Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bsky.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 660 posts

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

#271

Post by halJordan »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #190

Keep in mind that militaries are always preparing for war. They have to. A military exists in large part to always be prepared for the unthinkable. And in the case of countries like Denmark who have few realistic enemy choices, that means they must be prepared for unrealistic invasions, even if the US isn't threatening to invade. Yes the Danes probably spend most of their time preparing to fight the Russians, but alw…

No thats not what this was. These are the actions that the Russians did before invading Ukraine and were the specific actions that the military pointed out and said "these aren't normal actions everyone is always doing"

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

#272

Post by ifwinterco »

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…

The French took basically the exact opposite approach to the British in terms of post-WW2 foreign policy.

I think partly because of the shared language British elites were able to convince themselves that the US is just like us, and the so called "special relationship" sort of preserved British power albeit as an extremely junior partner riding on the coattails of the US.

With the French there was no such delusion and they've never seen eye to eye with the Americans, they've just been biding their time waiting for this all to play out.

In hindsight, the French were right of course (they usually are as much as it pains me to say it)

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

#273

Post by iso1631 »

nickdothutton wrote: post #233

I think there is a pretty good chance US is in the late empire phase. This is not about a single President or party, or even single geopolitical event/development.

> This is not about a single President or party

I've seen roughly two types of American commentators over the last year. The ones that cheer this stuff going on, which HN has plenty of, and the ones that think "come the midterms/2028/impeachment everything will go back to normal"

The latter are massively mistaken, it would take decades for the US to rebuild its standing in the eyes of the world, and there is no evidence that it even wants to.

Trump is a symptom of what America truly is, not the cause.

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

#275

Post by keiferski »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #61
matsemann wrote: post #7

Russia's invasion ironically strengthened NATO, with more countries joining or feeling the usefulness of it. Somehow the US managed to break down all that good will in such a short amount of time.. I think it's hard to overstate how much more hostile people look at the US the last few years. So much soft power has been lost.

> So much soft power has been lost. The worst part to me feels like US has lost trust and such soft power loss is irrecoverable no matter what happens now :/ A common statement I hear from people, or maybe its just what I think, but its like "How can we trust US after this" and hey mind you, Trump still has 3 years in office, but even if political parties change, how can we trust the whole system for not having anoth…

I am equally dismayed at recent US behavior; but this is a short sighted view.

1. Geopolitics is always unpredictable. Maybe the US has been unreliable lately, but the idea that there are states out there which have been bastions of reliability is not historically accurate. All great powers have screwed people over or made disastrous decisions. It’s mostly just the US’s turn now.

2. This all happened 20 years ago with Iraq. All it really took was a charismatic president (Obama) to undo the 8+ years of bad international relations. All it will probably take again is a charismatic reliable president to set things back on track.

3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.

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

#276

Post by [deleted] »

vrganj wrote: post #246
terminalshort wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History shows that Europe can't trust any inside powers either...

pre-EU history shows that, which is why we founded the EU in the first place. To quote one of our founding fathers, Robert Schuman, the point of tightly interweaving our economies this way is to "make war not only unthinkable, but materially impossible"

[deleted]

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

#277

Post by kasperstorgaard »

lm28469 wrote: post #139
KaiMagnus wrote: post #97

And this is, in my opinion, why support at Hormuz shouldn’t even be on the table. How can you possibly hold joint patrols when you were just months ago planning full scale war between each other?

> And this is, in my opinion, why support at Hormuz shouldn’t even be on the table Shouldn't? it's not on the table at all lol

Lars Løkke Rasmussen - Minister of Foreign Affairs, said just the other day on Genstart (podcast), that an EU solution for the Hormuz straight could be an option. This would probably be through Aspides.

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

#278

Post by enoint »

krona wrote: post #267
techterrier wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Amazing how outdated that document became. We all knew it was written for an audience of one, but still such transparent Emperors New Clothes vibe.

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

#279

Post by iso1631 »

1over137 wrote: post #120
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't matter. It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. It is about gross miscalculation of consequences. Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU. So you don't attack Greenland. Because that would be wrong. Unless all that stuff about shining cities on hills was nonsense. Instead of making America gre…

>It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. Um, lots of us have doubts about that. The USA couldn't win against Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; why do you think it could win against Greenland? Greenlanders actually have a lot of guns; and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA.

Doesn't need to. America can just leave the towns alone and do whatever it wants elsewhere.

It will cost a fortune, but nobody is going to go 500 miles over an ice pack to raid a US mining settlement.

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

#280

Post by srean »

imjonse wrote: post #240
jjtwixman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a european I see what you mean, but that 'we all' in your sentence probably hasn't included those from Latin America, and large parts of Africa or Asia since long before Trump. The US pulled quite a few less than admirable tricks (to use an euphemism) on non-europeans during the 20th century.

Exactly.
Post reply on HN