US President Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3 has emboldened him to proceed with the annexation of Greenland, a Danish-owned, self-governed territory, spelling the effective end of NATO and furthering Russia’s war aims in Ukraine, experts tell Al Jazeera.
“The move on Venezuela illustrates the Trump administration’s determination to dominate the Western Hemisphere – of which Greenland geographically is a part,” said Anna Wieslander, Northern Europe director for the Atlantic Council, a think tank.
“If the United States decides to attack another NATO country, then everything would stop – that includes NATO and therefore post-World War II security,” Frederiksen said.
“The pandering to Trump has been an element of our strategy over the last year, leaving observers hoping, but not entirely trusting, that another element of the strategy is preparing urgently for the final rupture with the United States,” Giles said.
Giles told Al Jazeera that Europe’s best option was to place a military deterrent on Greenland now, believing that putting allied troops in the Baltic States and Poland after 2017 deterred a Russian attack there.
What experrs? American experts?
They’re kind of forgetting the big elephant in the room that is the fact a lot of US foreign debt is owned by Japan and China, with the majority of the rest of it being held by countries that will be very very pissed off with this move.
If trump is stupid enough to pull the trigger, and those countries decide that a potential physical war is becoming inevitable, they’ll for sure dump all of that debt, all at once; killing the US economy and it’s ability to make war. War needs fuel. Despite Venzuela, Trump won’t have enough of it once his economy tanks.
Here’s a recent article on the chances the USD continues as the world’s reserve currency.
Ps it’s not looking great.
https://www.ftadviser.com/content/5cbf339b-7c4d-464b-8c2a-0c7409e515a0
this fills my heart with joy
Europe should prepare to tell Trump to go fuck himself.
Yeah I think the ordering on that is China, Japan, UK, Canada in terms of the countries that hold US bonds.
A diplomatic delegation came to Canada recently and then Mark Carney went to China. Maybe just coincidence, or maybe not.
Tanking the bonds is essentially the economic equivalent of a nuke. You don’t want to use it because there will be fallout which isn’t good for anyone. But the US actually using military force on Greenland would be a circumstance where you might push the button on that. China has some business interests in Greenland, and generally the US just invading places based solely on the whims of a deranged old man is worse for everyone than the economic fallout from tanking the bonds.
they’ll for sure dump all of that debt
That is a gain for the US, not a loss. No interest payments on the loans they’ve made, and no need to pay off the principal. Great!
The debt doesn’t “go away”, the countries sell it on the market, causing the price of us bonds to drop. That causes the yield (what it costs the us to service the debt) to go up. Borrowing becomes more expensive. Repaying debt or borrowing more to pay interest becomes even more expensive for the us.
Repaying debt or borrowing more to pay interest becomes even more expensive for the us.
Yes. This I agree. But the current administration has shown it is willing to ignore future consequences.
Higher yields are irrelevant if the project 2025 goal is to “Abolish the Federal Reserve” page 768
Those are not some remote future consequences, the downfall would be quite immediate
Less immediate than war with the EU or China.
I don’t think you understand how inflation works…
Debt cancelling is a deflationary action. It reduces the money supply.
Dumping their bonds into the market isn’t cancelling their debt. Its making all that debt available for OTHERS to buy. Supply goes up, value goes down.
In other words, if all of the US debt was out up for sale at the same time, is value of the US dollar would crater.
Supply is the same unless debt is cancelled. A weaker dollar makes it easier to pay interest.
"If you owe foreign banks $100, that’s your problem. If you owe foreign banks $100 trillion that’s the foreign bank’s problem.”
That’s not how markets work.
But you’re clearly a troll just being intentionally obtuse for shits and giggles. It’s on me for not having realised it earlier.
Have a good day.
If you think correcting someone’s macro economic misunderstandings is trolling then you will be meeting many more trolls.
Not cancelling, selling.
A dollar bill is debt that the govt owes to you. A bond is similar, just a bit different.
The US will still owe, just to different entities, but its figurative credit score will plummet at the same time it’s in a debt spiral.
But let’s make it simpler. Most of the world’s USD is not in the US, but in cash reserves abroad. They hold it like gold.
