Is anyone uncertain about the cost of invading a military ally to acquire more "vital" space?
The only language Trump and Putin speak is blunt power. (Except Trump also responds well to flattery. I doubt you'd get very far with Putin speaking that language.)
So it allows US to sap the resources of the adversary, making it even more expensive to hold Denmark. And that is ultimately the goal, because the more pain in the ass and expensive it is for Denmark to hold Greenland, the quicker there will be for pressure for Greenland to become independent.
And independence is only a hop, skip, and jump away from foreign influence; given that Greenland is indefensible without alliance and economically heavily subsidized.
That's valid for like 99% of countries on the planet so I'm not sure what signals it sends.
They could use the same logic to invade Germany tomorrow if they wanted, who's going to stop them anyways ?
And no, 99% of countries on the planet do not get 10-15k of outside subsidies per resident.
Also I think you are ignoring nuance on the importance of alliance; the population density and population is incredibly low and they are situated quite close to the US. The US has disproportionately strong-armed virtually every nation around it of similar size/strength; that's why central America and the Caribbean are chalk full of stories of US meddling. It's not similar to places like Brazil where an invasion of a world power would still cost an adversary a lot more than they bargain for in ground losses even without alliance even if the adversary would doubtlessly win a clear victory. They are far weaker at the negotiation table than, say, Germany, when in comes to foreign influence.
When you create a bluff pretending to be an enemy, do you still count as an ally?
While not 10-15k, the feds put ~5-8k [0,1,2] per-resident into Alaska, a remote territory the country intends to hold
[0] https://www.usaspending.gov/state/alaska/latest
[1] https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20250305/117980/HHRG...
[2] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-money-does-the-federal...
Considering we provide the same amount of benefits to all the citizens in our kingdom, the cost of sending a few extra soldiers up there to accommodate all the other EU troops coming up there... well... you wouldn't even notice it on our national budget. Hell, with how things are going with everyone looking to turn down their dependency on US tech, the Microsoft licenses savings in our public sector will be absolutely enormous.
There is massive public support for defending Greenland though. So I'm not sure cost will ever be an issue for us. Not that we realistically could defend Greenland if the US invaded.
The reality is this…Is choosing to challenge and not placate Trump control really worth risking losing $980B per year from the military budget designed to defend Europe from Russia? My guess is no.
As far as losing an ally goes... We already did that. EU is being diplomatic because we hope the USA comes to their senses, and because why wouldn't we? But internally everything is shifting away from US reliance because nobody actually belives USA would show up to protect Estonia if Russia invaded. So what our NATO allies are doing is sending troop to Greenland to make it very expensive for the US to attack it.
The deals that can be made are also sort of limited. Greenland is not ours to give away. The people of Greenland could democratically decide to leave the kingdom and enter some sort of deal with USA, and they might have, if they hadn't been threatened with invasion. Though it would frankly be unlikely considering they'd trade the Danish welfare and healthcare systems and workers rights for whatever the USA has.
My guess is a deal of some sort gets done.
What kind of deal do you imagine? The US already has full access to expand their military presense in Greenland. About the only thing they aren't allowed to do is place nuclear weapons there. Nobody is stopping American Companies from entering resource extraction there either.
> “it’s not ours to give but we will fight to not give it up” is a little odd.
There isn't a law which would allow Denmark to sell or give away Greenland, but of course we will come to the defense of a NATO member if they are attacked, we've done so before.
If Greenland decides to leave our Kingdom and enter a deal then they can do so.
> That is far more costly to Europe and NATO than to the US.
I'm not convinced. The EU doesn't want to play world police, so we need NATO for defense. We've been very reliant on US companies for this, but every European nation has been building up the EU defense industry and have been avoiding making US purchases for a year.
I don't think anyone in the EU ever wanted a bad relationship with USA. We owe USA a lot for it's role in the post WWII world and up until Trump, but it's not like we're destroying the friendship.
