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Here is the list of the topic of top level posts in this thread since the viral ICE shooting.
Seven out of Eleven posts and they're by far the largest threads. It's probably too late at this point but I'd like to suggest that in the future mods should exercise some judgement and make a megathread on events like this that are likely to generate a ton of back and forth discussion with an expectation of new information coming out over the course of days/weeks. Both because it is more convenient for the reader to be able to check a dedicated thread and because it makes it much easier to find the more general discussion for those of us who find the interesting angles of the subject to have already basically been exhausted.
Are we thinking Greenland is really going to happen? This was one of the "just Trump being Trump" notions I dismissed, but he seems to be making noises like he's semi-demi-serious, and the EU seems to be taking it seriously.
I don't know whether to laugh or be terrified about it; is this the US attempt to finally technically qualify for Eurovision? Though it seems that they are currently ineligible, alas!
He's serious about wanting it, not serious about taking it by force from Denmark.
It's not that reassuring though. The EU ought to put troops from multiple countries there to create some sense of jeopardy for the US that it might not be a totally bloodless operation, even if they can't realistically stay to fight.
They could put troops in Nuuk and a few other Inuit towns, but the US would just ignore it. The navy can just show up to any spot on the hundreds of miles of uninhabited coastline and start building whatever facilities they want. I suspect that this is the agreement that will eventually be reached. The inhabitants of Greenland will continue to be under the dominion of Denmark, but the United States will have free reign over all currently uninhabited territory.
If Trump just wants extra military bases, he only had to ask.
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This leaves us with the question of what the point of the entire drama is if the goal is simply to establish more US bases in Greenland, since the US can already do that under existing agreements with Denmark. Is Trump so thug-brained that he needs to see such actions as taking something rather than exercising a pre-existing option?
No, Trump wants to be able to say the US owns Greenland, and his reasons for wanting that are almost certainly incredibly stupid and thug-brained.
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That's both never going to happen and would do the opposite of deterring Trump if he really wanted to do it.
I think it is actually very likely to happen under the guise (?) of saying the troops are there to repel China and Russia, and thus assuage Trump's stated concerns about the island being seized.
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