as a neighbour.
There is no amount of rationalization that John Mearsheimer can make, that all great powers will behave the same way, history begs to differ. Civilizations matter.
There has for a long time also been the fear that if Russia and Europe (read: Germany) can live in harmony, together they will easily out-compete USA (and UK).
The stability issues Aurelien is referring to is basically the Visegrad nations not wanting to be between – again – Germany and Russia. As if NATO could change the geography somehow instead of being a root cause of instability (as military alliances usually tend to become).
But Germany is down & down and Russia is not really interested. It went south west with the excuse of liberating Christians from under Ottoman rule. Which stopped after the Crimean War, after which independent Christian states were allowed to form one by one.
Furthermore, The Visegrad countries led by Poland smack to me as a group, Poland chief of them wanting not necesarily safety, but also (re)establishing as local power force and controler (and beneficiary). Andrew Korybko keeps publishing articles on the theme. And he kind of knows the spirit of the Pans, so full of themselves…
Yes, Realism doesn’t “really” tell us anything interesting about how nations behave in practice. The suspicion and nervousness that the two sides felt about each other in the decade after WW2 is just a fact that has to be lived with, and can only be understood as a reaction to their recent experiences, and to the weakness each side perceived it had compared to the other. This may not have been rational, but it’s a matter of record. In my experience during the Cold War, there was very little actual “fear” of the Soviet Union, even among right-wing politicians: certainly there was little in the population at large. (But then Britain is an island, of course.) The fear that did exist was much more an existential fear of War itself and its potential consequences, especially in the countries that had been devastated by the fighting of 1939-45. Since WW2 had been caused by weakness it was argued (a dubious proposition) the only way to prevent another War was to be strong, and discourage any potential aggressor. We obviously understood much less about the Soviet side, but they do seem to have had more of an actual fear of a western attack: for example, Soviet troops in East Germany were at a few hours notice to move. This, of course, was an attempt to exorcise the disastrous lack of preparedness of 1941, when Stalin refused to heed warnings of German attacks. They seem to have believed that demonstrating how ready they were for war would deter one. Between the western desire not to be weak again, and the Soviet desire not to be surprised again, I’m quite surprised we actually survived.
The danger now is the re-nationalisation of defence, if only because large organisations move more slowly and carefully than individual nations, and impose checks and balances. As I said, the problems of the past have not been solved (we found that out in the negotiations on German unification in 1990), and more have been created since. The other thing, of course, is that threats are a zero-sum game. My demand that you do this or that to avoid threatening me is likely to be perceived by you as a threat to your security, and vice versa. And since we are not dealing with rational motives here, but with fear, uncertainty and the desire to symbolically exorcise the past, things could start to be quite uncomfortable, quite soon.
Thx, this provided more nuance and more “realism” on how humans behave, considering that the frontal cortex most of the time follows rather than leads…
Still there are layered reasons and differences in aproach all studed by past history, which all add their influence.
This!
Thank you for this excellent summary of the state of affairs as existed during the Cold War.
Many here including me have said we are in Cold War II. I’m beginning to think that is incorrect since the actions being taken by American elites seems more pointed towards the ending of NATO and the alliances that formed “the West” during the Cold War.
I’m not sure what’s happening now. It’s amazing to watch some of the things Trump and other American elites are now saying and realize that American “soft power” is flowing like a stream of diarrhea out the other ends of those same speakers. It was unnecessary to say America needs to “take” Greenland. America pretty much completely controlled it, and the American military was pretty much free to do whatever it wanted there.
Just a few additions, as singular as they may seem:
From what historian Marc Trachtenberg reported 25 years ago in his study “A CONSTRUCTED PEACE” well into the 1960s the US military and their analysts appear to have been rather sure of US dominance and (near) invincibility.
Just a couple of quotes from that book:
“(…)
“There was a time in the
1950s,” according to General LeMay, the SAC commander during this period,
“when we could have won a war against Russia. It would have cost us essentially
the accident rate of the flying time,” because Soviet air defenses were so weak.127
Eisenhower himself made a similar point in 1959. “If we were to release our nuclear
stockpile on the Soviet Union,” the president said, “the main danger would
arise not from retaliation but from fallout in the earth’s atmosphere.”
