functor
4d ago
European countries can defend themselves. During the cold war even mid tier European countries had hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Russia does not want to restore the iron curtain and retake East Berlin either. What this is the end of is European countries being a joke in terms of our militaries.
Trump is American and is responsible for the US. Reaching the conclusion that the US shouldn't spend hundreds of billions subsidizing European defence does not require Russian meddling.
functor
4d ago
Does the US actually want to defend Denmark? The idea could be to take the important and profitable parts of Europe and then let Europe manage its own defence.
Defending mainland Denmark, Estonia, Sweden and Ukraine is too expensive and risks nuclear war. Having a sanding army ready to fight off the Russians is simply not worth it for the US.
Defending Greenland without being forced to defend mainland Denmark is a far more attractive option.
functor
4d ago
Also to Trump personally I think there’s probably a legacy interest of being the first President in 150 years to make a major territorial acquisition for the United States.
Would that even be a positive? 50 000 inuits who barely speak english who live 6000 km from LA and have few common interests. The US is unruly because of its size and diversity already. The US should if anything be divided up, not expanded to handling Venezuela and Greenland.
functor
4d ago
And Trump took in Bolton, Rubio and other neo-cons despite running on America first.
functor
4d ago
Some of the largest demonstrations in the world were when Bush invaded Iraq. Anti Vietnam demonstrations defined a generation. US foreign policy has always been a disaster in terms of PR.
With that said I do agree that threatening Greenland is a new low.
functor
4d ago
This is reminiscent of the Obama era.
Obama campaigned on a paradigm shift from Bush and the forever wars in the middle east. The reality was a surge in Afghanistan, a dirty war in Syria and the destruction of Libya. Most likely Obama was genuine and did not want Dick Cheney style interventionism in 2008. Once he took power the party establishment made sure medical insurance companies could continue to enrich themselves and the military industrial complex kept marching on. By 2011 Obama had his groyper moment with occupy wall street.
Trump was probably genuine with MAGA. Then he got captured by the mainstream republican establishment and he is now going to blow up the deficit with more spending on the military industrial complex. He is going to go all in on big brother government with palantir and integrate 30 million Venezuelans into the US empire.
It will be interesting to see if we get a right wing occupy movement. Occupy was neutered by the great awokening and by shifting the focus from real issues to distractions. Unfortunately it wouldn't surprise me if the Maga base get distracted in a similar fashion.
If Americans actually cared about Iranians they would stop trying to turn Iran into Syria. Relieve the sanctions, stop trying to steal the oil and work for peace. Another fiasco regime change war that will flood Europe with migrants and that will wreck Iran is the worst possible outcome.
In hindsight the policy of arming jihadists while trying to sanction every aspect of the Syrian economy ended in a genocide of Syria's christian population and Europe getting flooded by migrants. If anything the west should prop up stable regimes in the middle east. Wasting another trillion trying to occupy a country in the middle east so they can get DEI would be a disastrous policy.
The recent fiasco in Yemen failed because bombing doesn't win wars. The newly installed jihadist in Syria barely controls the country. The Iraq war was a complete fiasco as well as Afghanistan. How many failures does it take before the neocons stop?
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