Thank God for the French. I long thought their strong Gaullist stance on sovereignty was a bit silly in today's world, but turns out they were right along.
Europe can't trust any outside powers. Any external dependency can and will be used against us. We used to be wide-eyed believers in international corporation and global alliances, but those are, as it turns out, always a risk and a liability.
I sure as hell am glad the French kept being stubborn enough to build most capabilities in-house, so now we have our own nuclear deterrent, aircraft carrier and fighter jet programs. Imagine if we had gone all-in on American weapons tech! They'd have us, excuse my French, by the balls!
There is very good reasons why De Gaulle was always a bit doubtful about American military protection and why post-war France put a strong emphasis on military sovereignty.
That has nothing to do with any French stubbornness or a so called French anti-American feeling.
The main reason is that De Gaulle experienced the fact American leadership can be untrustworthy first hand.
When he was the leader of the exiled French force during the 40s, Churchill supported him.
Meaningwhile Roosevelt refused to give him any support and actively acted to make him replaced by a puppet, General Giraud. Mainly because it was better aligned with American interests to setup a puppet state in France on the longer term.
The situation changed only later when it became pretty obvious that Giraud was antisemite, an openly nazi collaborationist and a pretty poor politician.
Only then, America started to support De Gaulle officially. Initially only indirectly through the relation between De Gaulle and Eisenhower.
Never trust america unless our last option is the one you want. Otherwise, let us stubbornly do it wrong until we come around.
This is why France went with its own nuclear deterrent, among other things.
The final straw was almost 50 years ago when Thatcher gave up the UKs space program and satellite plans in favor of giving the money, in cash, to the US.
In return for paying for 1/3 of the keyhole satellite network Regan said we could borrow them when needed.
Then we asked to use them to look at the Falklands and Regan said no.
That was the same period where we traded British missile technology for renting D5s from America. So though we make and own our own nuclear warheads, the delivery systems are American and must be returned to the US for maintenance on a regular basis. Essentially robbing the UK of an independent deterrent.
I am all for unilateral nuclear disarmament but if we are going to have nukes in the current climate they should be entirely homegrown and independent.
The British support of the US military industrial complex doesn’t benefit the UK as it means we have no ability to act alone or in opposition to the US. We are as dependent on resupply as the Israelis.
Obviously that’s great for the US.
Every single French president since Mitterand (with a brief exception for Iraq that was more than made up by Libya) spent a large part of their time liquidating Gaullism.
I think partly because of the shared language British elites were able to convince themselves that the US is just like us, and the so called "special relationship" sort of preserved British power albeit as an extremely junior partner riding on the coattails of the US.
With the French there was no such delusion and they've never seen eye to eye with the Americans, they've just been biding their time waiting for this all to play out.
In hindsight, the French were right of course (they usually are as much as it pains me to say it)
Silly ? it originally comes from the american trying to impose a governement to france / print money and administrate it right after WW2. The ONLY reasons this didn't happen is because De Gaulle marched to paris and became the de facto ruler of the nation after that from his popularity, other wise the american plan would have happened.
US has literally had the SAME policy since maybe as early as the 1800 : expand the empire and get as much as influence as possible. They were never exactly friends or at least "kind" friends.
If anything the subsequent presidents who meshed our defense / intelligence / technical appartus so deeply with the US were complete fools, at best.
To quote one of our founding fathers, Robert Schuman, the point of tightly interweaving our economies this way is to "make war not only unthinkable, but materially impossible"
France has nowhere the military power to resist a country like the US. They have not invested in the military for a very long time and most of their equipment is completely outdated.
It turns out even Iran has the power to resist a country like the US.
France probably has enough, and is definitely credible in their willingness to use them.
Covid showed us how economically dependent we are to major manufacturing countries like China. Paper money != ability to manufacture.
Russia broke any notion of peace that can be funded by cheap energy. It will always be a tool used against you, and Russia will not change.
The axis of US+Israel is breaking down the international system of laws and diplomacy. It’s going to be in a state even worse than the heights of the Cold War. Nukes are now a more favored instrument of peace compared to diplomacy.
Is it worth fighting for what we had, or should we fight for something better? Who knows.
(Edit: I don’t think non-Europeans can appreciate the whiplash suffered in our populations. In the span of around two years, European leaders drew red lines on political, economical and cultural decoupling from Russia based on human rights and the rule of law, then had to explain why preventable atrocities happening to civilians in the Mideast is not against our values and laws concerning human rights.)
The war in Ukraine is literally at the EU's border. It could be destabilizing in many ways. It's not just about moral reasons. By the way, I see similarities between Putin and Trump as they both started wars against big countries without thinking ahead more than three days. It's one more reason to strengthen the EU.
It has strengthened us.
Nordics and the Baltics are very pro Ukraine, we have a common enemy now to focus on.
