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But that's nonsense, Denmark knows what the danger is - this territory is far from Denmark and they can't defend it having a whole military as big as one army division (not to talk about the means to sustain long-distance military campaign ). US, OTOH, has the means and the desire to defend it. But they want some goodies for it. Trump wanted to buy the territory wholesale because it sounds cool. But the second best is to get the same benefits of the sovereignty - freedom of movement, freedom of military deployment, freedom of exclusion of others, freedom to mine the resources - without paying any money at all, but Denmark gets to keep the nominal title. The danger is being forced into the same deal by somebody like China - maybe not now, but in 10-15 years - who gives much less attention to European sensibilities than the US does.
Could Trump do it by "asking nicely" - i.e. doing the same in secret rather than in public? Yes, he could, but then he wouldn't be Trump. As I noted here many, many times, the "long time allies" aren't that much of an allies anymore, and become less of an allies every day, so not much loss. Maybe this particular show wasn't, strictly speaking, necessary, but not much lost here.
I actually don't think he could.
And the reason for that is specifically to force a response from the public- if it was back-channeled, then it could simply be "we'll think about it" until he's out of office.
But once you involve the electorate and force that question into the public sphere, that's a different question entirely. And in this case, with respect to "well, are you going to war over this or or not?"... the majority of the voting public enjoys the tax break they get from not
paying their young menfunding their military properly; either way, the US wins.It's not lost on me that this is some of what a settlement with Canada would likely involve (for the same issues apply to it as well), and the fact the US can pull this off does undermine its "we'll just run to Europe" strategy somewhat (did Denmark actually defect from the EU here?). Claim associate membership all you like, they won't do fuck all to defend you.
Well, refusing to pay your workers properly has costs. If old women refuse to realize that if they want sovereignty, they have to take the hit and pay for young men to do it, this is what it costs. Too bad they're unable to pay them- they spent all that money on collecting all those migrants. Moral causes aren't free.
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