(…)”
quoting John F. Dulles:
“(…)
America could accept Soviet challenges because she knew her “own military
establishment was superior to Russia’s and that the Russians knew it was superior.
Thus, if necessary, we could call checkmate on the Soviet Union.
(…)”.
“(…)
during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, a high Air Force general said that “if it came to a U.S. strike,” the
military authorities “could give a 90 percent assurance that 99 percent of the Soviet
nuclear force aimed at the United States would be destroyed before it could
get off the ground, or a 99 percent assurance that 90 percent would be destroyed.”
130 This calculation did not take into account either the damage that
would be inflicted by the nuclear forces under NATO command, nor the damage
that Europe would suffer through Soviet retaliation. But according to a major Defense
Department historical study, the Soviet strategic situation might well have
seemed “little short of desperate,” and a “coordinated U.S.-NATO first strike”
might have been able to destroy enough of the Soviet force targeted on the NATO
area “to negate the deterrent effect of hostage Europe.
(…)”
As the German public was concerned the population itself was divided.
Throughout 1957 West Germany witnessed some of its largest ever antiwar protests with 1-2M people. These were organized and supported by the German Social Democrats (SPD), the major opposition party, by the churches, by legacy media and academia.
Nonetheless in 1958 SPD lost its first big election in the largest state of North-Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) – to the anti-USSR Adenauer-party CDU – for the first time, even though labour-base NRW was traditionally SPD turf.
The defeat was so substantial that it led to SPD changing course and abandoning Marxism entirely for the first time in history. Nobody had expected such a result (loss of more than 9%) after antiwar protest had carried the party and transformed German society to an extent.
One major reason being, that despite the saber-rattling of NATO and the West still too many voters were afraid of USSR and did not trust the SPD´s demand for more cordial relationships with the Soviets and finding a way to maybe even unify with the GDR. Although latter was a minor position because it would have meant neutrality at least according to Stalin´s proposals of 1952.
The cracking point was – as then Adenauer´s staunchly anti-Soviet Secretary of Defense Franz-Josef-Strauß correctly pointed out to SPD: “Are you willing to leave NATO?”.
And of course SPD was not. So their pro-Russia course was half-hearted. Anti-Soviet sentiment in the population not least due to 3rd Reich propaganda and even before that still was deep inside German psyche. In a way this hasn´t changed to this day.
Last example: German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt during the PERSHING/SS-20 missile crisis 1979 once complained to Margaret Thatcher that CIA was not informing the German government properly. Instead lying to them about the real danger from the USSR, exaggerating it.
p.s. And if I follow the footnotes on how the USSR viewed matters militarily as provided by Andrei Martyanov in his written work it appears convincing that the Russians really were fearful. And what was done mostly was contingency planning. Defense. Not offense.
The internet reports that there are between 65,000 and 84,000 US forces still based in Europe. 32,000 in Germany alone. That’s a bit more than ‘almost none’.
There are two regiment size units, one based in Germany and one in Italy. The US is evasive about the total strength but it’s something between 5-10,000. There are a number of fighter squadrons based there as well, and various small forces visit from time to time. Of the two regiments, one is armoured cavalry with wheeled vehicles, and the other is an airborne unit. Neither is intended for combat in Europe nor capable of it. Both are intended for use in the Middle East. The rest? Logistics, training teams, communications, aircraft handling, marching bands ….
I am curious as to how far German parties that have a realistic chance to form government will eventually be willing to sell out until media and popular vote won´t go along any more.
I think the breaking point would come very very late in the game.
I recall reading a bunch about the arctic and Greenland in the …seems this is the go to operating manual in regards to many topics. Don’t have time to dig it up now but will later.
Project 2025 PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION PROJECT –
What is striking in all of this is the complete mismatch between the pace of physical reality and the pace of political imagination.
On the climate front, timelines have collapsed. We have already touched 1.5 °C on an annual basis, 2 °C is now plausibly within a decade, and under current trajectories 3 °C by mid-century and 4–5 °C later in the century are no longer fringe scenarios. That matters because beyond ~2 °C, impacts are not linear: heat, drought, flooding, food stress and insurance withdrawal begin to reinforce one another. We are not approaching “a problem.” We are entering a systemic unwind.