Poland has stepped up too militarlity.
Sweden where I am has seen a HUGE uplift in military spend, and the companies like SAAB and Bofors (heheh)
Germany is the big loser as they had cheap Russian energy and shut down their nuclear plants.
Where in Europe are you from exactly?
EU overall is pro Ukraine except for Hungary...
In summary, what are you on about? And post your passport.
Oh, and Israel is our ally. I am sick of EU being so pro Hamas and pro Iran. Thankfully our government cut down on grants to the MENA and increased to Ukraine!
And yes, it certainly has served America's interests to have a weak Europe that's dependent on it. But seeing that as "good will" seems like a distortion.
Europe could easily defeat Russia without outside help (look at how well Ukraine is doing with far less!), but we still fear Russia because that's what we're used to. That's what we were told to do and what we have embraced. We need to grow out of that and stand on our own feet again.
> Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other
This is the moment it helps to have allies. Like an insurance. Even if you can manage without, it hurts less if you have them.
To me it makes more sense to focus on that perspective.
The worst part to me feels like US has lost trust and such soft power loss is irrecoverable no matter what happens now :/
A common statement I hear from people, or maybe its just what I think, but its like "How can we trust US after this" and hey mind you, Trump still has 3 years in office, but even if political parties change, how can we trust the whole system for not having another Trump moment.
So this loss of soft power is quite a permanent loss. US has to now condition itself to live with it accordingly and live with some shame (which is something that I am observing too of people not being proud of being american anymore seeing the devastation caused by it)
Countries across the world will have to treat US as unpredictable from now on and treat its financial markets in the same way as well.
The worst part out of all of this is that it hurts the average day american the most not the people at the top who are doing all of this and the average person has no say in all of this seeing their country being destroyed by wreckless actions.
The sad part is that people did have many wake up calls to be honest, greenland was first joked about and then became so serious that denmark was preparing only to then move to iran now impacting the normal people's everyday life with oil price increases all across the world..
I do think that the people of US tried to stand up against the oppression by protests but some were shot (rest in peace) and others were detained.
The sad part is that the people tried their best but it still wasn't enough to stop all of this from happening. It was maybe too late after the election.
1. Geopolitics is always unpredictable. Maybe the US has been unreliable lately, but the idea that there are states out there which have been bastions of reliability is not historically accurate. All great powers have screwed people over or made disastrous decisions. It’s mostly just the US’s turn now.
2. This all happened 20 years ago with Iraq. All it really took was a charismatic president (Obama) to undo the 8+ years of bad international relations. All it will probably take again is a charismatic reliable president to set things back on track.
3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.
Anyone who has studied American history knows the US has been unreliable. Just look at how they made and then broke treaties with Native Americans. It's part of the foundation of the country.
True both outside AND inside the country.
People hated Americans in the 2000s invasion of Iraq. There were popular rock songs about it and students were hesitant to say they were American.
It seems to go in cycles. Next president many will forget.
Such is the power and fickleness of the American system.
Because US administration is compromised. Putin says jump, Krasnov asks how high.
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/groenland/danmark-forbered...
Shouldn't? it's not on the table at all lol
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-military-i...
This is the source article (in Danish) for the bluesky posts:
https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/groenland/danmark-forbered...
I'd love to hear how Biden, Obama, or Clinton got us into forever wars. Or how they threatened allies. Or how they destroyed our trade or deal-making reputation. Where are the Democrat newscasters saying we should invade Canada? The figure heads calling for internment camps?
Are we all affected? Sure. Does everybody in the world view us through the lens of our worst (people/behavior)? Of course. But it IS about a single party on every. single. issue.
If the Democrats were to regain control and we had public trials for all involved for war crimes, constitutional violations, etc, it would do a lot to fix the damage. Not pretending it would all go away, but actually holding the one party accountable would help because everyone on the planet knows who is responsible.
All the current conflict has done is make obvious that reality.
I wish this was just a Republican thing, or that people abroad perceived it as such but the reality is that people around the world no longer care about this Democrat - Republican split.
No one outside of America cares a Republican party started this shit. They care that this shit was started at all, because it means that the American system is out of control.
No one outside of America cares ifyou're a democrat or a republican. They just see you as American. And they see America as the source of so many of the world's problems.
Which means they see you as the source of those problems.
I've seen roughly two types of American commentators over the last year. The ones that cheer this stuff going on, which HN has plenty of, and the ones that think "come the midterms/2028/impeachment everything will go back to normal"
The latter are massively mistaken, it would take decades for the US to rebuild its standing in the eyes of the world, and there is no evidence that it even wants to.
Trump is a symptom of what America truly is, not the cause.
(I think I know, it has to do with how its 'stealth' works.)
Unfortunately if the precise construction of said structures is known, it becomes vulnerable to specially crafted radar pulses which make it generate strong returns.