What happens if the big players sell? It’s already happening a bit, look at EURUSD and gold prices.
Yes. This is Trumps goal. Make foreign goods super expensive for consumers and manufacturers. Exactly what a Tariff does.
They are isolationists. They don’t want debt held overseas.
This would make all goods more expensive, as it would directly devalue the USD. It wouldn’t make people buy local, it would just make them buy less.
It’s not what a tariff does, because that only applies to foreign imports.
Under both, local products become cheaper than foreign.
What if I told you that was literally part of the plan? The groundwork for looking the USD was already in project 2025 and the dark enlightenment bullshit the tech feudalists masturbate to requires the balkanization of the US, and pulling a smash and grab on the USD will get us there within ten years. And if Trump makes it to next January they can kill him and we get ten years of “legitimate” Vance and by then it’s well and truly over.
Money would be a problem but not the worst problem, all of manufacturing and materials come from China and the remaining single digit percent is in Europe, if the US pisses both they wont be able to manufacture war even if they haf all of the money
I just want to say it won’t end Nato. Nato countries will stick together, but the USA will be out, alone, isolated, another rouge state just like Russia. That is until Americans grow a spine and either throw Trump out by election, by force, or by crashing the economy.
Considering this year started 10 days ago, I don’t think we have enough time til the election in 3 years.
And then they may elect Mr Beast or some other rich dude.
And then they may elect Mr Beast
I can’t wait for welfare to be replaced by “Survive 30 days in Guantanamo, win $500,000”, and “100 people in Alligator Alcatraz. Last one standing wins $1,000,000”.
And gets to keep the alligator.
I’m sure the free world will stick together till the bitter end
The population of the US is about 342 million. Russia has a population of about 146 million. China has a population of about 1.4 billion. The European Union has a population of about 448 million people. The population of the world is about 8 billion. The orange mobster THINKS it will rule the world?
The thing is that population numbers isn’t everything, it’s also about what that population is doing. A tree has a thousand times the mass of a patch of grass but produces the same photosynthesis or sth.
That’s because the tree is massive due to its trunk, which is dead weight and doesn’t do much.
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Challenging, but not impossible. I think the military budget of all other NATO members combined would just be about the same as the US. However, it’s not like every country has its own independent “mix of everything”; they are supposed to work supplemental. What makes things worse is proprietary hardware and software in modern equipment such as planes. I’m not sure to which degree it would even be technically possible to use it to defend against the USA.
Then there is the nuclear weapon problem. France and UK would have to really stand their ground and follow through with nuclear retaliation. That means that even when the USA or Russia just use a small tactical nuke in Poland, Greenland or wherever, they’d have to use one of their few strategic nukes to destroy something big, possibly dooming Paris. The downside of the idea of mutually assured destruction always was that it only works with somewhat reasonable people who REALLY are not willing to take their entire civilisation with them. But since Stalin, there have never been nutjobs like Trump or Putin in charge, neither in the USSR, nor US, nor Russia.
A victorious Ukraine would certainly be an incredible asset to have in NATO, with all those battle-hardened, highly educated people.
But all things considered, might as well give it a try.
Because nobody in Europe wants to fight
You are deluding yourself.
The US is doing this with the aim of surviving and thriving. They are chasing treasure, land and the dream of a better life after. Those are not goals that motivate people to fight.
For Europe, as for Canada, this fight is existential. There is nothing people are not willing to do in an existential fight.
You’re out of your mind if you think the US has the upper hand here.
End of NATO means:
- Russia will go all in in Ukraine, Moldavia and baltic states
- Turkey and Greece will go to war.
- Israel will bomb everybody just in case
- China will get Taiwan
- USA will bomb Mexico
- Israel will nuke someone
- …
The fucking Muscovites will attack Poland to take the Sulwalki Gap and Finland to control their former vassal state.
\7. France nukes everyone. (That’s their policy, anyone uses nukes, they launch everything they have against all nuclear powers, which isn’t a lot, but that’s a lot of major cities gone.)
Isn’t that Israel’s nuclear doctrine?
Officially Israel “doesn’t have nukes,” unofficially they have very few that could be used in short order before they are nuked. They don’t have the capability to nuke more than a few countries in the Middle East
That’s not an answer to my question. What you described sounds most like Israel’s Samson Option and not anything like I’ve ever heard of France’s nuclear doctrine.
