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silvestrov: > * The Danish public broadcaster DR reports ...*This is the source article (in Danish) for the bluesky posts:https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/groenland/danmark-forbered...

jacquesm: Of course they were. The United States has never before damaged its own reputation in Europe as much as they did in the last 12 months.And the same goes for Canada, possibly worse. You don't go around threatening your allies unless you really have plans and that's why you don't elect senile old guys to positions of power.

philipallstar: > that's why you don't elect senile old guys to positions of power.Anyone of principle would have been saying this before 2025, and far louder.

jacquesm: Note that this is from a country that wouldn't exist if not for the allied countries and that the US has somehow managed to all but erase that reputation. We recognize our debt, we also recognize that this is to a country that no longer exists in a meaningful way. All we have now is multiple variations of the mob.

equilibrium: Europe and the rest of the world.

matsemann: Russia's invasion ironically strengthened NATO, with more countries joining or feeling the usefulness of it. Somehow the US managed to break down all that good will in such a short amount of time.. I think it's hard to overstate how much more hostile people look at the US the last few years. So much soft power has been lost.

throwa356262: Those Danes should study the Falklands war.Using F35 in this situation is like brining in a billion dollar paperweight to the battle.s

jacquesm: That doesn't matter. It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. It is about gross miscalculation of consequences. Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU.So you don't attack Greenland. Because that would be wrong.Unless all that stuff about shining cities on hills was nonsense. Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.

Peritract: That is a very reasonable response to the threats they faced.

zeroCalories: And partisan hacks will say that a stubbed toe and terminal cancer are both bad.

philipallstar: Indeed - Joe Biden was in far, far worse shape than Trump is. He barely appeared, and when he did he turned to people who weren't there, read parts of the transcript that were directions, and took giant amounts of holiday. Trump's talking basically every day in front of press, and for very long periods of time. There's absolutely no comparison, but the unprincipled are only mentioning age now.

gpderetta: True. Yet he still managed to do less damage.

kelipso: Lol there is posturing and there is whatever this is.

ericmay: The US wouldn’t even need to “attack” Greenland. What is there to even attack? 50 Danish soldiers? They could just say “that’s ours”, ignore whatever Europe says, and start doing whatever they wanted to do and instead force the EU to attack American forces or civilian business interests.I’m not suggesting this is a good idea or anything but there’s a ton of other ways that something like this could play out which involves more difficult ways to counter than you might think.> Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.What power has the US ceded?

Eupolemos: What power?Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency).The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz).All the soft power it ever had.

butILoveLife: As someone who studies International Relations, your take is gen pop, normie stuff.IR never follows Trust. It follows Power.You made the mistake to think you can trust nations in the anarchic system of IR. "Rookie mistake"I'm curious, are you an American? If so, I get it, we were taught IR Idealism in K12 school as children. If you are a European... Were you born after the cold war ended? I know Europe has been under the US Security umbrella and could have fanciful ideas of IR Idealism (and sometimes pacifism).Europe historically has been pretty solid Realists since the 30 years war. Maybe a brief interruption with the Holy Alliance.

deaux: If reputation with the masses was completely irrelevant, the likes of Saudi Arabia wouldn't throw dozens of billions at trying to improve it. Neither would there be any use in Hasbara outside of lobbying.Soft power is still power. It might not be as good as hard power, but you sure would rather have it than not.

empath75: The only way the US can fix our reputation will be to try and imprison our current leadership after they are eventually removed from power. And in particular, the Trump family needs to have all of its assets seized.

nxm: Imprison based on what and seize assets based on what exactly? You not liking the administration is not a valid reason for asset seizure

ivan_gammel: There’s probably a huge case for corruption. And of course he can be declared national threat and foreign agent. I mean, just look what Putin does within his constitutional limits. When there’s choice between the bad (block Trump and allies) and the worse (his ideas stay alive even if he is no longer in business), you have to choose something and then reflect not on what you just did, but how did you get there in the first place. Legal matters are secondary, as long as majority is convinced that justice is served.

nxm: Well maybe finally Europe can actually invest in own defense instead of the American tax payer for it

thibran: You forget hat you got a say for that money in a lot of parts of the world, which is one of the primary reasons the US is so wealthy.Europ took the deal that the US "Handels the war stuff in the world" for some influence.If we handle the "war stuff", the US influence will be gone.

dukeyukey: Surely there's a massive overlap, in that a country that has been trustworthy in the past derives a certain level of power from that? Like, Trump randomly declaring tariffs means a deal is not worth making, which erodes American economic power as countries find other suppliers and customers.

jazz9k: Why? They haven't done anything wrong and it reeks of communist tactics.Obama bombed kids in the Middle East, went after Republicans illegally with the IRS, and deported many more than Trump.He got a Netflix deal.

