• Civ7 is already available! Happy playing :).

Should the US Invade Greenland (Denmark) & Panama

The ever-obsequious Guardian has just discovered that Trump is already saving some native greenlanders from having their children stolen by the danes!

"Ever-obsequious", you say, whilst instantly crediting anything remotely positive to Trump's influence. You know full well he doesn't give a tinker's damn about the fate of the Greenlanders.
 
Trump will be gone in four years; no one should expect the Greenland program to end with him or with the republican party in government. So framing it like that also won't help Greenland - the fate of which likely is already sealed.
The situation currently makes it even easier for the US to formalize claims on the territory, since it is lording over any powers which could try to have a say - including being in control of their energy supply.
 
I doubt it, US American foreign policy will likely continue to flip with each new president, invade Iraq - leave Iraq, invade Afghanistan - leave Afghanistan, Invade Panama - no not Panama again,

basically cancelling itself out.

Each new president starts his term with a huge stack of previously prepared presidential orders undoing most of what the previous one did, and ends with pardoning his entire family and everyone related.
 
Last edited:
Might not even be 4 years, in 18 months most of congress needs to be replaced, Trump likely annoys enough people to flip one or both chambers.

Biggest problem is their supreme court, but that doesn't influence foreign policy much, more a domestic issue that will haunt them for a generation.
 
Last edited:
Yes the United States is basically the only federation which restricts the franchise to residents of states or equivalent, and doesn't give the franchise to residents of territories. That disenfranchisement is why your discussions about representation and the voting always revert to talking about statehood, as though those are necessarily the same thing.

By contrast, in Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, residents of the territories (capital districts and otherwise) have representation and voting rights, as well as those in the principal federal units (states, provinces, etc).

So as a Canberran, I still have full political rights even though I don't live in a state, but someone in my exact situation in the US, like Lexicus, does not have full political rights.

If I'm not mistaken British overseas territories aren't represented at the House of Commons in Westminster. They have a special status of "Overseas citizens" which is different from standard British citizenship. Most are tax heavens with the active support of Westminster.

Then you have "independent" countries such as Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia which have signed a deal with Washington to delegate their economical, monetary, foreign and military policies to the United States. Despite being sovereign on paper, I can hardly make the difference with the British overseas territories having basically the same limitations from London.
 
Last edited:
If I'm not mistaken British overseas territories aren't represented at the House of Commons in Westminster. They have a special status of "Overseas citizens" which is different from standard British citizenship. Most are tax heavens with the active support of Westminster.

Then you have "independent" countries such as Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federate States of Micronesia which have signed a deal with Washington to delegate their economical, monetary, foreign and military policies to the United States. Despite being sovereign on paper, I can hardly make the difference with the British overseas territories having basically the same limitations from London.
The UK is not a federation, though.
 
The UK is not a federation, though.

And so? That would justify a lack of representation?
France is also a unitary state and that doesn't prevent overseas regions to be fully integrated to the country, with full citizenship, representation, voting rights or access to welfare.
 
Wikipedia says that Palau retains its own diplomatic relations, but receives defence and funding grants through the Compact of Free Association.
 
Wikipedia says that Palau retains its own diplomatic relations, but receives defence and funding grants through the Compact of Free Association.

Indeed Palau is represented at the UN, where it almost always votes like the US, particularly on geopolitical and defence matters. Together with the Marshalls and Micronesia, they are basically extra votes for the US.
 
And so? That would justify a lack of representation?
France is also a unitary state and that doesn't prevent overseas regions to be fully integrated to the country, with full citizenship, representation, voting rights or access to welfare.

It does not justify a lack of representation. It just means that the concepts of states and territories does not apply and that the statement that the "US is the only federation..." still holds. The UK is not a unitary state either: It is a mess of different entities with different relations to the crown which should have been refactored long ago but probably never will. That does not justify anything. But it makes comparison to other countries difficult.
 
If I'm not mistaken British overseas territories aren't represented at the House of Commons in Westminster. They have a special status of "Overseas citizens" which is different from standard British citizenship. Most are tax heavens with the active support of Westminster.

Then you have "independent" countries such as Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federate States of Micronesia which have signed a deal with Washington to delegate their economical, monetary, foreign and military policies to the United States. Despite being sovereign on paper, I can hardly make the difference with the British overseas territories having basically the same limitations from London.
The UK isn't a federation, my statement was specifically about federalism because the topic is the US and its limiting political rights to states only in a way essentially unique among federations.

But yes they also suck a lot at democracy in Britain.
 
India is also a federation with a constitution.
I literally mentioned them, yes. The union territories have members of parliament, though political rights in Jammu and Kashmir are obviously a whole other thing.
 
"Ever-obsequious", you say, whilst instantly crediting anything remotely positive to Trump's influence. You know full well he doesn't give a tinker's damn about the fate of the Greenlanders.

Sarcasm passing you by?

What I meant is that something which was previously totally ignored outside Denmark (the porpaganda organs elsewhere would never even look at it, nor have anyone aware of it) now merits the eoffort of being written about. It came in handy as a means of spinning Denmark as baddies. One form of pressure, there is a programme going.

This ist't just a Trump idea. It's the imperial estabelishment (they see themselves as such) antecipating its losses in Europe and reacting. It's the security state bureaucracy behind it, Trumo os just riding it. Just as Trump started talking about "tariffs on China" and the next one kept going with it.
The US has been ever since its big international entanglements post ww2 a very internally chaotic and easy to manipulate "empire". I doesn't mean that as a state it can't act on perceived interests when a proposed move has no internal opposition. The success or failure of that move then depends on the external counter-forces it meets, not on random distractions or short attention span. Attention shifts happen when the move turns out to be to hard or expensive. As anyone who knows of the fable of the fox who left saying "they weren't ripe" sould know. Diplomacy is people, and it's not very hard to undestant people actually.

In short: the danes sould be worried. But they probably have already screwed themselves by now.
 
Danish news reported that diplomacy is kicking into gear; US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Danish counterpart Lars Lokke Rasmussen are to meet later this year, to discuss various issues concerning bilateral discussions on trade, security and defense. Greenland isn't specifically mentioned, but I take it for granted that it will be a top issue on that meeting.
 
Cracks are showing in the alliances:

Trade is supposed to be handled by the EU, and security and defence within NATO.

Not really.

EU member states can negotiate some sectors of trade on bilateral terms with non-EU trade partners, without the EU. Such sectors could be energy and defense; each EU member state can freely procure military hardware from outside the EU without the involvement of the EU Parliament or the EU Commission.

Also, Greenland isn't in the EU, so whatever bilateral trade arrangements are discussed between Greenland and the US (if they are), doesn't concern the EU.
 
My policy on the elderly Donald Trump, and younger others of his ilk such as Elon Musk, is to ignore them if possible.

If ignoring them is not possible, then it is best to be polite and listen to what they say, but negotiate nothing.

But politicians often fall into the trap of assuming that getting into a dialogue will satisfactorily resolve matters.

But perhaps Lars Lokke Rasmussen's meeting later this year is simply a delaying tactic in the hope that
by then the force of unfolding world events will have diverted Donald Trump's mind away from Greenland.

Now if I was Donald, I'd send Elon Musk to talk about ASML and building chip factories in the USA etc
to reduce US dependence upon Taiwan.
 
TSMC is already building or expanding plants in the US; the one in Arizona will go online during Trump's Presidency, planned to be mass producing down to 2nm chips by 2028.

More plants will follow, making Taiwan less of a bottleneck in global production of high-end chips.
 
Top Bottom