No idea, but Greenland fits in this renewal of the Monroe Doctrine, so my guess is something sort of deal where US has more influence there than it does now, perhaps as a protectorate, but falls short of all the “51st state” rhetoric, which is obvious Trump bloviating to press people to the table and to a deal. Just consider all the tariff back and forths and ups and downs.
> There isn't a law which would allow Denmark to sell or give away Greenland, but of course we will come to the defense of a NATO member if they are attacked, we've done so before.
Except…Greenland is not a member of NATO. Which is probably one of the reasons considering its strategic arctic location and interest to Russia/China that Trump is interested in it. It sits squarely in the Monroe Doctrine area of interest. If Russia were to invade, some NaTO countries may decide to stay out and could according to the treaty.
> but every European nation has been building up the EU defense industry and have been avoiding making US purchases for a year
Which is good, but can you honestly say that in 2026 Europe could economically handle a Russian aggression into a NATO state without the US? It’s important to keep NATO together for Europe’s sake until Europe no longer needs the US for its defense. I don’t think you are there yet.
Greenland is a member of NATO because it's part of the Kingdom of Denmark, the same way they are a mebmer of the EU.
> so my guess is something sort of deal where US has more influence there than it does now, perhaps as a protectorate, but falls short of all the “51st state” rhetoric.
I think Greenland will end up either being an unincorporated territory of USA or entering into a compact of free association with the US. Whether or not it'll be the end of NATO depends on how patient Trump is.
It won't be through a deal with Denmark though, but I guess we can call that semantics. I do think my own politicians are sort of hoping they can avoid "losing" Greenland by giving away the remaining restrictions on what the US military can do in Greenland, but I doubt they will succeed with that.
> I don’t think you are there yet.
I agree. In some ways Trump being the way he is, has been healthy for Europe. I'm personally more worried about tech. Most of my applications on my smartphone wouldn't work without either the Apple store or Google Play. It's sort of silly to have a national digital ID that I can't run on GrapheneOS after all, I do have the physical key thing though, but you get the point.
With our public sector dependence on Microsoft and to some degree Amazon, Trump could frankly order a complete shutdown of our entire society by telling Azure and AWS to shut down everything in Denmark.
"Donald Trump Says He Wants 'Ownership' of Greenland Because It's 'Psychologically Important for Me'"
He’a a rapist and does not take no for an answer. That’s it. That’s *really* it. It’s yet another score to be settled from his first term in office. Same with his Nobel Prize fixation.
I think a lot of people are having a really hard time grappling with the fact that the leader of a superpower is a literal maniac.
What does it take? Donald Trump asked NATO to help us invade and take Greenland. The Euros that met with him said 'it's time to take up drinking' after the meeting.
What line is too far for you? This is our President doing this stuff, you act like it's some stupid kid off on the sidelines.
Before you argue some BS, the USA has WAY LESS soldiers stationed in Greenland than we did during the cold war. It isn't a serious concern, and if it was, we could...staff to the levels we previously did and that were welcome to be in Greenland.
It often makes more sense to view Trump's behaviour as him being a Putin plant to destroy the USA and weaken Europe. I'd guess that Putin has a lot of incriminating evidence of Trump being involved in dubious sexual acts.
But the US already had excellent relations with Denmark and could probably have gotten mining rights or whatever they wanted without this weird display of power.
The huge downside to that would be it would quickly demonstrate how incredibly expensive, slow and uncertain such mining operations would be.
I must conclude the annexation of Greenland is mostly a play for the US domestic audience. Very similar to Russia - Ukraine. Maybe a way to put pressure on Canada too.
A number of my Canadian friends are of the opinion that if the US takes Greenland, Canada will be the next acquisition target. I really, really wish I could argue against that notion.
- There are only 57k people Greenland. A portion (6%) of which are already friendly to the idea of joining the US, the undecideds are 9%.
- How many converts to the deal would you get if you actually dangled a $100k per person lump sum (Literally this is a tenth of what the federal government claims it has saved closing USAID)? I assume a few. Maybe quite a few. Add to that an Alaska style ongoing PFD that paid out annually. That’s a tasty carrot.