Hnrobert42: False equivalence.

enoint: It wasn’t even about Greenland, but a distraction from the extent of Trump’s knowledge of Epstein.Anyway, there’s actually an index for soft power. Eliminating USAID halved that index. China built the highways, hospitals and water treatment instead.

Imustaskforhelp: > So much soft power has been lost.The worst part to me feels like US has lost trust and such soft power loss is irrecoverable no matter what happens now :/A common statement I hear from people, or maybe its just what I think, but its like "How can we trust US after this" and hey mind you, Trump still has 3 years in office, but even if political parties change, how can we trust the whole system for not having another Trump moment.So this loss of soft power is quite a permanent loss. US has to now condition itself to live with it accordingly and live with some shame (which is something that I am observing too of people not being proud of being american anymore seeing the devastation caused by it)Countries across the world will have to treat US as unpredictable from now on and treat its financial markets in the same way as well.The worst part out of all of this is that it hurts the average day american the most not the people at the top who are doing all of this and the average person has no say in all of this seeing their country being destroyed by wreckless actions.The sad part is that people did have many wake up calls to be honest, greenland was first joked about and then became so serious that denmark was preparing only to then move to iran now impacting the normal people's everyday life with oil price increases all across the world..I do think that the people of US tried to stand up against the oppression by protests but some were shot (rest in peace) and others were detained.The sad part is that the people tried their best but it still wasn't enough to stop all of this from happening. It was maybe too late after the election.

jjtwixman: Yeah the US we knew is gone. I think about this sometimes when I am listening to American music from the 20th century, how much soft power they had, how great they made America sound either directly or indirectly. That America that we all looked up to and admired is gone. Pity.

butILoveLife: If you are an American, this should 'tragically'(Mearsheimer) make you rethink spending resources on soft power.If a single US president can waste billions or trillions in soft power influence, the logically correct thing to do is to use hard power and seize resources.This shocks normies, but close to 100% of International Relations students and practitioners use Realism and not Idealism.Honestly this entire thing has convinced me outside of the books. I know Trump is a baddie, but seeing how quick Europe and Canada turned on the US makes me think we need full focus on hard power.

aaomidi: Epstein files for one

ta20240528: The UK only had to send a single officer to Greenland to stop Trump's previous attempt to annex Greenland.That was a signal, thankfully there are still adults in the USA who recognised it.

ericmay: You’re naive if you think that was what stopped Trump there lol

ta20240528: You clearly don't know British understatement.Firing on one British officer would be as bad a firing on 10000.It's about lines.

zabzonk: > Note that this is from a country that wouldn't exist if not for the allied countriesWhich allied countries? And (I assume we are talking about the USA) why would it not exist?

jacquesm: NL (where I live), BE, FR, ES, IT, a good chunk of Germany, Austria, possibly the UK.We'd have been part of the German Reich or the USSR for sure.I make a point of visiting the war graves every year, just to remind me not to take anything for granted.

_bohm: Starting illegal wars and engaging in extreme corruption, for starters.

butILoveLife: Not really.They are Melos and the US is Athens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos)Is it reasonable to send people to their deaths when the outcome of peace would be the same?When I was in my 20s, what I am saying would be horrible. But that is international relations Idealism/Institutionalism. No one plays that game (except people outside of power and maybe small states that are under great power security umbrellas)If you want to be knowledgable on international relations, the 'universal' accepted theory is called Systems Realism. There is an anarchic nature to IR, so you cannot declare pacificism or pretend a weak state can reasonably face a strong state(at least not unless the weak state is getting secondary support, which does happen).Idealism is the creationism of IR. (Systems) Realism is the darwinism of IR.As Mearsheimer says: "Its tragic"

Peritract: You're forgetting several factors which undermine your analysis:1. Denmark does have allies; they're not completely alone, and they're not completely helpless.2. The US has a track record of invasions, but not one of successfully pacifying states. Resistance works.You're using the same simplistic logic as Russia invading Ukraine; you can't just compare population numbers and guarantee an immediate victory.There's also a separate issue here: the US invading Denmark would lead to a lot of death and a loss of freedom for its citizens, even if unopposed. Flip your demurral: if they're going to take everything anyway, why not fight?