So it's paramount that the exact layout be kept secret (and likely there's some variation between manufacturing batches, but this is just conjecture).
Needless to say, the US very likely has this info on every jet it sold, and a sufficiently motivated and sophisticated adversary can likely figure this out if the plane spends a long enough time in front of their radars.
That's why the US has been extremely careful about where and how the F-35 gets to fly.
And in the case of countries like Denmark who have few realistic enemy choices, that means they must be prepared for unrealistic invasions, even if the US isn't threatening to invade.
Yes the Danes probably spend most of their time preparing to fight the Russians, but always wargaming the same thing leaves them unprepared for different enemies or unexpected approaches from expected enemies.
Yes, the actions in the links are more than just wargaming, but a large part of it is stuff the military should be doing anyways.
There's preparing and there's preparing. They sent soldiers to Greenland with orders to resist an invasion, packing live ammunition, explosives to destroy runways and blood bags to treat wounded.
That's more than a bit of wargaming.
> that means they must be prepared for unrealistic invasions, even if the US isn't threatening to invade.
It's not unrealistic to think the US would invade Greenland. We've now had 10+ years of this "it's a joke... no it's a bargaining chip... well it's overstated... okay it's temporary... ahh yes well this is Good, Actually."
Danmark forberedte sig på muligt angreb fra USA [Danish language - no native translation] https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/groenland/danmark-forbered...
Google translated URL: https://www-dr-dk.translate.goog/nyheder/indland/groenland/d...
>DR is a Danish public-service radio and television broadcasting company. Founded in 1925 as a public-service organization, it is Denmark's oldest and largest electronic media enterprise.
Using F35 in this situation is like brining in a billion dollar paperweight to the battle.s
So you don't attack Greenland. Because that would be wrong.
Unless all that stuff about shining cities on hills was nonsense. Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.
If mainstream media in the US showed this, I bet the politics would look different.
Rhetoric and public support aside, I honestly very much doubt that there will be a solid EU military response. For many countries like Baltic, Eastern Europe and Nordic countries (ironically DK included). US military support means life or death of their countries. I imagine they'd stall response like what Hungary did and hope that Greenland annexed become fait accompli.
Um, lots of us have doubts about that. The USA couldn't win against Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; why do you think it could win against Greenland? Greenlanders actually have a lot of guns; and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA.
I’m not suggesting this is a good idea or anything but there’s a ton of other ways that something like this could play out which involves more difficult ways to counter than you might think.
> Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.
What power has the US ceded?
Didn't UK get really really annoyed with France in the one instance their kill switch Didn't work?
The idea was to make it as difficult as possible to invade, not to stop it, because that’s largely impossible.
Sometimes these billion dollar high tech things work.
It's ludicrous to see the USA threaten to invade a well-connected European country, invade a South American country weeks after, and then now, three months later, beg its European allies to help with the invasion of Iran because ostensibly American leadership couldn't foresee that war in the Middle East might impact fuel prices. I still think it's a ruse to distract the European military by sending the navy to the Middle East but who knows with the current idiot in charge.
I hope the country will recover some normalcy in post-Trump decade(s), but I fear we're witnessing the slow collapse of a world power. Regardless of anyone's feelings on grip the East/West dichotomy has had over the world in the past 90 or so years, such shifts in world power rarely go calmly and peacefully.
Hehe, that's a good one.
Why should they trust a country that smells of corruption and lashes out at random like a shambling corpse?
They're wise to the fact that "the Stable Genius" isn't going to try anything violent with Denmark/Greenland, but they still want to prevent him thinking about just stealing territory "peacefully."
The assumption was - and still is - that the USA wasn't posturing either.
We (and I realize I obviously don't speak for all of Europe but I have my finger on the pulse in many places here) are also not assuming that when Trump is gone the USA will go back to normal.
If the people voted Trump in to office twice, it’ll happen again. It’s a divided country where propaganda has a strong hold.
There was similar tough talk in 1940 and Denmark lasted 6 hours. Without capitulation the country would have been razed. But surrender saw it able to keep some level of control and thus extricate the Jewish population in relative safety which would not otherwise have been possible.
And the same goes for Canada, possibly worse. You don't go around threatening your allies unless you really have plans and that's why you don't elect senile old guys to positions of power.
I can't say I know much about how the EU operates or how quickly their Open Digital Ecosystems initiative could take shape, but this is a really opportune time to build a better tech industry.
They were being discussed a year ago, too, they just got flagged. Make sure to check /active
Who is the leader in culture, business, technology? The only other contender I can think of is China.
And this is better?
So uh, threads with wrongspeak in them are still hidden.
Anyone of principle would have been saying this before 2025, and far louder.
