In politics things work differently: you have people that "spat on each other" today and tomorrow they'll act like they are brothers and the spitting never happened.
It is a bit more than "spitting on each other" which now is between the USA and its former allies. I seriously doubt that we will just go back to normal the moment there is a US president from the Democratic party. Possibly in some areas of politics and economy, in others (real) trust is more essential.
I believe at the moment it's still in the "spitting on each other" phase. Had Trump actually invaded Greenland* (and likewise if he does so in the future), that's where the Rubicon gets crossed and there's no going back.
I kinda do want it to have passed that point, but not as much as I'm glad he TACOed.
* There's other metaphorical Rubicons available, this is just the one most in my mind given I live in the EU
Trump and his team repeatedly saying they have no problems using force against Greenland and Canada were the red lines and they have already been crossed.
I want those actions to have been the red line, and wish my representatives to treat it so if they are not yet. It is important to keep separate what I want to be and what is.
They are the red lines. There is no going back. The USA is too dangerous to rely on, that's quite clear.
People don't quite realize how big a deal "invading" Greenland would have been. That's literally an act of war! What's next, occupying France? Saying that it's at all a possibility is far beyond any red line that the EU thought it would have to deal with.
Not only would the rest of the world ditch the USA, but the Democrats themselves would take the opportunity to publically announce that they do not recognize Donald Trump's government.
> People don't quite realize how big a deal "invading" Greenland would have been. That's literally an act of war! What's next, occupying France? Saying that it's at all a possibility is far beyond any red line that the EU thought it would have to deal with.
Yes, absolutely, I agree.
Thing is, in the end he backed off, so the result was all talk. He TACOed.
For everyone's sake (including Americans'), I absolutely 100% want the EU to disentangle as much as possible and as fast as possible from the US so that we don't even feel the need to be polite to Trump in the future: he obviously sees the world as only predators to be scared of and prey to consume, so it's better for us (everyone, not just the EU) to become big and scary really fast so he doesn't even try anything.
If he were to invade (anywhere, not just Greenland), that place and their allies basically have two options: fight or die.
> Not only would the rest of the world ditch the USA, but the Democrats themselves would take the opportunity to publically announce that they do not recognize Donald Trump's government.
I wish, but humans aren't like that.
The Democrat leadership keep pulling defeat from the jaws of victory, and people are the same everywhere so an external threat is more likely to pull everyone together than to split them apart (same for everyone else is why the EU and Canada are warming, or at least thawing, their relationships with the rest of the world).
What might have happened before an invasion was enough Republicans finally kicking him out (with Democrat support), or a US military coup (I'd say 50% if it got that far, but with high uncertainty).
A military coup would also be a crossed Rubicon.
But the military don't like traitors, and betraying an ally by invading it is an act of treachery.
No, the Democrats would do it precisely because of cynical human interest (they are like that). Donald Trump Republicans invading a Western nation plays right into their hands. They may as well just hand Gavin Newsom the next election. The overwhelming majority of US citizens do not approve of USA invading Greenland.
Nothing would have come of it. Ehe EU would have been upset for 3-6 months, then it would have got onboard with the idea that Greenland is now a US territory and that's that.
France has a too good of a cuisine to be invaded. I think Germany would be next, they are running their mouth more than they should and they suck at food.
Unless the mid-terms change the political majority in the US, the Democrats can wine all they want and recognize or not recognize whoever they want as president. It will not change the actual situation.
This is some top notch r/ShitAmericansSay material, especially Germany "running their mouth" and having bad food. Add in democrats "wining" and I'm pretty sure this post belongs on a Confederate cooking blog rather than HN.
It depends on what exactly Europe needs to defend itself against.
And Europe is quite rightly starting to regard this US-dependence as a problem to be solved without further delay, rather than an eternal and immutable fact of the world.
One of the criticisms I hear of Merz is that he's not tough enough on Trump; therefore the choice to target Germany at this time, matches a pattern of the target being painted on whoever wants to play nice.
All of that is why I want Europe to take it seriously, even though I think they might be cooling off now that Trump has backed off.
We (both of my "we"s given I'm a British citizen but live in the EU) sent in tripwire forces to defend Greenland. Their purpose is that getting shot is a casus belli for us to go to war with the USA.
Also remember: NATO has two other nuclear powers besides the USA, and the biggest flaw with one of those nuclear arsenals is how when the UK test-fired the missiles it bought from the USA, they went the wrong way or didn't launch properly at all.
I don't know what the order of events would have been given how heavily tied together EU and US (and UK) economies are, but essentially the EU banning the purchase of new US treasuries by itself would cause something in the order of US inflation going to 10% for several years; this, plus any economic departure (I'm thinking emigration more than internment camps like Japanese-Americans in WW2, much worse if that) from all the European migrants on visas (and some or all of the naturalised ones, but that number will be less… unless Trump also strips that like he's been suggesting), the US could loose 2-5 million people's worth of useful economic labour from the workforce. (Even if they're put in work camps, they're not getting good work out of them).
In the other direction, if the US cuts off cloud computing today, the EU is almost immediately screwed. Hence article.
But if the EU's screwed, then we don't have the money to buy the US treasuries, so screwing us also screws the US. That 10% inflation I mentioned, that's just from not buying T-bills; screwing the EU like this would also mean no more trade with the EU, which basically doubles the US unemployment rate on top of that, budget deficit goes to $3T/year, and costs the US 5% GDP relative to the baseline (i.e. what it would have been without invading) forever. Without a shot fired. But France has enough nukes that even if the USA's anti-missile defences can stop 80% of them, it could by itself destroy every US state capital and still have several left over.
And if you're worried about Russia taking over Greenland, oh boy you should worry about what they do to a catastrophically weakened Europe that isn't just a hard-to-mine sheet of ice supporting a population that wouldn't even half-fill these seats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Narendra_Modi_Stadium_vie...
Sorry but you're just wrong. This isn't a situation to be upset about. Its war. There's no universe where the USA invasion of Greenland doesn't end in disaster for Trump.
There's already been articles in Politico where USA lawmakers admit that there would have been a War Measures Act passed if Trump invaded Greenland. Unlike Venezuela.
It would definitely change the political situation if the state governments of California, New York et al stopped recognizing the federal government.
This isn't politicking though. This is national security. In matters of national security, you take no chances. There's no going back to the relationship the world had with the USA.
That's mostly how it was during the last US presidential term. The president even said that "America is back" (1)
The fact is, it didn't last. America going away was not a one-off. It happened a second time, worse. The lesson that the USA just is a country that does this from time to time. People in the rest of the world who learn that lesson will prepare for the next time.
As another US president accurately said: "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice ... you can't get fooled again."
What's different this time is that the US has an extensive system of checks and balances that nearly everyone thought would make the current situation impossible, and now we are learning that they aren't nearly as effective as we thought.
No matter how reasonable the next few administrations are it is hard to see anyone else trusting the US nearly as much as they did before 2024.
This has been creeping up on us for some time. For my entire life, the US executive branch has done nothing but accumulate powers and slowly undermine constitutional checks and balances. It’s all fun and games while your guy does it, but it’s inevitable that you’ll get someone in power who you don’t want. That’s the entire point of the checks and balances, but few seemed to care until now. Even if we get a “normal” president after this, I’d bet a lot of money that he/she won’t do anything to reduce the power of the executive.