FpUser: >"You not liking the administration is not a valid reason for asset seizure"Civil forfeiture would do just fine. Such a wonderful tool. /s

i80and: The absolute lack of consequences Trump faced after his first go-around all but guaranteed the crime spree we're now seeing, and will probably go down in history as the primary blunder of Biden's DOJ.

roenxi: On what principle would the Trump family's assets be seized? Just to pre-empt the idea that he corruptly became rich in office, that is actually fairly usual for US presidents to become suspiciously wealthy after their time in office [0, 1]. That's never been a reason to start talking about asset seizure.Although given the current lunatic escapade it does seem like a good moment to remove him from office. There must be someone somewhere in the administration that thinks another forever war is a bad idea, even if they aren't worried about WWIII. I've never seen a presidency implode so quickly - this has to be the most illegal, unconstitutional, unmandated, immoral and ill-advised war of choice the US has launched in decades.[0] https://www.newsweek.com/chart-shows-net-worth-us-presidents...[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...

throwpoaster: If the US invaded Canada they would win before we finished the land acknowledgment.

matsemann: This is very reductive. European countries pay a lot into their defense, especially the last few years. It's not as black&white as a certain person likes to claim.

jjtwixman: Yes really, firstly it worked, and secondly it forced Americans to reckon with murdering and betraying their friends across the Atlantic. You can take Greenland, but you must live with the infamy and treachery of it all. And Trump blinked.

ta20240528: Nah mate,Rich powerful countries could also keep slaves and no one would be able to stop it by force.But they don't. Civilisation advances.

KaiMagnus: And this is, in my opinion, why support at Hormuz shouldn’t even be on the table. How can you possibly hold joint patrols when you were just months ago planning full scale war between each other?

verelo: Also, the "was" in this title feels misleading. If they're not still, they're crazy.

freehorse: The original title is better translated as "prepared". The tweeting reposter translated to continuous past tense somewhat erroneously imo, because it sounds as if the preparation was interrupted by something.

fluidcruft: I'm of pretty mixed feelings about this. It certainly strengthened Europe's collective defense priorities and awareness. That response happens to include NATO but primarily because Europe is too weak without NATO. Europe used to be full of world powers and now they collectively can't manage collective defense without the US? There's something very learned-helplessness about that.And yes, it certainly has served America's interests to have a weak Europe that's dependent on it. But seeing that as "good will" seems like a distortion.

fifilura: [delayed]

krona: I live very close to one of the USAF's largest European airbases.While Trump was trolling European leaders about their security posture (by threatening to relieve them of sovereign territory which the US already has extensive access to) the USAF was already moving assets in the opposite direction to the middle east (this was mid-january).It's fairly easy to work out what's happening if you ignore the orange man and listen to what serious people are saying, what they've briefed on, how they contradict one another, and where the assets are moving.Obviously European leaders have to pretend to take the orange man seriously, but the reaction in the media was bordering on hysterical.

enoint: This is exactly right. The liar who lies to control the narrative is lying again. The chance he’s lying is high but as adults the (likelihood * hazard) of an invasion is worth preparing for.The narrative he wanted to control was about Epstein. Denmark could have simultaneously prepared for that, but it wouldn’t be on OSInt Twitter.

InsideOutSanta: The problem is that his "lies" and "jokes" sometimes suddenly turned out to be not lies and jokes.

beanjuiceII: lol Denmark yea i'm sure no one was concerned

1over137: >It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that.Um, lots of us have doubts about that. The USA couldn't win against Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; why do you think it could win against Greenland? Greenlanders actually have a lot of guns; and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA.

Quothling: I'm Danish. There are 56k people in Greenland and almost half of them live in Nuuk. The USA could frankly "take" greenland simply by putting a warship there and saying it was theirs. Not really sure why it was ever on the table though. The USA has basically free reign to expand it's military bases there, aside from the ban on nuclear weapons. Which would probably have been a possiblity considering we're now debating whether or not to have french nuclear weapon carrying planes stationed on Danish soil in the fallout of the USA no longer being a trusty NATO ally.If it was because of resources, then American companies are frankly free to extract them as long as they reach deals with Greenland about it. If the USA had waited a few years for Greenland to gain more independence then it would have been even easier.

crispyambulance: There's a difference between "posturing" for show and actually "preparing for war".They're wise to the fact that "the Stable Genius" isn't going to try anything violent with Denmark/Greenland, but they still want to prevent him thinking about just stealing territory "peacefully."

jacquesm: Trust me, Denmark wasn't posturing.The assumption was - and still is - that the USA wasn't posturing either.We (and I realize I obviously don't speak for all of Europe but I have my finger on the pulse in many places here) are also not assuming that when Trump is gone the USA will go back to normal.