Israel doesn’t have the capability to deliver. That’s about as useful as saying North Korea will nuke everyone. They literally can’t.
France adopted the policies I listed, with some small nuance in the 1970s and haven’t changed their stance.
Source ?
I can’t find the articles that I read about this, but if you look up their nuclear policies, they won’t use in first strike scenarios, but the will use for defensive strikes, which amounts to exactly what I said. In defensive scenarios, someone else already used them, so may as well unload your entire stockpile. Everyone else is going to unload theirs.
Just for reference the US, Russia, and China have similar contingencies. Once Israel or anyone launches a nuke or uses a bomb in very short order all the stockpiles get emptied. France just was pretty blatant about it in the '70s.
NATO won’t end, only the US being part of NATO will end.
In fact if NATO didn’t already exist, something just like it would be formed if the US starts invading countries just because a crazy old man thinks the world map is a colouring book.
The crazy old man is a reflection of all Americans. That’s how most Americans see the world. 1 American life is worth 10,000 third world country lives.
Please stop vilifying the entirety of America. There are millions of us that are doing everything we can to organize against this while also feeding our families.
Yeah well y’all need to understand there are people in Venezuela and Greenland that are just trying to feed their families.
If Trump attacks my country I’ll need to be capable of going to war against your country. And that demands considering you to be nothing more than collateral damage if you happen to be in the wrong place at that wrong time. Just like those 100 people he killed in Venezuela.
If Trump carries out some of the threats he’s making right now, you’ll need to get used to being vilified. The rest of the world may need to burn your country to the ground, and we can’t let feelings get in the way of what must be done to prevent him from destroying our countries.
You shouldn’t be surprised when people have the same consideration for your life as Americans generally have for the lives in countries you go to war with.
Don’t spend any more time telling people to not “vilify” Americans, spend more time trying to make it so America is not the villain. We aren’t making you the villains, the actions of your President is making you the villains of the world.
Wow alright, fuck you too then I guess?
Yeah, an innocent American “just tying to feed his family” LOL.
No one needs to “vilify” you. You’re always ready to be villains with very little prompting.
All I’m seeing is another “fuck you, my needs are the only thing that matter” MAGA-type in your responses. Way to be part of the problem. You’re no different than Trump’s supporters. You just have the benefit of not being born here.
You’re country is falling apart and instead of doing something about it, you’re looking for someone else to blame.
It isn’t people from other countries that fucked up your country. You’re fucked because Americans were willing to vote in a fascist because you believe the “I’m just trying to feed my family” line of bullshit justifies your raw greed.
You’re the wealthiest country in the world, and you voted for Trump (or didn’t vote at all) because you believed it would make you rich. And you sure as hell didn’t want to vote for the black lady. But sure blame the black lady, blame everyone in the world, do everything you have to do to avoid responsibility. American culture is rotten to the core, and you’re incapable of understanding that.
You got a pass on a lot of your bullshit when you were an ally to other countries. That’s over now.
Gonna keep spamming this cuz I made it a year ago and it sat in a random folder on my PC for the perfect time lol
Maybe America has to be understood as the logical conclusion of Western European geopolitical and moral ideology, and maybe it has to hurt Europeans (I’m French living in the UK, DW, it’ll hurt me too but such is life) for us to finally consider some sort of ideological revolution that produces something that’s diametrically opposed to what’s currently embraced. I mean, it’s not like we wouldn’t be doing whatever America has been doing for at least 70 years if we had their power level, lol, history shows that clearly, so for this all to end because it must (“THIS SICILIAN THING THAT’S BEEN GOING ON FOR 2000 YEARS!”) our minds have to undergo a drastic collective change.
TBH the change can be pretty small, albeit revolutionary.
Actually embrace the humanitarian values of enlightenment. Gain some class consciousness. Remove the dictatorship of the capital by seizing the means of production. Consider other peoples of the world as equals and allies rather than dumb weaklings to be taught a lesson and/or exploited.
It all fits in a very long and established european tradition. Remember that Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Kropotkin, and Lenin were all europeans.
