Second ('Third') Trump Presidency Thread
- Thread starter thethe
- Start date
I don’t know why this is so hard for you to understand: the primary objection to all this is that we are looking to acquire land that the sovereign nations that control that land do not want to sell to us. If we assume this is going to deter Trump, then life is grand. If we assume this won’t deter Trump (a position you yourself have taken) then we would be *checks notes* using sanctions and/or military encroachment in order to take sovereign land and hoping those allies don’t think ahead to what happens if we are allowed to do that without consequence.
This reads as a defense of military encroachment into Europe.
It should be noted that using aggression to combat hypothetical aggression might go poorly for us diplomatically.
It’s actually incredible to me that it took such a little amount of time for Trump to convince you that taking sovereign land from our allies is all common sense governance and that anybody who disagrees is a woke leftist. I naively thought the line wasn’t quite this far.
I don’t mean to tell you that you’ve not been interested in acquiring Greenland. But the President-elect of the United States of America is openly musing that we will get land that is not ours and that Denmark and Greenland have a duty to make that happen, and has declined to rule out taking it by force. You and many others like you, have now taken the position that we have a claim to that land because it is in our best interest. But the rest of the world that isn’t the United States or China always needs to be cognizant of their own best interest. I simply do not see how you can justify a military or economic response even being on the table to acquire land when China is acquiring resources through investment rather than force. At what point does the rest of the world stop accepting we’re on the right side of this divide if we transition from diplomacy to might?
So climate change is fundamentally changing the world and making the glaciers melt which will lead to new shipping routes, and if we don’t act fast, the very militarized China and Russia will take control of this emerging route through force, and Trump is merely smartly protecting us against these things using his extra special big business brain.
Absolutely none of this is an argument for what we should do if Denmark and Panama tell us their land isn’t for sale.
I simply don’t know how to find any shred of common ground with this worldview. It is quite literally *exactly* the type of extreme authoritarian view you’ve taken offense to Trump and MAGA being accused of for the past decade. Growing the American Empire regardless of what our peaceful allies say is a line that I’m just incredulous you’re actually willing to cross and think you’re morally justified.
The moral justification is that we are stopping literal bad actors but since you are mostly anti-american you don't see it that way.
A country like Denmark owning Greenland makes no sense and the people of Greenland seem to be aligned with that.
You would have been against any territorial expansion of America in its history. Heck - you probably still think this land should belong to the indigenous people.
News flash - Territorial lines change. Just like Russia will get large swaths of eastern Ukraine because your preferred political party is a bunch of hacks.
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zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
Greenland doesn't want to be a part of America.
Greenland and their PM already are open to it and Trump hasn't even been sworn in.
It appears they won't want to be part of Denmark either.
So a protectorate is fine as long as we get authority on shipping routes and mineral excavation (with profits going to the people of Greenland of course).
My objection is if Greenland and Panama are not on board with the plan, your stated position is that it’s okay for the United States to use force. That would be the action of a bad actor.
They won't have the deal on the table when its China holding them at gunpoint.
Territories change - Just because this is the 'present' doesn't change that fact at all.
In a 100 years Trumps acquisition of Greenland/Panama Canal will be looked at in the same way of the Lousiana purchase and Alaska.