easytiger: This is absurd in the extreme. In actual war there is absolutely no possibility of success for Denmark, even with the help of allies. Failure to capitulate results in nothing but death and destruction with no hope of strategic gain to begin with. What you are likely experiencing is a modern belief that screaming and shouting will bring popular diplomatic pressure to bear on the opponent, thus arresting their actions.There was similar tough talk in 1940 and Denmark lasted 6 hours. Without capitulation the country would have been razed. But surrender saw it able to keep some level of control and thus extricate the Jewish population in relative safety which would not otherwise have been possible.

jacquesm: No, what is absurd is the number of people that can't wait to go back to a world with endless wars of conquest. We already know what that looks like.If you have never seen war up close then I am happy to forgive you, but trust me, in 'actual war' there is no possibility of success for anybody, there are only degrees of damage and degrees of grief and illusions to the contrary are focused on the few people that manage to get out of war with the profits in their pockets. Everybody else suffers.

easytiger: I'm sorry but you are not interacting with the rational suppositions of posters in various threads here. No one is arguing for a war except you. People are explaining to you the strategic reality and you are espousing rhetoric that I honestly can't decipher.1. Denmark cannot win militarily2. You are suggesting Denmark would not capitulate and indeed enter into a state of warWhat do you think happens in this situation?

jacquesm: > I'm sorry but you are not interacting with the rational suppositions of posters in various threads here.The one thing that is common about 'rationalists' is that they share a lot of the viewpoints with other ra*ists and that's not the world many of us want to live in.Sure, you can take it. But can you afford to take it?The answer is most likely you can't. And so far every attempt to show John Mearheimers superiority has been the equivalent of 'just relax and enjoy it'.Guess what? We won't. Alliances are made voluntarily, not through conquest.

Insanity: And even if they did go back to normal for the next presidency - why trust it? Their entire political system is set up so that the winds can change entirely every 4 years.If the people voted Trump in to office twice, it’ll happen again. It’s a divided country where propaganda has a strong hold.

dspillett: Useful stability can be achieved again, either “back to normal” as mentioned elsewhere in this thread or “forward to something different but better (and not crap like it is now)”, but it is going to take at least a few terms, maybe several. Even if it did happen more quickly, it will take that long for those of us on the outside to trust it, reputational damage like this can not be undone quickly.

jnwatson: Ukraine thought Russia was just posturing and look where it got them.

__bjoernd: I'm pretty sure Ukraine were taking the Russian preparations as what they were. And they had plans to counter them. Proven by the fact that Putin's 3 days war has now surpassed the Russian involvement in WWII.

petterroea: Living in Japan, I meet and talk to Chinese when out drinking. Many of them are almost literally ROFLing about how the US practically just gave away everything they had to China. It's as if the US is playing poker with their cards facing up on the table. Chinese already consider themselves the defacto superpower.If mainstream media in the US showed this, I bet the politics would look different.

steinvakt2: Seems weird. China is definitely falling behind. India is not.

petterroea: They are pretty happy with having superiority on high tech manufacturing and robotics. You basically cannot manufacture something without using China - even if you try. I don't think they consider the TSMC EUV monopoly a long term threat. Doing good on AI as well, you bet the OSS chinese models causing stock panic in the US makes them laugh.On the topic of manufacturing outside China, the YouTuber "Smarter Every day" (Destin Sandlin) has a series on manufacturing and feels strongly about manufacturing having moved out of the country. As an experiment he tried to manufacture something without China, but was unable to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY

jacquesm: I have some friends who are doing things 'China free' and it is possible but it comes at a very substantial premium.

petterroea: I think the most interesting takeaway from this video in question is that he tried to buy material from an Indian seller, who promised it was Indian. When the box arrived, it had the name of a Chinese factory on it.

rishabhaiover: Hate to be that guy but> What to Submit> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.Reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Trasmatta: The US threatening to invade European territory, and Europe preparing to fight a war against the US, is absolutely "some interesting new phenomenon".

pembrook: It would be an interesting new phenomenon if it were true. But it requires unquestionably pretending a country of 5 million people was going to go to "war" with one that has 70X that and a military hundreds of times larger. C'mon.This is just vaguely frustrated venting into the void using a piece of fantasy erotic fan fiction from a hyper-political filter bubble (bluesky).

mirekrusin: Top class comedy is allowed though.