That being said, I don't think we can pin this particular expression of derangement on age, or at least not age alone. Trump has nothing to lose. He cannot run again. He doesn't care one whit about the common good or even tawdry partisan interests. This is his unhinged narcissism at work, abetted by a cultish, smarmy, obsequious coterie of yes-men that surrounds him.
Thus, some lessons need to be learned again and again. Some rights fought for again and again.
Not necessarily with similar judicial executions. Fair trials and fair and exemplary punitive measures would be enough for me.
I lost respect when Obama let Bush Jr administration off the hook. It essentially set the tone that it is ok to behave like that, that there would be no consequences.
Imprisonment would be a good starting point though. Together with education, regulation and reforming the political system. But this takes decades.
Maybe the predecessor regime is corrupt. Maybe not. But the first thing the new regime always does is to arrange the show trials to establish their own bona fides.
Although given the current lunatic escapade it does seem like a good moment to remove him from office. There must be someone somewhere in the administration that thinks another forever war is a bad idea, even if they aren't worried about WWIII. I've never seen a presidency implode so quickly - this has to be the most illegal, unconstitutional, unmandated, immoral and ill-advised war of choice the US has launched in decades.
[0] https://www.newsweek.com/chart-shows-net-worth-us-presidents...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...
Some people in Europe were not that happy when Biden told on public television that the Nord Stream pipeline will be blown up somehow, but luckily the media was good in not talking too much about it and later he listened to his own advisors better about how to communicate.
Younger people are not fit to power in 300M country with lots of smart and rich people. Instead these smart and rich people back these old guys because when it comes to election they use half of their brain or sometimes not use their brain at all. One of these rich one was recently bl00mberg and he tried to get elected at age of 500 year old but couldn't do it.
Maybe you should be. You might need them one day.
> Most Americans don’t know the name of a single politician in Denmark.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of.
It’s not gonna be nice and fun for anybody, but it’s time to learn that you guys are just one country in a whole world, and you need friends to thrive. The ignorant bully attitude has run its course.
Just for some additional context, these meetings are held every week, but this caused headlines because there was held an additional one outside of the normal schedule due to some classified time sensitive case, i.e. not something that happened in another country many months ago.
What I find harder to believe is that they were preparing for "full-scale war". That makes no sense. Using F-35, American made and very likely with kill switches or otherwise susceptible to American interference? And where would they get their American made parts and supplies? And Denmark stands no chance at all against US military might, with or without assistance from France.
I'm sure they were prepared to engage in token resistance, and also more serious diplomatic and economic struggles, but "full-scale war" is hyperbole.
While understanding the danger of dictators and technical mistakes and the chaos that would ensue, besides that, what would happen if just every or even just most countries had nukes? Just give them to everybody, and I'm really not convinced we would end up in a Fallout situation but maybe quite a peaceful one? No expert in that but tbh when you think about it most of the countries getting fucked don't have them and the aggressor always seems to do.
I realize this is very simplified and many things I'm probably not seeing but I'm open to learn.
The next decade will be a complete disaster for non-proliferation.
> The Danish public broadcaster DR reports that officials in Denmark, France and Germany say that Donald Trump's threats to seize Greenland were taken so seriously that wide-ranging preparations were made to forcibly resist a US invasion of the Danish island.
Breaking (2): small country was preparing to forcibly resist (?) an invasion. That was threatened.
World tension continues to increase.
If the oligarchs don't feel any pushback they'll continue to wreck the US and Europe.
It is entirely different if USA starts attacking NATO allies such as Denmark which isn't a threat or problem to anyone, that is not something anybody would expect and it would ruin American diplomacy completely.
This is one battle of many and the USA will win it. Whether it is warranted or whether the USA will win 'the war' is another thing.
While Trump was trolling European leaders about their security posture (by threatening to relieve them of sovereign territory which the US already has extensive access to) the USAF was already moving assets in the opposite direction to the middle east (this was mid-january).
It's fairly easy to work out what's happening if you ignore the orange man and listen to what serious people are saying, what they've briefed on, how they contradict one another, and where the assets are moving.
Obviously European leaders have to pretend to take the orange man seriously, but the reaction in the media was bordering on hysterical.
off you go then, what is it?
Then maybe look at the Nato chain of command and who was interviewed and what was said in mid-Jan?
The narrative he wanted to control was about Epstein. Denmark could have simultaneously prepared for that, but it wouldn’t be on OSInt Twitter.
I think Europe's inaction in 2022 will go down as the greatest moral failing of the century. You can't say "they didn't act because Russia is a nuclear power" - the same is true here.
Russia has invaded Ukraine. There is no political entity called Europe. And if you're talking geography than good chunk of Russia is in Europe.
It wasn't until that thing with Trump and Vance shouting at Zelensky in the oval office that Europe figured the US had kind of flipped and it was on us to support Ukraine.
Critics never miss a chance to sit around and bitch about orange man.