The humanitarian ideals of the enlightenment were used to justify colonialism, they simply said “look, those people don’t have our humanitarian ideals, we need to take control of their society/resources.”
Yeah, agreed. Hence
Consider other peoples of the world as equals and allies rather than dumb weaklings to be taught a lesson and/or exploited.
It’s peak neolib capitalism.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”
Germany needs to boot the US out of all the military installations there.
Germany helped the usa become the beast it is and is the inspiration for the current situation (funny when the usa inspired Germany first).
The right wing parties in Europe will help the usa.
Here is how the Greenland issue will likely play out. Trump doesn’t live in the real world and is too dumb to see the downside to what he is doing, so he will get Greenland one way or the other. The reasonable people on the other side see this, and have poor options. Either they sell Trump Greenland, notwithstanding all the reasons that this would be improper and unnecessary, or they stand firm and Trump moves in and takes it, which would effectively be an attack on a NATO country and trigger article 5. This would end NATO as we know it, as the U.S. would no longer be part of it (which Russia would love to see). If Denmark sells Greenland to the U.S. to appease Trump, they get some money and the fig leaf of NATO remains, as there is no attack on a NATO country. I believe that the latter course is more likely, as appeasement will disrupt the status quo much less, and history shows that appeasement of fascists is usually the first course of action (see, e.g., Chamberlain’s approach towards Nazi Germany in the 1930s.) Of course, this will only embolden Trump and his followers, as it will be seen as Trump’s great success.
Incidentally, if Trump were smart, what he would do is immediately start building up the base that the U.S. already has, and then get Denmark to agree to several additional bases, ideally in every town on the island, ostensibly to protect U.S. security interests. Then, use the bases to start pumping money into the local economy. Each base would have construction projects, personnel to feed and entertain, etc., etc. Suddenly, the locals would see dollars flowing into their pockets and their communities prosper. The U.S. could offer each citizen of Greenland $1 million tax free dollars if the country joins the U.S., and pressure Denmark to let Greenland put it to the vote. The population of Greenland is only 56,831, so the cost to purchase would be less than $57 billion. If Denmark balks, simply declare Greenland part of the U.S. and it’s citizens U.S. citizens, and make Denmark the bad guy for trying to strip Greenland of it’s right of self determination. If it goes to the vote, it seems highly probable that a majority the citizens would take the financial windfall and Greenland would become part of the U.S… On the outside chance that the citizens voted against their own financial interests, well, the U.S. would already have a ton of military already in place, and show its true colors and take it anyway. With this strategy, the U.S. could at least pretend to be the good guy.
If he was smart then he would just start mining, no one is opposing it.
If he was knowledgeable, he’d know it’s a dead end trying to mine stuff up there.
Nobody cares about mining anything in Greenland. Nobody actually cares about any resource in Greenland, or even the people in Greenland. Not strategically, anyway, before anyone gets it twisted. Rare earths, fine, whatever, that’s just a marginal distraction.
Greenland is the fence post on one side of the gate which allows NATO to control Russia’s potential naval passage into the Atlantic. At present Russia functionally cannot project any naval force to western Europe without literally going the long way around, all the way around Asia and Africa and past the tip of Cape Town, etc. Not at all coincidentally, the vestiges of the Cold War are why the US has always been so keen to maintain a military presence on Greenland in the first place.
With Greenland out of the picture and the US theoretically also on Russia’s side rather than NATO, Putin stands a much greater chance of being able to get his warships into the Atlantic by hugging the coast of Greenland and then subsequently threaten the rest of Europe.
So Greenland is vital for Europe’s security, but not exactly for the US…great…
Yes. And also while we’re at it, just remember who has been whispering in Trump’s ear all the goddamn time.
There’s supposed to be a huge untapped oil field that Greenland and Denmark refuse to explore. That’s what Trump is after.
I don’t think NATO is going to end, I think what’s going to happen is NATO is going to turn on America if Greenland gets annexed. That is how I think World War III is going to start.
Agreed NATO will go on without the US.
The US has dominated the Western hemisphere for 70 years. Moving to snatch-and-grab military adventurism suggests that is no longer the case.