DivingForGold: The Anti-NATO pact.

srean: Nuremberg style judicial proceedings. Not necessarily with similar judicial executions. Fair trials and fair and exemplary punitive measures would be enough for me.I lost respect when Obama let Bush jr administration off the hook. It essentially set the tone that it is ok to behave like that, that there would be no consequences.

schnitzelstoat: Yeah, tbh I was in the camp of 'nothing ever happens' too and I was shocked when they actually invaded.

__bjoernd: No one forces you to be that guy :)

InsideOutSanta: It's peculiar to me that after Nixon, Americans just don't hold their presidents accountable for their illegal actions anymore. It seems like they've just given up; they no longer behave as if the president was the head of the executive branch. They behave as if he was a king with absolute power.This is such a long-standing problem that people no longer even notice the crimes happening right in front of their eyes. It's just become normal.

jfengel: Yes. That is why Biden dropped out. But the unprincipled are talking as if he was the candidate in 2024.

iugtmkbdfil834: The 'unprincipled' simply remember how long it took the establishment and Biden to drop out of the race ( and even that was only after it became painfully clear he is barely there ).

lm28469: > And this is, in my opinion, why support at Hormuz shouldn’t even be on the tableShouldn't? it's not on the table at all lol

freehorse: Well it is on the table but only trump is sitting on that table.

KaiserPro: I mean the same was said about Ukraine.What are we supposed to do, just fucking give up?

jacquesm: Ukraine is rapidly becoming one of the hardest countries in Europe. They fought a former superpower to a stand still and are innovating on weapons systems and integration at a pace that makes LM's skunkworks look like sloths. And on a budget that is insane.Just like Ukraine, Europe does not want war, doesn't want to see their kids die for the umpteenth time so that fat cats can line their pockets. But if push comes to shove we would be absolutely capable of doing it, either outright or by slower guerilla like means. Bombing shit is easy. Taking over territory and holding it is much, much harder, infinitely more so if the population holds a grudge. Note that the Dutch resistance killed more German soldiers than the army ever did. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, lots of countries in Europe. Examples aplenty.

vrganj: France has a nuclear deterrent it has stated has "a European dimension".Don't go around poking hornets nests if you don't want to get stung.

lynndotpy: I'm really happy these topics are being discussed here on HN, when they weren't ~1 year ago. When considering a post-USA world, we also get to consider a post-Microsoft, post-Meta, post-Google, post-CloudFlare, post-Amazon, etc world.I can't say I know much about how the EU operates or how quickly their Open Digital Ecosystems initiative could take shape, but this is a really opportune time to build a better tech industry.

AlecSchueler: > I'm really happy these topics are being discussed here on HN, when they weren't ~1 year ago.They were being discussed a year ago, too, they just got flagged. Make sure to check /active

blurbleblurble: Totally, and they're still being flagged, just not to as great a degree

HighGoldstein: If you hold the belief that the Trump administration (and Trump himself personally) have not commited a rather long list of crimes openly, you are either willfully ignorant or complicit. I do not care if this statement irritates you in any way. After a certain point, we are firmly in the realm of personal responsibility.

vrganj: > As a source puts it, the French said: "Would you like more soldiers? You could have them. Would you like more naval support? You could have that. Would you like more air support? You could have that too."Thank God for the French. I long thought their strong Gaullist stance on sovereignty was a bit silly in today's world, but turns out they were right along.Europe can't trust any outside powers. Any external dependency can and will be used against us. We used to be wide-eyed believers in international corporation and global alliances, but those are, as it turns out, always a risk and a liability.I sure as hell am glad the French kept being stubborn enough to build most capabilities in-house, so now we have our own nuclear deterrent, aircraft carrier and fighter jet programs. Imagine if we had gone all-in on American weapons tech! They'd have us, excuse my French, by the balls!

terminalshort: History shows that Europe can't trust any inside powers either...

vrganj: pre-EU history shows that, which is why we founded the EU in the first place.To quote one of our founding fathers, Robert Schuman, the point of tightly interweaving our economies this way is to "make war not only unthinkable, but materially impossible"

iso1631: Bush wasn't great with Iraq, but it was hardly the first bad foreign policy move the US has made, and Obama wasn't squeaky clean.Jan 6th 2021 was the turning point.

varispeed: > Somehow the US managed to break down all that good will in such a short amount of timeBecause US administration is compromised. Putin says jump, Krasnov asks how high.

terminalshort: Yes that is clearly the case. Obviously Putin told Trump to start seizing his oil tankers recently.

torginus: The F-35 is mentioned in the article as being readied for the defense of Greenland. I wonder what the 'easter-eggs' Danes would've found out about it if they went up against the US.(I think I know, it has to do with how its 'stealth' works.)

chewbacha: Jake Tapper was on the case… against Biden.

