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It still blows my mind that European NATO countries can do things like "miss NATO spending goals and fall behind on military readiness for years despite years of increasingly pointed US signals that there will be consequences for this" or "make preparations to literally give away territory that is crucial to American defense preparedness" and then act as if Trump arrived ex nihilo and his actions have zero context and make no sense besides a wanton betrayal for no reason.
But they had already started ramping up spending before Trump's election and were continuing to do it after he was elected. That's the point - yes, Europe has been failing in several aspects, but it's been in the process of improving on those, and the result has been a continuous stream of piss on the face by the Trump admin nevertheless.
The Chagos Islands? That's the UK specifically, it's not within the purview of (other) NATO (countries) to intervene in this affair. Why take out complaints with the UK on Denmark?
For better or for worse, I think that Trump's first term probably did a lot to set the mutual opinions of Trump and the Europeans. And in Trump's first term, the number of NATO allies meeting the 2% GDP benchmark doubled, which sounds great until you realize it was from 4 to 8. Then there was a regression in the Biden-era. The numbers really didn't improve dramatically until 2024 and 2025. So while it's true that Europe has been in the process of improving, it seems pretty clear that it took a literal invasion of a European country to get that going.
NATO spending, of course, is far from the only complaint the USA has with European NATO countries; whether it's cracking down on free speech or installing Chinese telecomms or what have you.
You can counter with various things that the US of A did, such as Gitmo - that's entirely fair, but my point is that Trump didn't emerge out of a vacuum. And frankly if the Europeans have a lot of issues with the US of A, and the US of A has a lot of issues with Europeans, a split seems pretty natural. But whenever Trump suggests this, some people treat it like a massive stab-in-the-back for no reason, despite it being a pretty natural development.
No, Denmark agreed to let Greenland secede, which throws existing NATO security arrangements up in the air if it's followed through on. It's very natural for the US of A to want to acquire Greenland under the circumstances.
Obviously the Chagos deal is also non-ideal for the US.
The Chagos deal was pushed by the US deep state during the Biden administration. That is perfectly compatible with the idea that the deal is non-ideal for the US, but not with the idea that it is a shocking betrayal of the US by the UK.
Perhaps it's a shocking betrayal of the US by the US!
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So what? The point is that Europe is doing what the US claims it wants Europe to do and the result is, well, all the things that Trump has done.
I'm all for Europe distancing from US and developing independent capabilities, and have been so even before Trump, but it's also obvious that you can't just achieve a neat split where both commit to doing their own thing without the other - the recent events have made clear that whatever US does globally will in any case have a huge impact on Europe (and what Europe does of course also has some impact on the US).
Regarding Greenland, it's odd to argue for Greenlandic independence aims (without anything concrete about the details vis-a-vis relations to the Western alliance, or anything else really, on the table), considering that Trump admin itself attempted to present itself as some sort of an opponent of Danish colonialism on the island and what have you.
Press conferences and speeches?
Almost any sovereign nation-state can do things that have a huge impact elsewhere; it does not follow then that all nation-states must be part of a military alliance.
I actually do tend to favor either NATO-but-with-division-of-labor or a slow, coordinated split, but the mere fact that Europe and the US impact each other isn't necessarily an argument for NATO, and it certainly isn't an argument that NATO is necessary.
I am not sure what argument you're making here. Certainly it seems quite plausible that the US would be a better colonial overlord (or partner, or whichever term you prefer) than the Danish, so I don't see anything particularly odd about the argument. That's different from saying the argument is convincing - the devil is in the details, and the people of Greenland would be ill-advised to simply jump ship without looking before they leap.
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