And yet, the geopolitical response looks like a game of Risk being played on a burning table. Greenland, Venezuela, bases, pressure, threats – to what end? The world is not short of oil. It has more fossil fuel reserves than it can safely burn. Markets know this. Capital expenditure is stalling. China is electrifying at scale and setting the pace in renewables and EVs. The age of fossil expansion is ending economically even before it ends physically.
What we are witnessing instead is a familiar imperial pattern: extraction for extraction’s sake, power exercised because it can be exercised. The center hollows out – growing numbers of people without healthcare, without security, without food stability – while elites roll the dice, financialize everything that moves, and treat the planet as collateral damage.
Money itself is revealed as what it has always been: entries on a ledger, increasingly abstract, increasingly gamified, now threatened by speculative digital substitutes that claim “full faith and credit” while eroding the very social trust that makes credit meaningful in the first place.
So the question becomes unavoidable: power for what? Not security. Not prosperity. Not survival. Only dominance.
“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” The empire is building monuments to itself while the conditions that sustain civilization erode beneath its feet. The serfs will be surveilled, policed, and endlessly entertained by the next app. Resistance is declared futile but collapse does not require resistance. It requires only denial.
Thank you for this. My thoughts have been very much along the same lines, but I haven’t been able to articulate them nearly as cogently.
It seems like we are approaching an asymptotic state where a few will have infinite money but nothing left to buy because the combination of climate change, class warfare, and imperial wars will have destroyed the foundations of economic life.
I’m getting old and have no children, but I grieve for the young people I know, who are overwhelmingly bright, decent, hardworking, and (I fear) doomed.
You left out no fresh water to drink or oxygen to breathe. As Guy McP says, nature bats last. Do you suppose there’s a Platinum Club in Hell?
The “personality disorder” reasons you’ve mentioned are really the best way to look at it. On top of the narcissism, Trump is incredible petty, and he must know that these overpreening euro “elites” all hate his guts and think that Trump is a piece of trash that they have to hold their nose and tolerate. He clearly has no respect whatsoever for any of them (save Orban?? he might like Macron?), and it doesn’t appear that there is anyone in his administration that actually likes the Europeans either (much the reverse in fact, as he sends some of them over to seemingly poke europe in the eye for fun). And now Trump has figured out that he has a shiny red flashing button on his desk that says “do NOT press!!!”, “Annex Greenland” and “Make toady Euroslugs twist into pretzels and seethe”.
It’s a wonder he hasn’t done it already.
Another great post today. I’ve used my memory of IM Doc’s diagnosis to try to explain Trump to my brother and will copy and send the above.
And I’d also suggest in my perhaps grandiose way that our entire society seems to have White Matter disease as rationality takes flight and underlying egotism and sociopathy come to the fore–at least among the ruling gerontocracy. The rest of us–often no spring chickens ourselves–are along for the ride.
I’ve said this before but I think Trump wanting Greenland (and Iceland, and Canada) is likely not motivated by what we’re being told, namely security vis a vis Russia and China shipping.
I think the planners and thinkers in the agencies are forecasting and know that with climate change Americans will want to be anywhere but the US. Are probably also anticipating that there will be much social and class strife, that the homeland won’t be a safe space. So this may be about migrating a (very particular) American population to someplace cooler and safer.
Some questions:
– Given the order, would the US military carry out the order?
– What does occupation look like? Will this be the Israel playbook: Building unauthorized infrastructure, settlement building, restricting building permits, controlling citizenship, controling tax administration, controlling import, restricting population movement, roads, destroying archeological and historiccal sites, rewriting history, hasbara, etc.
– Clearly, we end up with a situation where the UN does not recognize occupied Greenland as American, would these be nearly the exact same legal questions as with Palestine?
An added thought. I wonder, is it in Israel’s interest for the US to take Greenland because it then legitimizes what Israel is doing to Palestine, Lebanon, etc? Is this perhaps the real reason?
While Trump is certainly not without power and authority, we seem to be forgetting that he is not the only key stakeholder in US foreign policy. And that these other key stakeholders, while far less vocal, are often able to do whatever they please irrespective of what Trump wants.
