US - Greenland Crisis Thread

[Jacob]

Danish news is leading with this video: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/reels/loekke-fejrer-overstaaet-moede-med-fist-bump-og-faelles-smoeg

The Danish delegation sharing a fist bump and smoke after meeting in the White House.

[Jacob]

... though no actual statements about the content of the meeting yet.

[HVC]

Danish news is leading with this video: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/reels/loekke-fejrer-overstaaet-moede-med-fist-bump-og-faelles-smoeg

The Danish delegation sharing a fist bump and smoke after meeting in the White House.

I think they're going to find out that an agreement with trumps America is only good for as long as it takes you to walk out of the meeting rooms door.

[Jacob]

I think they're going to find out that an agreement with trumps America is only good for as long as it takes you to walk out of the meeting rooms door.

I don't think that's news 

My understanding of the strategy with Trump is to kick the can down the road as much as possible and avoid irreversible breakdowns.

If Denmark came out of this with a "okay, what you said makes sense (for now)" that's about as best-case a scenario as can be reasonably expected.

[Zanza]

Regarding the Baltic States - aren't international NATO troops already there? Even if currently small contingents and NATO unwilling to defend the Baltics, they would be in the firing line if the Russians roll in.

Germany has stationed a panzer brigade near the Suwalki Gap in Lithuania now with currently about 2000 soldiers, meant to grow to 4500-5000 and 100 armoured vehicles by next year. That's the biggest foreign deployment since 1945. The UK, Canada, Italy, and France have substantial deployments in the Baltics or the Balkans

[HVC]

I think they're going to find out that an agreement with trumps America is only good for as long as it takes you to walk out of the meeting rooms door.

I don't think that's news 

My understanding of the strategy with Trump is to kick the can down the road as much as possible and avoid irreversible breakdowns.

If Denmark came out of this with a "okay, what you said makes sense (for now)" that's about as best-case a scenario as can be reasonably expected.

True enough. Sometimes that the best way to deal with a toddler.

[Admiral Yi]

Danish news is leading with this video: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/reels/loekke-fejrer-overstaaet-moede-med-fist-bump-og-faelles-smoeg

The Danish delegation sharing a fist bump and smoke after meeting in the White House.

Looks very much like the best case outcome.  A joint statement full of nonsense that allows Cheetoh to claim VICTORY then his tiny T Rex brain wanders off to the next shiny toy.

Question for the Yuros/Scandis/Danes: in current smoking  culture is handing your lighter over instead of lighting the other guy's cigarette good manners or kind of a snub?  Two German girls taught me in high school to always light the other person and I've lived by that ever since.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I've always lit the other person's cigarette. But it has been a while.

[Norgy]

Danish news is leading with this video: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/udland/reels/loekke-fejrer-overstaaet-moede-med-fist-bump-og-faelles-smoeg

The Danish delegation sharing a fist bump and smoke after meeting in the White House.

Looks very much like the best case outcome.  A joint statement full of nonsense that allows Cheetoh to claim VICTORY then his tiny T Rex brain wanders off to the next shiny toy.

Question for the Yuros/Scandis/Danes: in current smoking  culture is handing your lighter over instead of lighting the other guy's cigarette good manners or kind of a snub?  Two German girls taught me in high school to always light the other person and I've lived by that ever since.

It's a snub, but so few people smoke these days. Always light a woman's cig, though.

The instances where handing over the lighter are okay are limited, and include, but are not limited to, in a) snowstorms in the mountains, b) during heavy rain and wind when lighting a cigarette is nigh on impossible except inside a parka and c) when you are driving.

[bogh]

So a high level working group to explore options, but still unchanged opinions on both sides.

I doubt this will survive Vance bringing it back to the boss.

[Sheilbh]

So a high level working group to explore options, but still unchanged opinions on both sides.

I doubt this will survive Vance bringing it back to the boss.

Yeah, I could be wrong but I think sending Vance is precisely intended to line it up to fail.

See his behaviour to Zelensky or his speech on Europe - I think he's very aligned to the really ideological hostility to modern Europe (like in the NSS).

[Jacob]

It's a snub, but so few people smoke these days. Always light a woman's cig, though.

The instances where handing over the lighter are okay are limited, and include, but are not limited to, in a) snowstorms in the mountains, b) during heavy rain and wind when lighting a cigarette is nigh on impossible except inside a parka and c) when you are driving.

I don't read it a snub. Motzfeldt is there not as a woman but as a representative of Greenland. Solicitous behaviour that could be seen as patronizing might carry it's own risk.

That said, it strikes me as a pretty personal "holy shit it's done, I need a cig" type moment rather than significant gesture. That said, I'm not a smoker.

I also note that Rasmussen offers Motzfeldt a drag of his own lit cigarette inside the car, which to me suggests a level of closeness.

[Jacob]

But in terms of substance, it seems like nothing has really changed. Which is not good, but also not bad.

[HVC]

It's a snub, but so few people smoke these days. Always light a woman's cig, though.

The instances where handing over the lighter are okay are limited, and include, but are not limited to, in a) snowstorms in the mountains, b) during heavy rain and wind when lighting a cigarette is nigh on impossible except inside a parka and c) when you are driving.

I don't read it a snub. Motzfeldt is there not as a woman but as a representative of Greenland. Solicitous behaviour that could be seen as patronizing might carry it's own risk.

That said, it strikes me as a pretty personal "holy shit it's done, I need a cig" type moment rather than significant gesture. That said, I'm not a smoker.

I also note that Rasmussen offers Motzfeldt a drag of his own lit cigarette inside the car, which to me suggests a level of closeness.

It's glorious... but deadly. Like the best things in life

That being said my experience when I was a smoker was the opposite of Norge. Offer a lighter in good weather and light off a cigarette in shitty windy weather.

[mongers]

So if trump stages a invasion, well at least sends in troop that'll look good on the domestic news channels, it's now quite likely that European soldiers will die and so probably some Americans too.

What next?

Who calls it a war first?

What do Europeans and Canadian governments do in reaction?


FWIW Even if trump and/or his pet US congress 'declares' war in some way, then I think we should declare we are at war with trump and his conies, sanction them, put bounties on their heads, but make it clear we are not at war with the American people.

This would be a first step in sowing dissent and unrest within the USA, a necessary policy as the US naval and military forces can't be defeated. Hopefully a few loose threads within those institutions could be picked at, with the aim of getting some in the officer classes to refuse to fight, maybe offer them asylum etc?

If that also means really helping the fault-lines between American political classes to widen, then it's a necessary small evil.  But by the time this reckless buffoon is ordering the killing of allied soldiers and invaded peaceful lands, cheered on by the moronic section of US society, then the USA has to be remade anyway by, what's the word, 'the decent people' of America.