nuclear umbrella would be a choice between Russia (practically impossible)

Let's say the Russia/Ukraine war is over. Russia mends its ties with Europe and says it will be good from now on. The US is ready to annex Greenland. Denmark is powerless and will lose Greenland. Russia calls Denmark and says it can help. If you're Denmark, what would you do?

Build then pull. Or don’t. It’s a treaty from a falling world order.

> quite possibly giving a state like the US pretext to annex Greenland

If you believe America would wait for pretext, you don’t need the umbrella.

Also, Denmark should now kick the US Military Sites off Greenland until the US climbs out if its psychotic break.

Mad rulers are also quite normal for much of human history, the theory was that Democracy would relieve us of that particular problem.

The liberation of Europe owes more to the Soviet Union than the USA, perhaps the current situation there foretells where we are heading with the USA?

Unfortunately the US has a strange system in which the most populous and economically vital parts of the country have the least influence in Washington...

Much of what Trump officially destroyed should never have been built in the first place. Most of the damage he has wrought is not from his actual platform, but from his sheer stupidity. Covid and Russia both come to mind immediately, but also the irreparable harm he has done to the ~century-old carefully crafted global illusion of American legitimacy. As far as we can tell, he doesn’t read, including without limitation the daily intelligence briefing. There is no way to act strategically if you don’t avail yourself of all of the relevant information or you purge the administration of the messengers of news you don’t like.

As we know, stupidity is far more harmful to society than malice, as malice is at least zero-sum: someone gains when you lose.

Stupid people through their actions simply harm everyone, themselves included.

Think of what an improvement it would be (over Trump) to have someone hyperintelligent as POTUS, but with the exact same platform. It would be bad, but not the catastrophe that Trump has wrought by being a moron who can’t think more than 15 minutes in advance and fundamentally doesn’t seem to understand the concept of strategy.

If there had been an armed conflict outside the Capitol on Jan 6 between pro and anti Trump citizen groups, American democracy would have been better served.

Meet strength with strength. Some progressives forgot that.

  If Trump expires, Vance will take the helm.

Some of the things Trump has done—like tariffs—I actually agree with.

Sometimes you need to do stuff out of left field to break out of a rut.

But the purging of good civil servants is what enables Trump. And many of his voters fervently believe these civil servants are “the swamp”.

> I doubt they voted for _this_.

They most certainly did.

First, they love the retention of the tax cuts and the OBBB.

Second, they were repulsed by most/all things that liberals embraced: DEI, language police, gender topics, loose immigration policy, an obviously over the hill Biden, perceived weakness abroad (Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel/Gaza), etc.

> They voted for a vague promise of a better life through some cool sounding measures, at the time.

Ehhh… I don’t think so. They wanted tax cuts and anything that was the opposite of liberal social policy. They got it.

As for the people who didn’t vote, I’m not sure anything has changed that would get them out to vote for an opponent to Trump (Biden, Kamala, or whoever other milquetoast candidate lined up).

> Now that people are starting to realize the demon they have given full power to, I doubt he would win another (unrigged) election.

I think he wins by more if the election is tomorrow.

Large swathes of the monied classes in the US are largely ok with the direction things are going.

Tariffs, harassment of immigrants, neutering the federal government, and chaotic diplomacy just seem like unfortunate collateral damage to them.

Imho, the US is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. If the Dems or some other group don’t approach 2028 accordingly, they may be watching from the sidelines again for who knows how many more years.

Many people said the same thing between 2017 and 2021.

But Denmark isn't the one that should be complaining about their ill-gotten loot being taken from them.

There is also no german leadership. Germany does not want to lead - it has enough of own problems and it is not like external affairs count that much in german politics, as a usual deflection tactic.

Regarding fiscal politics - current administration is willing to make big debts, so it should not be an issue.

> The US has spent decades preventing and delaying the EU becoming a defacto state

> I am just saying trump is driving [pressure for EU armed forces]

So which is it, is US stopping EU from federalizing, or accelerating it?

The best possible reading is, before Trump US was stopping, now it's accelerating, but that's what I asked - what's your source / data / facts / circumstantial evidence that US used to try to prevent / delay EU federalizing?

I don't see it, or if there was, it was completely in-consequential, because there was enough hesitancy within EU already.