Are there any instances in which Denmark has refused to co-operate with the USA over collective security in Greenland?
They did not invite any US units to participate in the 2025 annual Greenland military exercise, just units from France and Germany. Total 550 personnel, two F-16s, one helicopter, one frigate. Write-ups on the exercise also emphasized the difficulties Denmark and France had getting two planes and one helicopter to Greenland.
Worth noting that a single US Wasp-class amphibious assault ship carries more Marines and much heavier weaponry than took part in the exercise. Standard compliment for an AAS is 1900 Marines with six F-35Bs, four attack helicopters, a dozen supply helicopters, three air-cushion landing craft, five tanks, eight howitzers, lots of trucks, plus fuel and ammunition. And a hospital. On the Navy side there's 1200 crew with anti-air and anti-ship missiles, multiple sorts of air and surface radar, and a long list of defensive stuff. The US has seven Wasp-class ships. Range is 9,500 nautical miles. The trip from their Atlantic Coast home port to Greenland and back is about half that.
3 weeks ago
Now I can see it, but it still has “awaiting approval” or whatever the exact wording is.
I didn't notice that unspamming it left it waiting for approval, rather than just releasing it completely.
3 weeks ago
It’s becoming clear through statements by Rubio and Miller, that the goal is hemispheric dominance by the US for the sake of dominance.
I've been saying since about February that the actions of the administration make some sort of weird sense if you assume the goal is Donald, First of His Name, Emperor of the Americas. There are lots of parallels to historical empires. Vassal states are to produce raw materials and consume manufactured goods. Citizens of the vassal states don't easily acquire citizenship in the dominant country.
Perhaps not all of the Americas, though. Like the historical Monroe Doctrine, Trump's version is very heavily Atlantic- and Caribbean-centric. There is an interesting test case: a shiny new deep-water port built by China opened in Chancay, Peru late in 2024. Bolivia has already signed a deal to increase their lithium production and ship it to China through that port. Estimates are that very soon there will be a million shipping containers per year of consumer goods shipped directly to South America through Chancay. There also appear to be lots of EVs going there as well in big roll-on/roll-off ships.
3 weeks ago
Somehow I’m in the spam bucket after a comment with no links or anything else I can imagine would flag it.
Freed it. Spam filters are the magic sauce in commercial blogging software. Good ones make sites usable. The companies don't reveal how it works, so there's no reliable way to warn people about what not to do. That's actually understandable: if the spam-detection algorithms were revealed, the spammers would be working even harder to find ways to defeat them.
3 weeks ago
On editing... To add slightly to @wj's comment, you generally have to be logged in to WordPress and have sufficient privileges to edit comments. I have enough privileges to be really dangerous, so if I want to edit, I log in, do the edit, then log out immediately.
3 weeks ago
Certainly Greenland still has strategic value.
Are the G-I-UK gap sonar facilities to keep Russian submarines from reaching the North Atlantic undetected still a thing? I assume so, since some of NATO's strategy still involves holding open the sea lanes between Europe and the (supposedly) vast manufacturing capacity of the US.
4 weeks ago
@Hartmut, if Western Europe has really reached that sort of conclusion, that the US executive branch (with cover from the judicial) can do as it pleases, w/o any attention to even the niceties of form, well... There's three more years before control of the executive can legally change hands. I would suggest Europe thinks hard about taking action:
Get serious about the mutual defense parts of the EU treaties, rather than NATO. How does France feel about a nuclear-capable Germany?
Accept that it's going to be damned expensive.
Kick the 80,000+ US military and their kit out of Europe. Soon.
Work hard to get Britain to jump the right way.
And part of me also thinks, don't ask me to constrain the Trumpists overseas, I've got a civil war to fight.
4 weeks ago
In addition to Trump's threats about crude oil resources in Venezuela, a Delaware court is nearing the end of the process to sell off Citgo's US assets. Citgo is majority owned, indirectly, by Venezuela. Citgo's big Gulf Coast refineries were specifically tailored to handle Venezuela's crappy crude oil. As I understand that case, much of the proceeds from the sale will go to the companies whose Venezuelan assets were nationalized. None of the big oil majors bid on the Citgo assets. You have to wonder if any of them will be interested in taking on the billions of dollars of deferred maintenance the oil infrastructure in Venezuela requires.
4 weeks ago
...for among other things illegal possession of firearms and intent to acquire such. Where in the constitution does it say that one needs a congressional approval for that?
