Second ('Third') Trump Presidency Thread

thethe said:
Should send this note to Department of War - After we are done taking Greenland lets move right over.
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Fortunately, Ellesmere Island and Iceland can be invaded relatively easily from Greenland. The Svalbard archipelago is a bit more remote, but we got the muscle to go there too.
 
nsacpi said:
Iceland has always been an extremely important strategic chokepoint. The map you shared reinforced this. It also reinforces the importance of good relationships with Canada and the other Nordic countries. They are already very important and will likely grow in importance as the ice sheets melt.
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I’m glad you mentioned this. The rhetoric about Canada becoming the 51st state should be seen in a different light now. If Greenland ever wanted to be “independent” they would have to rely heavily on the US and Canada due to geography and logistics. Trump basically signaled to Canada that their sovereignty isn’t absolute with the 51st state stuff. Now the one country that’s probably more important than Denmark in the Greenland equation has that to think about. It’s leverage to support the US in this. Trump does this a lot, make outrageous statements and signals to shift the Overton Window far enough that he reach through it to grab what he actually wants. In this case, that’s the most strategic land in the world that isnt already controlled by a major power. China, Russia, or the US will control it, the only question is when. Trump is trying to strike while the acquisition cost is low enough that a war isn’t involved. I’m sure becoming a modern day Jefferson, Johnson, or Polk by adding significantly to US territory appeals to him as well.
 
Jaw said:
I’m glad you mentioned this. The rhetoric about Canada becoming the 51st state should be seen in a different light now. If Greenland ever wanted to be “independent” they would have to rely heavily on the US and Canada due to geography and logistics. Trump basically signaled to Canada that their sovereignty isn’t absolute with the 51st state stuff. Now the one country that’s probably more important than Denmark in the Greenland equation has that to think about. It’s leverage to support the US in this. Trump does this a lot, make outrageous statements and signals to shift the Overton Window far enough that he reach through it to grab what he actually wants. In this case, that’s the most strategic land in the world that isnt already controlled by a major power. China, Russia, or the US will control it, the only question is when. Trump is trying to strike while the acquisition cost is low enough that a war isn’t involved. I’m sure becoming a modern day Jefferson, Johnson, or Polk by adding significantly to US territory appeals to him as well.
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When Canada, Denmark, Norway and Iceland act like good allies we will know it will be due to the strategic genius of The Chosen One.
 
nsacpi said:
When Canada, Denmark, Norway and Iceland act like good allies we will know it will be due to the strategic genius of The Chosen One.
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These allies are equivalent to someone who wears a Braves baseball cap in Montana saying “we” when the Braves make a move or win a game. Maybe they were cheering, but they didn’t have anything to do with the outcome.
 
Jaw said:
These allies are equivalent to someone who wears a Braves baseball cap in Montana saying “we” when the Braves make a move or win a game. Maybe they were cheering, but they didn’t have anything to do with the outcome.
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Eh. That Braves fan swaps his Braves cap for a Rockies cap and it doesn't matter. Canada pulling out of NORAD and turning the facilities on their soil over to China is a different ballgame.
 
For those of you who think of allies as vassals without agency, I offer a little history:

1) The anti-NATO riots in Iceland in 1949. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_anti-NATO_riot_in_Iceland

2) The decision by the Seychelles to ask the Americans to leave the satellite tracking station they had built there.

The Indian Ocean Station (IOS) was a US Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN) tracking station that operated in the Seychelles islands from 1963 until 1996. The station was made up of several sites, including a technical site, a transmitter site, a receiver site, and a Commander's house. The technical site housed a 60-foot antenna for telemetry, tracking, and commanding for satellites. The station's closure in 1996 marked the end of an American military presence in Seychelles. Diplomatic relations were downgraded and the American embassy was not reopened until 2023. During this interval China stepped into the breech and was able to deepen its economic and diplomatic ties to the Seychelles.

3) The decision last year by the Ecuadorian people to vote down a plan by their president (who is close to Trump) to amend their constitution to allow them to host an American military installation.

https://theweek.com/politics/ecuador-noboa-military-bases

The results were a “significant defeat” for Noboa, a “conservative who is closely aligned with the Trump administration,” The Associated Press said. He recently gave Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a “tour of a military base along Ecuador’s coast that could possibly host U.S. troops.” Noboa said after casting his ballot Sunday that “international cooperation” was “the only way to dismantle” the “transnational criminal networks” that have turned Ecuador into a violence-plagued conduit of cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru.
 
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The Cold War was over in 1996 and our politicians were looking for ways to cut military expenses. It’s not like the US would have left if they wanted to stay. A similar tracking station in WNC near where I grew up was closed around the same time. It wasn’t because the mighty town of Rosman rose up to throw off the shackles of their imperialist overlords.

