Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland • Hacker News Board

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#261

Post by lo_zamoyski » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #5

jacquesm wrote: post #3

Of course they were. The United States has never before damaged its own reputation in Europe as much as they did in the last 12 months. And the same goes for Canada, possibly worse. You don't go around threatening your allies unless you really have plans and that's why you don't elect senile old guys to positions of power.

> that's why you don't elect senile old guys to positions of power. Anyone of principle would have been saying this before 2025, and far louder.

Men of old age are indeed generally ill-suited for the presidency (as are the young; middle age best balances vigor with prudence and wisdom). The elderly function better as advisors where they may be consulted for their experience, or as amici curiae.

That being said, I don't think we can pin this particular expression of derangement on age, or at least not age alone. Trump has nothing to lose. He cannot run again. He doesn't care one whit about the common good or even tawdry partisan interests. This is his unhinged narcissism at work, abetted by a cultish, smarmy, obsequious coterie of yes-men that surrounds him.

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#262

Post by ericmay » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #118

ericmay wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

> 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…

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.

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#263

Post by mcv » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #77

ta20240528 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah mate, Rich powerful countries could also keep slaves and no one would be able to stop it by force. But they don't. Civilisation advances.

They don't because the west banned slavery on moral grounds, and enforced it on the rest of the world. That advance is actually just western power in effect.

That ban on slavery is not being enforced on the rest of the world. The west had no problem playing football in Qatar in stadiums built by slave labour.

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#264

Post by bko » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

lynndotpy wrote: post #220

jacquesm wrote: post #3

Of course they were. The United States has never before damaged its own reputation in Europe as much as they did in the last 12 months. And the same goes for Canada, possibly worse. You don't go around threatening your allies unless you really have plans and that's why you don't elect senile old guys to positions of power.

I'm really happy these topics are being discussed here on HN, when they weren't ~1 year ago. When considering a post-USA world, we also get to consider a post-Microsoft, post-Meta, post-Google, post-CloudFlare, post-Amazon, etc world. I can't say I know much about how the EU operates or how quickly their Open Digital Ecosystems initiative could take shape, but this is a really opportune time to build a better tech in…

What does post-USA world mean?

Who is the leader in culture, business, technology? The only other contender I can think of is China.

And this is better?

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#265

Post by njovin » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

techteach00 wrote: post #202

njovin wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and took giant amounts of holiday Trump took more than double the amount of vacation days in his first term, and if the golf tracker is accurate, he's on pace to increase it this term. > Trump's talking basically every day in front of press I'm not sure if talking === communicating_effectively. There are certainly noises coming out of his mouth, if that's the only metric we care about. > Joe Biden was in far, far w…

The truth is Obama whether you like him or not was the last traditional post War American President. Biden copied Trumps extremist way of Government. Biden said (totally abnormal comments for a president) "we've been patient with the unvaccinated, but our patience is wearing thin" highly aggressive comments. Trump is basically using that same language with illegal immigrants and Americans critical of Israel and the I…

> highly aggressive comments. Trump is basically using that same language with illegal immigrants and Americans critical of Israel and the Iran war.

You're equating a _statement_ made by Biden (with regards to a public health crisis actively killing Americans) with Trump arresting US citizens, illegally deporting asylum-seekers, and bombing Iran without congressional approval, a plan for the strait of Hormuz, nor buy-in from allies. This is not a good faith comparison.

> Both Biden and Trump wanted to use media organizations to censor their political opponents

Again, you're comparing the Biden admin _asking_ Twitter to censor content (primarily relating to revenge porn against his adult son) with Trump actively threatening the broadcast license of networks because comedians were mean to him - another bad faith comparison.

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#266

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

jjtwixman wrote: post #34

jacquesm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that this is from a country that wouldn't exist if not for the allied countries and that the US has somehow managed to all but erase that reputation. We recognize our debt, we also recognize that this is to a country that no longer exists in a meaningful way. All we have now is multiple variations of the mob.

Yeah the US we knew is gone. I think about this sometimes when I am listening to American music from the 20th century, how much soft power they had, how great they made America sound either directly or indirectly. That America that we all looked up to and admired is gone. Pity.

> how much soft power they had,

Soft power? Have you been sleeping during the 20th century? The formidable military power of the US comes from a constant state of war.

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#267

Post by krona » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

techterrier wrote: post #199

krona wrote: post #100

I live very close to one of the USAF's largest European airbases. While Trump was trolling European leaders about their security posture (by threatening to relieve them of sovereign territory which the US already has extensive access to) the USAF was already moving assets in the opposite direction to the middle east (this was mid-january). It's fairly easy to work out what's happening if you ignore the orange man and…

> It's fairly easy to work out what's happening off you go then, what is it?

Dunno, start by reading the national security strategy and count the number of times it mentions the words "Arctic" or "Greenland"? (hint: it's zero).

Then maybe look at the Nato chain of command and who was interviewed and what was said in mid-Jan?

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#268

Post by enoint » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #181

enoint wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. The liar who lies to control the narrative is lying again. The chance he’s lying is high but as adults the (likelihood * hazard) of an invasion is worth preparing for. The narrative he wanted to control was about Epstein. Denmark could have simultaneously prepared for that, but it wouldn’t be on OSInt Twitter.

The problem is that his "lies" and "jokes" sometimes suddenly turned out to be not lies and jokes.

More precisely, propaganda is always fake. After verification it’s possibly true, but it still began fake. Trump could try supporting his utterances with fact, but he doesn’t.

It’s rational to prepare for his propaganda to sometimes accidentally turn out true. Hence this relatively modest response. But the narrative most reliably supported by fact is that Trump hasn’t kept his story straight about Epstein.

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#269

Post by keybored » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

JeremyNT wrote: post #218

srean wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did that US really exist without a self imposed convenience of blindness ? The brutality of the School of Americas might indicate otherwise. Now rebranded as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...

The US was historically self-interested in empire building, with an excellent PR campaign in front of it, but... it also did useful and good stuff, both for its allies and for unrelated parties. USAID was a testament to this. PR spin aside, it was largely a force for global stability (a few notable and disastrous military quagmires aside). "Free trade" isn't much of a philosophy to hang your hat on but it is an ideal…

> PR spin aside,

Then the comment repeats the same PR spin.

Re: Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland

#270

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Mar 19, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

vrganj wrote: post #143

> As a source puts it, the French said: "Would you like more soldiers? You could have them. Would you like more naval support? You could have that. Would you like more air support? You could have that too." Thank God for the French. I long thought their strong Gaullist stance on sovereignty was a bit silly in today's world, but turns out they were right along. Europe can't trust any outside powers. Any external depen…

> Thank God for the French

France has nowhere the military power to resist a country like the US. They have not invested in the military for a very long time and most of their equipment is completely outdated.