No takers to the deal? Wild, ok though…so we fight instead of fattening the bank accounts. How many will be willing to pull a trigger and risk certain death if they do? Let’s be generous and call it a third of the population (basically half of the hardliners).
But…realize that only 65% of the population are between 13 and 65. So you are talking about maybe 12k people who might be willing and could effectively take up arms. Bear in mind due to disperse population centers…the largest single concentration of resistance would be about 5k people. Let’s go ahead and add in the entire Danish active duty military (17k people).
29k people with 40% of them being civilians with minimal training…against the might of the US military. That seems like terrible odds.
But what about NATO? NATO is pragmatic. It’s highly likely that every other NATO member would decide to just stay out of the conflict because they would rather have a NATO with the US and without Denmark than the other way around.
I'm not so sure about that. The US has successfully alienated pretty much everybody that used to think well of us. We now represent a threat to them. We have lost a huge amount of goodwill and respect. Why would they prefer us over Denmark? Because we have big guns that we're willing to use against them? That's all the more reason to distance themselves from us.
Would you want essentially your continent’s defense budget reduced by two thirds?
The US is being overtly hostile, though. We're even threatening nations who should be allies with military invasion. Who would look at that behavior and think "yeah, but they'll behave differently once they pay us?"
> allows the US access to your land for defense purposes
We already had that with Greenland without threatening them with violence or taking their country.
> Bring in some companies to harvest your mineral resources and enjoy the wealth
This is a thing that they could already do if they wished it. As of yet, they don't wish it.
When a bully is threatening you, the very worst thing you can do is to give in to the bully. Even if the bully would totally win in a fight. I suspect most nations understand this.
Agreed in principle, but in this case there are two bullies to worry about which changes that equation.
You can choose to align with the bigger tougher bully who is periodically reasonable, has a lot of shared values, and generally has been historically friendly to you. They only occasionally get grumpy and have to be placated. This alignment has, can, and will protect against the other bully.
Or…you can chose to not align with them because they went and got grumpy again and the consequence of that is they will just ignore you when the other bully comes calling to kick your ass.
Factor in that you can’t align with the other bully at all because they have never ever been friendly or reasonable to you. They also don’t have hardly any shared values. They cant protect you from the other bigger tougher bully anyway. So its a moot point.
At the end of the day you are faced with a sort of global political version of Pascal’s Wager.
But we didn't just "get grumpy again". We've been actively telling and showing our allies that we're their enemy. That they have another enemy as well is certainly a factor, but it doesn't mean that they will treat us as if we're their allies. We're in the process of burning that bridge, and they can reasonably expect that if they submit to us, they won't come out well for it.
What it means is that they have to distance themselves from us as much as they can. And it shows the nations that would otherwise be friendly to us and that we aren't currently targeting that they need to do the same as well.
In my opinion that is an exaggeration. Trump has certainly been pressing US interests (as he sees them) and sometimes those interests may not fully align with what some of our allies want. Conversely, sometimes that happens in reverse too, yet we tend to work things out in the end. This will too.
> What it means is that they have to distance themselves from us as much as they can.
Another way of saying that would be “they need to stop being dependent on the US as much as they can.” I am sure any sovereign state would really want that as a goal.
Also, it's spending rather than funding.
Some NATO member states until recently were actively avoiding meeting their defense spending commitments as agreed to in the treaty. Would that indicate that they were untrustworthy or unreliable?
> Also, it's spending rather than funding.
Care to explain the difference when it comes to being ready to fight a war?
Regarding spending vs funding as it relates to war, I would seriously like you to try and explain the distinction. I don’t think you can.
So your analogy should probably be rewritten to be more like A guy who says he might shit on the floor vs the guy with skid marks in his drawers”
Clearly US spending is not part of Europe's defense budget, if attacking Denmark is on the menu.
