Comment by ericmay

> Ehm, Russia didn't invade Danish territory. The US was threatening to invade Danish territory.

Can you invade a territory in which you already have a dominant military presence? I appreciate Denmark’s bark loud approach but the country is militarily irrelevant. I think it was more of an awful negotiation tactic. We weren’t in the room. Maybe the Danes simply needed a reminder to take US concerns seriously and this was the crappy way of doing that.

> Putin only wants them because they are weak and can be played.

Either way they’re in the room at least trying something. Why aren’t European leaders in Moscow trying to get the war to end? Because they’re strong? Sorry that doesn’t pass the smell test.

> It was not a negotiation tactic. They already had an agreement for over half a century that they could scale up US military presence as they would like. The US has reduced presence over the years.

I disagree. Guess we can agree to disagree here. The new agreement protects American bases even if Greenland declares independence and also establishes formal, legal rights for America to prohibit hostile nations from mining or establishing military infrastructure on the island.

> Aside from getting a worse deal then before, as a side-effect many European countries that were planning to buy US arms are now switching to European options.

Well the deal is better. That’s an objective fact. Nobody in the US is threatened by or cares if Europeans are buying local. We led the way on that and we are happy that Europe is investing more in its defense and defense industrial base.

> This sends ripples all over the world and Europe, Canada, and East Asian countries get the message "we cannot trust the US as an ally anymore", which leads to proliferation and probably more wars.

That doesn’t reflect reality though. Japan and Korea for example haven’t lost trust. Putin by attacking Ukraine sort of forced the issue and to get countries thinking about whether the US would use nuclear weapons I guess in these wars? But the same is true for the EU. Even the language you are using doesn’t make sense to me. If Putin attacks a NATO country why is he all of a sudden testing how firm Trump’s commitments are? He would be testing how firm the EU’s commitments are instead. How fast do you think Spain or Italy will tap out when their kids are off dying in the cold to defend Estonia? What will to fight does France have when its economy is so heavily indebted? Poland and the United Kingdom will fight, the baltics would too since their lives are at stake. You can read for yourself survey results out of Germany where some large majority of German citizens said they wouldn’t fight to defend Germany. You’re going to read this as an attack on Europe. Nothing is further from the truth. I love Europe, but folks need to have a sober assessment of themselves here instead of hiding every possible problem behind Donald Trump.

Poland specifically said they did not want to host nuclear weapons by the way. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/poland-do...