Example. Remember how in his first term he kept announcing troop withdrawals hither and yon? From Syria, for example? And every time, two or three days later, the Pentagon would quietly say – no, we’re not doing that – and the matter would basically be dropped. No military adventure, and the seizure of Greenland would be one such (albeit a bloodless one), would happen unless the Pentagon were willing, or at least not actively against the idea. Conversely, if the Pentagon wants a thing, like the two Easter strikes against Syria (also in Trump’s first term), or the troop surge in Afghanistan under Saint Obama, there are a lot of levers it can pull both internally and externally.
Then, of course, there is the intelligence community. Recall that Ukraine, to a significant extent is also a CIA operation, and I point to Trump’s recent waffling on the drone strike on Putin’s residence as evidence that the CIA can a) launch an op like this without bothering to clue Trump in (I suspect his initial surprise was genuine – we know, e.g. from Politico, that his staffers “curate” the info he sees); and then b) get Trump to come around to whatever point of view they want him to have. Then there is the recent case of the CIA director, again per Politico, going to Europe to personally reassure the Europeans that Trump or no Trump, the CIA-European relationship is as strong as ever.
So just these two, and arguably there are other players, if they really did not want the US to take Greenland, could probably stop it. Conversely, if the US does take Greenland, then either a) the Pentagon and-or the CIA want it thus (sealing off the North Atlantic, base for expansion into the Arctic, whatever); or b) the Pentagon and the CIA want to give the baby his newest favorite toy so as to keep him occupied and not disturb them in places like, oh, I don’t know, Ukraine. Either way, it ain’t just Trump flying solo, there has to be complicity or direct participation of other stakeholders in the US political system. Which, in turn, has implications for when Trump is replaced by some other schlub, and eventually this will happen, even if simply due to basic biology.
Meanwhile, for all the noises they are making, I highly suspect this particular crop of European leaders will find a way to accept and live with a US seizure of Greenland. After all, it’s only Greenland. Surely the Big Bad Evil Trump (and not anyone else in Washington) will stop now…I mean, if you view the present-day EU as a de-facto US vassal, then it necessarily is run primarily by a group of collaborationists, which means that – while for public politics purposes they may make differing noises – in reality they’ll accept whatever the “white massa” does. And they’ll be ever more loyal to the schlub that shows up after Trump, just as had happened with Biden, because now the “big bad” is gone…
Remember the Falkland Islands? The point is not what’s on it, but what flag is on it. Despite that the Falklands were next to useless to anyone at all, and Argentina had more of an arguable claim to them than the UK, the UK sent its armada – it had to, the Argentine move could not go unanswered.
The same will happen here – one of the EU states will need to send something, anything, cannot just let it pass, because the principle is at stake.
And meanwhile, if the US claim is that it can take ANY country it wants out of strategic/military interest – every country with a stationed US base is now at risk.
Which might actually be a strategic point against doing it – the Pentagon wouldn’t like to lose it’s 90ish bases worldwide but that’s exactly what will happen if it takes Greenland.
The Europeans will not do anything that is effective and even the Scandanavian’s will run off to sulk in a corner. A quick look at my wall map and a dashing slash of Occam’s razor says that it is in the interests of Russia and China to keep the sea lanes open, and keep them open they will, whilst ensuring that the Greenlanders oil and minerals are kept outside the reach of the US.
It happened before, with Denmark, in fact. Britain occupied Iceland in 1940 (it was sovereign Danish territory, then). They handed it off to ostensibly neutral US the next year, because they needed the troops elsewhere. By the end if the war, US unilaterally set up a government of Iceland which gets handed the sovereignty of the island. What’s good for Iceland, why not for Greenland?
Again as entertainment recommendation: The Danish success TV series BORGEN´s final season was focused on Greenland where US was interfering over an oil reserves discovery. Including covert CIA action. Of course I believe eventually the Russians turned out even worse villains.
There was another scandinavian TV series with a Russian invasion of Norway…with the US aquiescing. How they come up with these scenarios, boggles the mind.
Screenwriters! Commissioning editors! Producers!
The biggest ideologues around.
Just for starters:
CSIS panel about screenwriting and “NATO”.
Just beautiful…
Hollywood Goes to NATO: Telling the Story of the Alliance
July 12, 2024
47 min.
https://www.csis.org/events/hollywood-goes-nato-telling-story-alliance
p.s. In the past 4 years I believe no other nationality has received more German art awards than Ukraine.
That tells you everything about the level incompetence, indoctrination and duplicity among “artists” and “intellectuals”.