Unless the US had an Obama type of limp wrist in the Oval Office, Canadian plans to turn over NORAD to China would last as long as it takes for either a C5 Galaxy full of commandos or a few Tomahawk cruise missiles to arrive. That’s US infrastructure whether it’s publicly acknowledged or not.
 
I think Noboa's plan made a certain amount of sense for both Ecuador and the United States. It probably would have passed if the vote had been taken before we started extrajudicial executions on the open seas.
 
Jaw said:
The Cold War was over in 1996 and our politicians were looking for ways to cut military expenses. It’s not like the US would have left if they wanted to stay. A similar tracking station in WNC near where I grew up was closed around the same time. It wasn’t because the mighty town of Rosman rose up to throw off the shackles of their imperialist overlords.

Unless the US had an Obama type of limp wrist in the Oval Office, Canadian plans to turn over NORAD to China would last as long as it takes for either a C5 Galaxy full of commandos or a few Tomahawk cruise missiles to arrive. That’s US infrastructure whether it’s publicly acknowledged or not.
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And the British thought they could rule India forever.
 
Jaw said:
That’s just rationalization for grabbing Greenland.
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I'm not sure what that means. But we already have an example from 2025 of how Trump's heavy-handedness and violations of international norms and laws turned the Ecuadorian electorate against a plan that made a lot of sense for both the United States and Ecuador. But it only makes sense if you are dealing with a counterparty you can trust. And they were smart to realize that the United States is no longer in that category.
 
It means the goals of Europe are increasingly at odds with the good the of the United States, so continuing to guarantee the safety of such a strategic asset that we don’t control is self defeating.
 
Jaw said:
It means the goals of Europe are increasingly at odds with the good the of the United States, so continuing to guarantee the safety of such a strategic asset that we don’t control is self defeating.
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I think Denmark and the rest of Europe are fully aware that a guarantee from the United States is a meaningless thang. As are the voters of Ecuador. You have to be in a coma not to understand that.
 
nsacpi said:
I think Denmark and the rest of Europe are fully aware that a guarantee from the United States is a meaningless thang. As are the voters of Ecuador. You have to be in a coma not to understand that.
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The biggest difference in a current strategic protectorate, Taiwan, and Greenland is that Taiwan saw the China threat and didn’t feel safe. Greenland doesn’t yet see the threat and does feel safe. Greenland is tied to Denmark, Denmark is in NATO, the US will protect NATO because no one else in NATO can. That’s the reasoning.

So has it occurred to you that the guarantee of the US defending NATO being less ironclad may be a good thing?

The US has slowly been moving to more of a directed protectorate model anyway. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and several Pacific islands fall into this. The US provides them with security, with the understanding that they don’t upset the US too badly. They don’t sell things without the US okaying it, they don’t form alliances without US consent, several of them are obligated to pay much of the cost for US basing on their turf. A sugar daddy relationship. Eastern Europe is essentially going in the same direction. Western Europe knows it’s been running around on the sugar daddy and then claiming to have a headache when he’s in town. It won’t last. Greenland needs to be made aware of that, for our benefit and theirs.
 
Jaw said:
The biggest difference in a current strategic protectorate, Taiwan, and Greenland is that Taiwan saw the China threat and didn’t feel safe. Greenland doesn’t yet see the threat and does feel safe. Greenland is tied to Denmark, Denmark is in NATO, the US will protect NATO because no one else in NATO can. That’s the reasoning.

So has it occurred to you that the guarantee of the US defending NATO being less ironclad may be a good thing?

The US has slowly been moving to more of a directed protectorate model anyway. Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and several Pacific islands fall into this. The US provides them with security, with the understanding that they don’t upset the US too badly. They don’t sell things without the US okaying it, they don’t form alliances without US consent, several of them are obligated to pay much of the cost for US basing on their turf. A sugar daddy relationship. Eastern Europe is essentially going in the same direction. Western Europe knows it’s been running around on the sugar daddy and then claiming to have a headache when he’s in town. It won’t last. Greenland needs to be made aware of that, for our benefit and theirs.
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Yes. The clarity about the lack of reliability of the United States "guarantee" has some positive aspects to it. There are negative aspects as well to the perception we are an erratic and unreliable partner.
 
One important question I haven’t seen the “America is subsidizing Europe’s defense” crowd really be forced to defend is whether or not we actually need to do as much defense spending and world policing as we do. There’s this insistence that we spend on the defense of other nations and are thus owed something in return, but what exactly are we spending that money on?

Is the Russian army that is still struggling to take hold of one non-NATO country really about to take over Europe next week if we stop “subsidizing their defense” or are we just spending too much? Europe is not in our debt, we just decided that we will spend so much money on being the top dog that we took on the role of permanent protector. And over the past 50 years, there hasn’t been a ton of ROI on that spending as all we’ve managed to do is blow up some people in the Middle East.
 
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