Denmark summons top US diplomat over alleged Greenland influence operation

The US administration hates offshore wind farms more than DEI. I don't believe this was a shock as stated in the article.

The US is actually in a weird place where it has more oil (and natural gas) than any other country by far, but has competition everywhere when selling it and now refining capacity will soon drop to the point where the US will need to import millions of gallons of refined petroleum products per day, probably from Mexico and Asia, with tariffs.

I had a debate with my teenage daughters yesterday whether Trump was evil (all agreed), nice (all disagreed), stupid (they agreed, I did not). I explained that he's a fool wielding a very powerful tool. And we all suffer his greed. But in the end of the day, he's still a fool easily swayed by throwing a couple of dollars his way.

> Greenland is such a small population it's hard to hide something like this.

I remember reading some impressions of the dating scene in Iceland (almost 7x Greenland's population) and realizing just how well everyone knows of... well, everyone. (At least via friend of friend in cohorts)

A country of 56,800 isn't a great target for secretly conducting influence ops...

> what the hell is happening. How do we "get back to normal"?

To a certain degree, that is what’s happening. Denmark should bolster its military presence on Greenland, potentially up to and including by putting it under a nuclear umbrella. (Ideally European. Pragmatically, homegrown.)

You don't "get back to normal". 77 million people voted for this, and 90 million more did not care enough to stop it. This is the "normal" now, what they voted for, and you don't just forget about it.

Americans have been doing things like this for a while. It's just that they're doing it to their "allies" now.

You'd be surprised how many people here will just continue to downplay any kind of anti-democratic creep all the way to its abolishment. And Trump is even a vulgar example rather than a smooth one.

Privileged people have a bad habit of assuming they'll be outside of any significantly adverse effects - or may even think "Well, this kinda sucks, but maybe this is actually pretty good for my wallet (read: social-economical status)".

There is no going back to "normal". The American Empire is failing, the imperial boomerang is in full effect, and it will continue to destroy American democracy from within.

Revolution is required.

Military coup and throwing the fascists in jail. There's no going back or adjusting course otherwise, people like this will only keep going unless punished. Yet we keep going with appeasement.

As much as I take a centrist position; I can’t see a solution that doesn’t involve a civil war that some of the American white supremacists have been begging for.

The project 2025 mandate for leadership enabled a dictator in the making to establish himself.

The Republican Congress removed the checks in the Supreme Court during Trump’s first term; and refuse to legislate in a way that works against Trump.

And this second term, he’s been purging all of the civil servants who are more loyal to the mission than to him.

What I’m dreading is 2028: Will he make good on his threat to go for a third term? Will most of the nation be too apathetic?

Maybe Trump found Hitler's fascism playbook. Part of it is to acquire new territory to stay popular. I'm guessing the US will make at least one serious attempt at annexing new land before Trump's term is over. Panama, Canada, or Greenland maybe?

Edit: Getting downvoted now. No clue why. It's not me who is making these suggestions. This administration has literally said these things themselves. If you downvote me, at least have the balls to explain why.

> US is still largely a democratic country

Having fixed elections from a pool of candidates that have been pre approved by people you don’t know does not make for a democracy

The correct move is Russian-style hybrid warfare against the US. Botnets manipulating social media with pro-European viewpoints. Paying opposition politicians. Inciting unrest to paralyze the regime. Etc etc.

Do you have any source for that?

From my perspective, as an European, there's plenty of forces / population within the EU that doesn't want federalization.

Even myself, I'm generally pro-federalization (necessary to solve some structural problems, border, army, money), I definitely don't want to give even more power to Germany (biggest and most powerful EU country), so the only way forward would be for Germany to massively diminish their power... but then they probably wouldn't want that.

Same story as Putin trying to weaken NATO. The two might have given the nudge towards a EU army or at least a more tightly integrated defence force. Spending will be through the roof for at least the coming two decades.

> Virgin Islands

Denmark tried to offhand the islands multiple times.

"The islands were eventually sold to the United States for $25 million ($613,570,000 in 2024) which took over the administration on 31 March 1917 and renamed the territory the United States Virgin Islands."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_West_Indies

The controversy is more how it got in the hands of Denmark in the first place.

> Emphasis on the word 'alleged' which is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the article

This is the BBC, talking about something which might be a criminal offence, for which no-one has been (as yet) convicted. They will absolutely use the word 'alleged'. If someone is standing over a pile of corpses with a gun and saying "I did it, and I'd do it again", the BBC will still refer to this as alleged murder unless or until there is a conviction, as will most other high-quality journalistic outlets; it's a fairly standard convention.

> Except you definitely CAN annex a foreign country. How does he think the US got Texas, Hawaii, California, Nevada, Utah, and overseas territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa?

By sneakily doing it before the United Nations Charter, one assumes. (Also some of these were via cession, which is a bit different).

What I like about this comment is also what I like about the current imperial administration. It's blunt, it's openly brutish and evil. And now, European vassals are finally understanding their place in this new world and will fully grasp what it felt like to be a South American, African or Asian nation whose sovereignty only exists on paper.

> How does he think the US got Texas, Hawaii, California, Nevada, Utah, and overseas territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa?

There are different meanings for annexation. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation

"Annexation,[1] in international law, is the forcible acquisition and assertion of legal title over one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory.[2] In current international law, it is generally held to be an illegal act.[3] Annexation is a unilateral act where territory is seized and held by one state,[4] as distinct from the complete conquest of another country,[a][7][8] and differs from cession, in which territory is given or sold through treaty."

While the Republic of Texas was annexed into the United States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_annexation), it was voluntary, and does not fit that modern definition in international law.

Puerto Rico was also transferred to the US by cession, because it was "as a result of a treaty concluded between the States concerned" (quoting [3] above), that being the 1898 Treaty of Paris.

It's also seen in the name "Mexican Cession" to describe the lands transferred to the US as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, even though we often say the region was annexed by the U.S. to become, for example, Utah and Nevada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Cession

I consider the US acquisition of Republic of Hawaii to be annexation, and would add the acquisition of the Philippines in 1898 to your list. The American Anti-Imperialist League was right.

A goal of the post-war anti-colonization movement was to delegitimize the use force to obtain territory, which is why [3] also points out "Under present international law, annexation no longer constitutes a legally admissible mode of acquisition of territory as it violates the prohibition of the threat or use of force. Therefore annexations must not be recognized as legal." (Emphasis mine.)