dspillett: Aye. Though those making a big noise about “Sleepy Joe” didn't seem to have a problem electing Drooling Dementia Drone Don.

bregma: There is no evidence that dozy Donny the paedo president has dementia. It's just that one of his personality traits is "Arbitrary".I can just imagine him saying, as he walks into the TV room in the Whitehouse, "I went to Glitterhoof's chamber and gave him a good tumble! It is good to be the king!"

dspillett: > There is no evidence […] Donny […] has dementia.Oh, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that would constitute proof without access to the results of a detailed medical examination. Source: watching the decline of family members, and others in the care home my mother is currently in.The increasing randomness and apparent lack of concentration, the “resting his eyes” in some meetings, the leaning, etc. A lot of the signs could be other things of course, like just plain ol' age related decline. But if the people close to him don't at least have concerns, would he have been subject to the cognitive tests he is so proud of “winning”?

imjonse: As a european I see what you mean, but that 'we all' in your sentence probably hasn't included those from Latin America, and large parts of Africa or Asia since long before Trump. The US pulled quite a few less than admirable tricks (to use an euphemism) on non-europeans during the 20th century.

gregw2: Not the parent poster but, while I acknowledge your point on Canada and Europe entering the conflict (and I'd add that the highly motivated Dutch punch well above their weight in intelligence and economic spheres and this whole scenario of US invasion is a Putin dream), when you ask "why do you think it could win...", the 50k population of Greenland is smaller than Granada (100k) and three orders of magnitude smaller than Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq (~40m). So I find its insurgency potential hard to compare to those examples you give.

srean: Did that US really exist without a self imposed convenience of blindness ?The brutality of the School of Americas might indicate otherwise.Now rebranded ashttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...

jacquesm: That's a tough question.There has always been a meddlesome quality to the USA that the rest of the so called developed world turned a blind eye to. Along the lines of 'their bastards, but at least they're our bastards'. Of course that does not make it good, but the balance calculation worked out in favor of toeing the line and being careful not to get pulled out of joint too much. 9/11 changed all that and effectively Bin Laden forced the USA to lower its mask for long enough that the world could no longer ignore the bad sides of Uncle Sam. Even that would have not been enough to seal it, but Trump has managed to accomplish this in record time.

srean: "Meddlesome" is certainly a light way of labeling torture training.What I find more troubling is that Trump has popular support. It's just not Trump. The rot goes far deeper.

TheOtherHobbes: Trump doesn't have popular support. Many of his 2024 voters are furious with him.What Trump has is oligarch support - an unholy alliance of weird and cranky tech billionaires, old(ish) money, foreign money, media owners, and insane white supremacist patriarch-wannabes, some of whom operate through think tanks, some through megachurches.The media are doing an excellent job of normalising this, not least - but not only - sanewashing Trump's obvious mental and physical decay.

bko: I'm sure this will be very unpopular but no one else is going to say it so here goes,I don't think a country should make decisions based on how it affects their "reputation" among other countries.Most of Europe has been riding on American security guarantees and under-invested in their own defense. And then there's other things like straight up theft from American companies mostly through "antitrust" or "data privacy" laws. This is thankfully changing due to Ukraine war. People say Europe is an ally but when America pays for their protection and gives them innovations in tech and subsidized drug discovery, what does America get in return?The fact is Europe hasn't offered America much of anything other than a vacation spot over the last 100 years. And there's the cookie banners too. They're essentially irrelevant in culture, technology and pretty much everything else. It's a shame and I hope it changes, but that's where we are. It's a stagnant culture, basically a museum, no economic growth or prosperity. The poorest US state rivals Germany in GDP per capita.So I don't think the US should give much consideration about it's reputation across Europe.https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/poorest-us-state-rivals-ge...https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-are-generally-richer...

xenocratus: > The fact is Europe hasn't offered America much of anything other than a vacation spot over the last 100 years. And there's the cookie banners too.https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?si=XCJWAtcZ0t633oLE

techterrier: > It's fairly easy to work out what's happeningoff you go then, what is it?

krona: Dunno, start by reading the national security strategy and count the number of times it mentions the words "Arctic" or "Greenland"? (hint: it's zero).Then maybe look at the Nato chain of command and who was interviewed and what was said in mid-Jan.

enoint: Amazing how outdated that document became. We all knew it was written for an audience of one, but still such transparent Emperors New Clothes vibe.

kasperstorgaard: Lars Løkke Rasmussen - Minister of Foreign Affairs, said just the other day on Genstart (podcast), that an EU solution for the Hormuz straight could be an option. This would be probably be through Aspides.