If I recall what I've seen this morning correctly, the indictment that is the basis for the arrest warrant says "fully automatic firearms". Full-auto weapons are only legal under some very narrow conditions. I don't remember if a non-citizen can qualify. So far, at least, the Supreme Court has upheld state and federal restrictions on full-auto weapons.
Are there any instances in which Denmark has refused to co-operate with the USA over collective security in Greenland?
They did not invite any US units to participate in the 2025 annual Greenland military exercise, just units from France and Germany. Total 550 personnel, two F-16s, one helicopter, one frigate. Write-ups on the exercise also emphasized the difficulties Denmark and France had getting two planes and one helicopter to Greenland.
Worth noting that a single US Wasp-class amphibious assault ship carries more Marines and much heavier weaponry than took part in the exercise. Standard compliment for an AAS is 1900 Marines with six F-35Bs, four attack helicopters, a dozen supply helicopters, three air-cushion landing craft, five tanks, eight howitzers, lots of trucks, plus fuel and ammunition. And a hospital. On the Navy side there's 1200 crew with anti-air and anti-ship missiles, multiple sorts of air and surface radar, and a long list of defensive stuff. The US has seven Wasp-class ships. Range is 9,500 nautical miles. The trip from their Atlantic Coast home port to Greenland and back is about half that.
Now I can see it, but it still has “awaiting approval” or whatever the exact wording is.
I didn't notice that unspamming it left it waiting for approval, rather than just releasing it completely.
It’s becoming clear through statements by Rubio and Miller, that the goal is hemispheric dominance by the US for the sake of dominance.
I've been saying since about February that the actions of the administration make some sort of weird sense if you assume the goal is Donald, First of His Name, Emperor of the Americas. There are lots of parallels to historical empires. Vassal states are to produce raw materials and consume manufactured goods. Citizens of the vassal states don't easily acquire citizenship in the dominant country.
Perhaps not all of the Americas, though. Like the historical Monroe Doctrine, Trump's version is very heavily Atlantic- and Caribbean-centric. There is an interesting test case: a shiny new deep-water port built by China opened in Chancay, Peru late in 2024. Bolivia has already signed a deal to increase their lithium production and ship it to China through that port. Estimates are that very soon there will be a million shipping containers per year of consumer goods shipped directly to South America through Chancay. There also appear to be lots of EVs going there as well in big roll-on/roll-off ships.
Somehow I’m in the spam bucket after a comment with no links or anything else I can imagine would flag it.
Freed it. Spam filters are the magic sauce in commercial blogging software. Good ones make sites usable. The companies don't reveal how it works, so there's no reliable way to warn people about what not to do. That's actually understandable: if the spam-detection algorithms were revealed, the spammers would be working even harder to find ways to defeat them.
On editing... To add slightly to @wj's comment, you generally have to be logged in to WordPress and have sufficient privileges to edit comments. I have enough privileges to be really dangerous, so if I want to edit, I log in, do the edit, then log out immediately.
Certainly Greenland still has strategic value.
Are the G-I-UK gap sonar facilities to keep Russian submarines from reaching the North Atlantic undetected still a thing? I assume so, since some of NATO's strategy still involves holding open the sea lanes between Europe and the (supposedly) vast manufacturing capacity of the US.
@Hartmut, if Western Europe has really reached that sort of conclusion, that the US executive branch (with cover from the judicial) can do as it pleases, w/o any attention to even the niceties of form, well... There's three more years before control of the executive can legally change hands. I would suggest Europe thinks hard about taking action:
And part of me also thinks, don't ask me to constrain the Trumpists overseas, I've got a civil war to fight.
In addition to Trump's threats about crude oil resources in Venezuela, a Delaware court is nearing the end of the process to sell off Citgo's US assets. Citgo is majority owned, indirectly, by Venezuela. Citgo's big Gulf Coast refineries were specifically tailored to handle Venezuela's crappy crude oil. As I understand that case, much of the proceeds from the sale will go to the companies whose Venezuelan assets were nationalized. None of the big oil majors bid on the Citgo assets. You have to wonder if any of them will be interested in taking on the billions of dollars of deferred maintenance the oil infrastructure in Venezuela requires.
...for among other things illegal possession of firearms and intent to acquire such. Where in the constitution does it say that one needs a congressional approval for that?
If I recall what I've seen this morning correctly, the indictment that is the basis for the arrest warrant says "fully automatic firearms". Full-auto weapons are only legal under some very narrow conditions. I don't remember if a non-citizen can qualify. So far, at least, the Supreme Court has upheld state and federal restrictions on full-auto weapons.