US - Greenland Crisis Thread

[The Brain]

Yeah, Trump speaks for the US. He is head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief. With a strong voter mandate, having been elected twice, the second time after openly displaying his ambition to end democracy by a coup attempt. Trump doesn't matter. The US does.

[Threviel]

Yeah. 70%+ of the American electorate thought Trump was good enough either to vote for or to not bother to vote against. He was clear in his goals and his politics and the Americans overwhelmingly supported him.

Sure, there might be regions where there are decent Americans, but we're most definitely better off without those fuckers and their revolting culture war.

[Tamas]

You all are only partially correct. Yes it's not going to be like the 90s again when the US ran Europe (and through it the world) as a bunch of vassal states. And even if a pro-sanity President will be in charge, at any point we can end up with another post-truth Republican piece of shit as President.

But at any time when the US President isn't THIS evil and demented,  Europe and Canada are the natural allies and partners of the US. Through the largest number of cultural and economical links when compared to the other major players.

So, yes, Europe needs to grow the fuck up and become the powerful, singular, block it can be and should be and it should never regress back into American dependency once we (well, them, the UK may still end up a US puppet) have climbed out of it.

BUT, Europe will not need a progressive liberal US President to be able to cooperate with America. They only need a pragmatic one.

[The Brain]

Partnerships and alliances cannot depend on exactly what government happens to be in power at a given moment.

[Threviel]

Europe needs to grow the fuck up and fix its shit, we're two bad elections in France and the UK from not having a nuclear panoply. We need to get nukes now. And by now I mean yesterday.

The Americans are already lost, I hope we can keep Canada and Australia as allies though. And in the mean time that we can pretend to still be allies to the US until we're autonomous.

[Grey Fox]

We're about to be fighting them so probably not.

[crazy canuck]

Partnerships and alliances cannot depend on exactly what government happens to be in power at a given moment.

 

[Jacob]

One thing that has come out of the current Greenland situation is that the US does not necessarily have the same level of overwhelming military force available in the arctic as it does elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see how determinedly the US builds up its arctic capabilities after this - especially ice breakers, arctic capable vehicles, and infantry formations with arctic training.

[grumbler]

One thing that has come out of the current Greenland situation is that the US does not necessarily have the same level of overwhelming military force available in the arctic as it does elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see how determinedly the US builds up its arctic capabilities after this - especially ice breakers, arctic capable vehicles, and infantry formations with arctic training.

Ironically, the reason the US lacks such capabilities is that it ceded the arctic warfare mission to NATO allies better-suited to develop and maintain the necessary training and equipment.

[Threviel]

The US has enough capability to totally dominate the arctic outside of Russia. Sure, Denmark had the Orion patrol with dozens of guys more capable than almost everyone in the US defense, but they are no good if they can't get to Greenland. Also, they are easily killed by US air power.

[HVC]

We're about to be fighting them so probably not.

He chickened out in attacking Greenland, he won't take on Canada. That being said he can still fuck us up economically.

[Jacob]

The US has enough capability to totally dominate the arctic outside of Russia. Sure, Denmark had the Orion patrol with dozens of guys more capable than almost everyone in the US defense, but they are no good if they can't get to Greenland. Also, they are easily killed by US air power.

My understanding is that it is not nearly as clear cut if it's the US vs Denmark + Sweden + Finland + Norway (+ France) in Greenland.

Not that the US doesn't have the advantage, but it's not nearly as overwhelming as one would think at first blush.

At this stage - and earlier - the likely scenario would be an air drop against the few airports to take control and then fly in massive supplies.

My understanding is that this is not necessarily going to be trivial to do with the US's current arctic capable infantry if those airports are defended (see the defence of Hostomel airport for example) and perhaps further complicated if the runways are set up to be destroyed.

Furthermore, my understanding is that concentrating the accustomed air and naval power on Greenland is challenging especially in the winter months, even if there's no direct opposition. Rendering a carrier inoperational due to an inconvenient iceberg or black ice is a real risk, even if there aren't Swedish electric subs nearby trying to damage it.

Of course, a lot hinges on the degree to which Denmark's NATO allies would join the fight if fighting started. And of course there's the consideration of whether the conflict would spill outside of the Greenland theatre and how that risk shapes the conflict.

But the bottom line for me is that it's not as much of an at-will slam dunk for the US as I initially thought. There's a real risk of incurring significant costs. Certainly it seems to me that the calculation of the potential risk there contributed to taking the military option off the table in the US for the time being.

From that it follows (at least to my eyes) that if the US has a long term commitment to taking Greenland - and want to have ability to just take it militarily - then reasonable future steps for the US is to:

• Continue to build out and prove arctic capabilities
• Expand bases and personnel in Greenland to pre-establish beachheads and make them more immediately useful in case of an invasion.

... so that's what I'll be looking out for

[Tamas]

I assume it must come down to the level of surprise the US manages to achieve. Because I don't think you need artic fighting capability to blockade Greenland on the sea and in the air if you have America's power. But if the rest of the nordics can get in most of their artic forces to greenland before the attack, I could see that being a major blunder for the US.

[Jacob]

We're about to be fighting them so probably not.

He chickened out in attacking Greenland, he won't take on Canada. That being said he can still fuck us up economically.

IMO Trump and his clique are perfectly willing to use military force against Canada. The determining factor, I expect, is going to be how such a war supports or damages their ability to maintain power in the US.

If Trump et. al. were facing a close to certain loss of power (i.e. elections were looking to go badly and they thought ICE and the Supreme Court would not help them engineer an anti-democratic putsch) and they thought a war would Canada would allow them to escape certain defeat, then they'd do it in a heartbeat IMO.

That's not the scenario at the moment. It could change, though. In the meantime, they'll use the idea to bully us and to normalize the idea for when the time is right (if it ever is).

[Jacob]

I assume it must come down to the level of surprise the US manages to achieve. Because I don't think you need artic fighting capability to blockade Greenland on the sea and in the air if you have America's power. But if the rest of the nordics can get in most of their artic forces to greenland before the attack, I could see that being a major blunder for the US.

Yeah, which is why at this moment the calculation is probably "how certain are we that the 11th Airborne can take control of Greenlands airports against the current defenders" (as an aside, I understand that there's been a real increase in Greenlander volunteers for the military / civil defense).

The other question I have is how sustainable and effective US sorties and missile forces are from their current posture against dug in and dispersed defenders in Greenland.