applfanboysbgon: Unfortunately it doesn't seem like that thought will actually hold up to the real world. The US's economy is tightly interweaved with and dependent upon many parties, but they have no qualms about utterly destroying themselves to satisfy the ego of one man they worship as their supreme leader. Schuman's quote requires a base minimum of rationality in the world, which we are discovering does not actually exist.

keiferski: I am equally dismayed at recent US behavior; but this is a short sighted view.1. Geopolitics is always unpredictable. Maybe the US has been unreliable lately, but the idea that there are states out there which have been bastions of reliability is not historically accurate. All great powers have screwed people over or made disastrous decisions. It’s mostly just the US’s turn now.2. This all happened 20 years ago with Iraq. All it really took was a charismatic president (Obama) to undo the 8+ years of bad international relations. All it will probably take again is a charismatic reliable president to set things back on track.3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.

hosteur: > Hate to be that guy butI do not believe you. I think you quite like to be that guy.

nickdothutton: I think there is a pretty good chance US is in the late empire phase. This is not about a single President or party, or even single geopolitical event/development.

iso1631: > This is not about a single President or partyI've seen roughly two types of American commentators over the last year. The ones that cheer this stuff going on, which HN has plenty of, and the ones that think "come the midterms/2028/impeachment everything will go back to normal"The latter are massively mistaken, it would take decades for the US to rebuild its standing in the eyes of the world, and there is no evidence that it even wants to.Trump is a symptom of what America truly is, not the cause.

ifwinterco: The French took basically the exact opposite approach to the British in terms of post-WW2 foreign policy.I think partly because of the shared language British elites were able to convince themselves that the US is just like us, and the so called "special relationship" sort of preserved British power albeit as an extremely junior partner riding on the coattails of the US.With the French there was no such delusion and they've never seen eye to eye with the Americans, they've just been biding their time waiting for this all to play out.In hindsight, the French were right of course (they usually are as much as it pains me to say it)

bryanlarsen: Keep in mind that militaries are always preparing for war. They have to. A military exists in large part to always be prepared for the unthinkable.And in the case of countries like Denmark who have few realistic enemy choices, that means they must be prepared for unrealistic invasions, even if the US isn't threatening to invade.Yes the Danes probably spend most of their time preparing to fight the Russians, but always wargaming the same thing leaves them unprepared for different enemies or unexpected approaches from expected enemies.Yes, the actions in the links are more than just wargaming, but a large part of it is stuff the military should be doing anyways.

halJordan: No thats not what this was. These are the actions that the Russians did before invading Ukraine and were the specific actions that the military pointed out and said "these aren't normal actions everyone is always doing"

ekianjo: > Thank God for the FrenchFrance has nowhere the military power to resist a country like the US. They have not invested in the military for a very long time and most of their equipment is completely outdated.

terminalshort: The war isn't illegal. The president has that power. I don't like it either, but since the Korean War this is simply a statement of fact.

jacquesm: > The war isn't illegal.You're going to have to specify a framework if you want to make statements about legality.

foobarian: I think that a big part of it is the transparency brought on by the vast communication bandwidth that came online starting after the dot com years. This stuff happened before just the same, but was concealed by media gatekeepers.Bay of Pigs, regime changes all over including Iran, South Asia wars, Afghanistan (not the recent one, the one in the 80s), all the cold war stuff, etc etc.

techterrier: im still waiting to find out whats happening...

aprentic: And he's just making a grill scrubber.I just ordered a bunch of drone parts. The majority of those part were only available from China.

jacquesm: If you want: motors, ESCs, flight controllers and radios those can be sourced from outside of China, and competitively priced too (if you're in Europe, outside you'd still have to add taxes).

petterroea: Yeah tbf I wouldn't underestimate Eastern Europe. The drone industry there must be booming nowadays, pun not intended.

thesquandered: It's clear that you're projecting by not understanding the point presented.

bko: What does post-USA world mean?Who is the leader in culture, business, technology? The only other contender I can think of is China.And this is better?

ndsipa_pomu: Much better.China is far more reliable and dependable than dealing with a lying narcissistic paedophile and his cronies.