I can buy that Greenland valuable to the US for geopolitical reasons. I can't understand what about the status quo of "we get to put our military here, and our close ally Denmark can run the civilian stuff" was so terrible that we needed to undermine our allies' and enemies' confidence in us to seize it.
They will let GI freeze to death in a vehicle stuck in the ice after sabotaging the roads. The Arctic climate is more deadly than any automatic rifle.
Militarily occupying Greenland seems even more foolish than occupying Vietnam or Afghanistan.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/denmark-greenland-face-...
You go to the King, the King does not go to you. The party that travels is the weaker one. Maybe that's childish but it is the standard power play even in daily life and business.
As for how this is seen internally for Danes, at least in my part of the world the US admin has already achieved crackhead with a knife status. I suspect that trying the dog whisperer shtick (like Mamdani) will not be seen negatively.
Indeed, there would likely be a great deal of backlash in the military itself.
This is not what Americans want. It cannot even be said that those who voted for Our National Embarrassment want this, because He Who Shall Not Be Named ran on an isolationist, xenophobic platform that pledged "no new wars" and that he would be the "president of peace".
Would it? Only if by protest you mean doing some moaning on Twitter and Reddit, then scrolling to the next post.
It's clear that Stephen Miller in all of his fascist eggheaded brain thinks that he can just do a real quick annexation and is one of the key people pushing for this. But I don't think any of them are prepared for the fallout.
It's clear that Trump acts alone in foreign policy - formal channels and structures can barely check him. However, informal resistance still appears to exist. Trump apparently still takes into account the vibes of the people he surrounds himself with into account. In a haphazard way yes, but it's clear that Trump can be swayed to some degree by those around him.
The Trump administration is not a unified bloc, and there are likely many elements that see annexing Greenland as ridiculous. However, if they lost access, then they would be forced to concede that there was something actually valuable to gain.
Months ago, the US was an ally of Denmark and Greenland. Greenland allowed an ally to have their military stationed there, because it served both (through NATO).
From one day to the other, the US behave like an enemy. And the US behave erratically. So NATO still exists on the paper because the US haven't invaded anyone yet, but the US are behaving like enemies and threaten to invade.
Seems more than rational, from the point of view of the rest of NATO, to prepare for an invasion, but at the same time hope that NATO still exists and that the US are not actually an enemy (probably not an ally anymore, but "partner" is better than "enemy").
Or am I missing something?
Censorship in HN came to a point that can't be ignored anymore.
It is ok to post an article saying Trump will send troops to Greenland, but a post saying Denmark will send troops defend Greenland is flagged?
It's ridiculous.
The majority of Greenlanders want independence. That percentage would possibly increase if they knew that they had solid support for statehood with good security agreements and trade agreements from the US.
Strong pressure on Denmark from the US would likely get Greenland their independence. If Greenlanders want it, then many Danes would feel obligated to give it to them. US pressure would help turn that into reality.
Once Greenland is independent, then those trade & security agreements mentioned would provide the US with the minerals or whatever it's truly after.
In the abstract, yes. In the specifics, maybe not so much:
> A poll in 2016 showed that there was a clear majority (64%) for full independence among the Greenlandic people,[25] but a poll in 2017 showed that there was a clear opposition (78%) if it meant a fall in living standards.
Greenland gets about 700m/year subvention, so about 15k per capita. Without that it would be very serious trouble, making actual independence (vs self-rule, which it largely already has) difficult. Realistically it's difficult for such a small country to be truly independent.
Peter Thiel backed Praxis, a startup that envisions building a semi-autonomous, low-regulation "network city" in Greenland. The vision is led by Praxis co-founder Dryden Brown, who sees Greenland as an ideal testing ground for a future Mars colony. Praxis has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, however, the proposal faces significant opposition from unexpectedly Greenlandic and Danish politicians.
And then there's this: Ibtimes reports that MAGA Supporters Urge Barron Trump to Marry Princess of Denmark and Claim Greenland as Dowry
MAGA wants Barron Trump to marry Princess Isabella of Denmark to claim Greenland
mooreds•3w ago