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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24374 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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I mean, totally see your point, but there's nothing really comparable here.

If anything the closer parallel would be the Nordstream 2 bombing.

Even without Ukraine, there is the following:

  • Punitive tariffs.
  • Threatening the invasion of Greenland.
  • Invading Iran without first discussing with the EU nations, causing economic damage and chaos without even giving them a chance to prepare.
  • Having it in the national security strategy that they want to create regime change in Europe.

You can see how these points might come off like a betrayal of sorts, right? And this took me like 10 minutes to think of. I am sure there is more stuff that I am forgetting about.

Threatening the invasion of Greenland.

Again, completely blown out of proportion. They wanted to buy it, the talk of invasion was media and politicians hyperventilating.

Invading Iran without first discussing with the EU nations, causing economic damage and chaos without even giving them a chance to prepare.

A bit of a dick move, but hardly comparable. The war didn't sabotage some bespoke diplomacy Europe was trying to get done, and the US does not depend on European aid the way Israel does on the US.

Having it in the national security strategy that they want to create regime change in Europe.

Europe has literally censored American speech in order to influence US elections, tried to prevent an interview with the current president taking place on an internet platform, and sent activists to help campaign for his opponent.

Again, completely blown out of proportion. They wanted to buy it, the talk of invasion was media and politicians hyperventilating.

It is always interesting to me that two people can see the same event unfold and come to wildly different conclusions. As far as I can tell, Trump clearly indicated he would take Greenland by force if necessary, and only backed down because several NATO countries showed support for Denmark. Had they not done that, had Denmark stood alone, no alliance would have kept the American military from waltzing in and taking the island.

That interpretation makes no sense to me. Denmark would have as much luck holding Greenland without NATO backing as with it, if Trump actually wanted to take it by force. You can also compare that situation to cases where he actually did use force, like Venezuela and Iran, and see there's essentially no overlap.

It was horrible diplomacy, and there's lots to criticize there, but acting like the invasion was imminent and it was repelled by the resolve of Europeans bravely standing together is cartoonish propaganda.

Trump pushes and sees if he gets pushback. I think the likelihood of taking by force was low - maybe 10% - but NATO sending troops moved it from 'yeah, could be easy, could be fun' to 'going to be a headache'.

I think 0.01% probably more reflective

Obviously, no military in the world could prevent a determined US from taking Greenland. The cost however, of taking it by force changed massively for the US. The threat of sanctions from a combined EU + potential war with the other NATO countries made Trump see military action as no longer worth it.

Yeah, and the consequence of the US and Ukraine blowing up Nordstream 2 was that Germany did…absolutely nothing, cozied up to Trump, increased their contributions toward the NATO target and sent more money to Ukraine.

Did some amazing new investigation happen that I missed? We don't definitively know who bombed Nord Stream. Even on Wikipedia there's not a hint of evidence that the US was involved (and Wikipedia will never miss the chance to skew an article against America). Don't try to sneak propaganda through by presenting it as common knowledge.

Yes, Der Spiegel did a very in-depth story on how Ukraine did it, which seemed to at least pass the sniff-test.

Thanks for the article. There does seem to be good evidence that Ukraine did it. But this topic was discussing US-Europe relations, and again, there's nothing in the article that suggests that the US was involved. (Your link mentions the Seymour Hersh article that @peanutgallery linked, but only as a half-baked conspiracy theory.)

As regards the that topic, Spiegel did a follow-up suggesting that the US had some forewarning of the attack but ultimately was not involved in supporting the Ukrainian operation.

It seems plausible at the minimum that the US is not being forthright, but one might actually see that as being in solidarity with Germany, which itself has, as far as I know, declined to officially point fingers.

The American establishment media reporting of yesteryear went beyond 'the US had some forewarning of the attack' and went to 'the US forewarned Germany of the attack.'

Doesn't really seem fair to point fingers at the US, if that's true, then.

I don't believe the German government establishment ever has.

It's been much more of the tankie 'I don't believe anything that exonerates the US' / pro-Russian 'I won't admit the Ukrainians could have done that' camps that have maintained the conspiracy theory in the political fringes of Europe.

We also had a NYT expose right before the Germans announced, iirc.

There was an article three years ago by a famous journalist Seymour Hersh three years ago (https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/world-int/22973-us-and-norway-blew-up-the-nord-stream-pipelines-seymour-hersh.html). Of course, he was dragged through the mud for it and it's all circumstantial evidence, and I guess the story got buried if it's not in wikipedia, but there are tons of people who don't believe the US government version of the story.

Ah, yes, the 'so sensitive we won't tell the US military because they're overseen by Congress, so we'll tell other parts of the US military that are also overseen by Congress, and they'll tell foreign partners who need to tell their Congress-equivalent' theory.

Also had some novel theories on how air-dropped torpedoes worked, and a cartoonish fixation on avoiding simple solutions.

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