KaiserPro: > What power has the US ceded?Before this, we (large multinational infra company) were happily using AWS, microsoft and a bunch of other US based companies.Now we are beginning the migration away, not because its cheaper or better, but because we just don't think that we can trust the contracts we have with them any more.This isn't a sudden thing, we are not going to do it over night. But we are not renewing multi-million dollar contracts in the coming years for stuff that would have been a no brainer last year.

ericmay: It’s interesting how these conversations always start and end with “my company isn’t buying XYZ American cloud provider services” while ignoring other incredibly important products and services that you can’t or are unwilling to boycott. Are you turning in your MacBook Pro and iPhone, or are you putting a bumper sticker on it saying you bought it before you knew America was crazy?Similarly, while it's great to take a principled stand here (it's yet again interesting how it's always a principled stand against American companies but never others), while you are busy spending time and money migrating away from AWS to a competing product that has worse features and is more expensive as you said, you should hope your competitors are too because if not, they're going to be delivering features faster and more cheaply. Something worth thinking about there.I don't think Microsoft losing some European contracts is an example of the US ceding power.

iso1631: Macbooks are built in China.Personally I have a Lenovo laptop (China) running Ubuntu (UK), on an LG monitor (Korea) with a logitech (Switzerland) mouse on an Ikea (Denmark) desk connected to a Mikrotik (Latvia) router.

estearum: Hot take: Preparing to defend your country from an ally invading you is actually very bad and indicative of inexcusable behavior from your "ally."> that means they must be prepared for unrealistic invasions, even if the US isn't threatening to invade.It's not unrealistic to think the US would invade Greenland. We've now had 10+ years of this "it's a joke... no it's a bargaining chip... well it's overstated... okay it's temporary... ahh yes well this is Good, Actually."

lm28469: Yeah, he's talking for himself, and begging for one, everyone else said "No." Danemark can keep their CIA bases and fuck right off to daddy trump if they want, nobody in Europe will follow them to a war in the middle east

vrganj: It's absolutely insane they're thinking of bailing out the US given the context of this thread.

easytiger: You think there's a game theory scenario in the book where France launches a nuclear weapon at mainland USA over a land dispute between them and Denmark?

Jensson: NATO dictates that an attack on any NATO nation should be seen as an attack on every nation, so yeah.

ericmay: I guess it's global supply chains when it's convenient for your argument, but not when it's inconvenient? Does Denmark build all the Ikea furniture?Who do you think designs the MacBook, chipsets, and more? Who designs and builds the semiconductors for your Lenovo laptop?

karmakurtisaani: You get downvotes, but even if China is an authoritarian oppressive regime, they are not going around starting wars and threatening their allies, changing directions daily.

megous: Who cares? Just stop enforcing laws on little guys completely, if you can't even think of what to put any of the US admin members on trial for. It's nuts that there are long complicated trials and TV series and movies about like a single person murdering one other person, yet people ask what we could even try nutjobs that murder and kill by thousands and/or support mass crimes all around the world for. Let alone all the financial crimes that are being perpetarated for sure, with all the crypto scams and insider trading on the insane volatility they themselves create and know in advance about.

jacquesm: Spoken like someone who is utterly clueless about international relations.

Imustaskforhelp: I do agree with some of your points and I believe some aspects of it might be right but there is a big difference between the past and present because this time, its America attacking EU sovereignity/other countries and so many things all at once literally within less than a year.Just count all the things that america did in the last year and try to imagine as a foreigner or foreign nation once as an exercise. All of the things that America has done in the past year is just quite so much to list here even.No amount of charm within a president might fix or make the people of denmark/EU/even the world, forget the greenland crisis and many others.This is fundamentally different, in my opinion.> 3. Which leads me to my third point, which is that most foreigners understand that the American government is separate from the people and separate from the corporations. And more importantly, changing the world system dramatically is really hard, and has a lot of friction. It will be a lot easier for states to go back to the pre-2024 status quo than to embark upon something entirely novel.Yea, we do but we can only tolerate so much at a certain point too. This goes to my point again but we are forgetting that US is still voted by its people. Yes the two party system corners the people and we are sympathetic of that, but the world/foreigners (atleast me) sympathesize with the american citizens but at the same time, can't trust them.This isn't something even foreigner related issue but the people of America themselves don't trust their fellow neighbours now as I read the comments of this post and many others.We sympathize with the people of America but sadly, the world doesn't trust America anymore, Trust is quite brittle and delicate thing so its quite an miracle we still saw trust bounce so many times but right now the glass of trust has shattered (as evident by Denmark preparing for almost war against America)I can be wrong, I usually am but that's just my understanding.

Flip-per: It was very obvious that Trump is a highly corrupt and incompetent person at the second term election. His voters do not disappear when he is in prison, neither would the US reputation suddenly be way better. Who will these people elect next, why should anyone trust the US anymore?Imprisonment would be a good starting point though. Together with education, regulation and reforming the political system. But this takes decades.