To the US, this is all just a distraction scheme from economic problems at home, and they know it.
People are poor and looking for anything to make them feel alive again.
Putin is a genius
I think it’s more that Americans are stupid.
Putins had his hand in ensuring that happened for the latest generation as well.
It was Americans that created a culture where people will believe anything as long certain symbols are referenced. Throw in a flag or a cross and they’ll believe any bullshit.
Americans made themselves stupid, Putin just exploited that stupidity.
Too much lead poisoning makes people dumb.
Americans are taught at a young age that a piece of paper they’ve never read with pretty about freedom and equality written by slave masters makes them the best country in the world.
It’s always been a stupid country.
He brexited, too.
Nah that was British boomers being stupid.
And he played their stupidity just right.
Russia just employed a firehose of falsehood tactic. That could only achieve a low level distrust of government and institutions. It was American social media algorithms that matched up the falsehoods to the people that would believe them and presented people with an endless stream of false but consistent information. I don’t think the social media companies were colluding with Russia (that would be evil but not stupid) they were just maximizing profits for the shareholders without any consideration for how what they were doing would negatively impact society.
What Glavset did wouldn’t have been impactful had it not been for the stupid greed that permeates American culture. It’s still happening, though obviously Russia is less of a factor, and it’s more China and Iran doing these things now. Though Iran is less significant than China and may be out of play soon enough. But the damage is done and the US will never fully recover.
They are a nation who stereotypically love playing chess…
He could have waited a few more years before his special military operation for his Trojan horse to get back into office. Wouldn’t call him a genius entirely.
but it was just three days to kyiv
Calling him a “genius” is overdoing it, i think. He just interpreted the signals of the time, before anyone else did. He guessed correctly that the west is too fractured and weak to defend Ukraine.
I think EU should cut off US completely and BRICS should form then EU and BRICS should do trade. Ban all US social media and boycott anything that’s made in US
BRICS is just a propaganda thing, it’s all it will ever really be. Most trade happens between countries near to one another, though sometimes there’s cultural similarities countries can come together on. The BRICS countries are all over the world, they all speak different languages and have very different political systems and interests.
Brazil is a democracy in South America Russia is a fascist regime in Europe and Asia India is a democracy in Central Asia China is a fascist regime (that pretends to be communist) in Asia South Africa is a democracy in Africa
Some of these countries have more trade and closer relations with western countries than with each other. China and India occasionally exchange gunfire over border disputes. Brazil has other trade agreements in South America which are way more meaningful. South Africa is similar.
It’s just some fantasy of internet contrarians that have fallen for the “liberal democracies are bad actually” bullshit and want some weird group of countries that are going to… well no one knows.
And LOL at the EU wanting to do trade with Russia right now. Did you even think about what that R in BRICS stood for?
There’s one thing common among all of them. They were all exploited by the west.
Russia? China? How?
The British Empire got China addicted to opium to take all their silver. The opium was grown by slaves in India.
Russia, despite being a northern nation, isn’t in the western nations club, because of communist history. Capitalists hate communists because they don’t want to lose power.
So you believe the Trump zero sum game view of the world? Wealth is entirely about resources, and people don’t create value?
I did not say anything like that in my comment above. That’s an entirely new sentence.
The image you posted portrays large pits in some places in the world, with large stacks of resources (gold presumably) in other parts of the world.
That is how Trump understands the world. You seem to think the same way.
What you’re both missing is the fact that people create value. Gold doesn’t actually improve people’s lives, it’s the products and services that are produced by people that make your life better. Your understanding of economics is out of date by about two and a half centuries.
Europe just finally signed a deal with Mercosur (that’s the B in BRICS). Europe is also negotiating one with India. And it’s increasing sanctions against Russia. BRICS is just an annual show off conference with zero substance.
I hope the US loses all international rights if this happens. It has too many.
Might is the only right in the year 2026.
Some countries in Europe are starting to, and given what Europe is, that’s probably the best they can start doing.
At least because they made sure to show us their hand at their latest sonic weapons and information warfare used to shut down weapons that was used in the Venezuela attack. They would probably go the same route with Europe, trying to behead whatever strategic target is going to get them what they want, because they can’t go for a prolonged conflict either.
