Ownership
Your basic local extortionist speaks to the world:
Trump said Wednesday that he had reached the framework of a deal with NATO over Greenland’s future, hours after alliance officials separately discussed the possibility of the United States obtaining sovereignty over land for military bases, according to three senior officials familiar with the talks.
Mr. Trump’s announcement was among a series of moves on Wednesday that appeared to draw the United States back from the possibility of military and economic conflict with his allies over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Mr. Trump also withdrew the threat of additional tariffs for European allies that had resisted his insistence on owning Greenland, and said he would not use force to assert American ownership.
“I’m not gonna rough you up, you just gotta play nice with me, that’s all.”
Asked for details of the framework that Mr. Trump announced, NATO said in a statement that “negotiations between Denmark, Greenland and the United States will go forward aimed at ensuring that Russia and China never gain a foothold — economically or militarily — in Greenland.”
Mr. Rutte did not release details of the possible framework. Allison Hart, a spokeswoman for Mr. Rutte, said that he “did not propose any compromise to sovereignty during his meeting with the president in Davos.”
In other words he told Trump to fuck off, but politely. Trump doesn’t understand politely. He doesn’t know how to use it himself, and he doesn’t know how to react to it from others. He has a very crude and basic way with language.
Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament, rejected what Mr. Trump said about his potential deal with NATO.
“What we are witnessing these days in statements from Trump is completely absurd. NATO has absolutely no mandate to negotiate anything whatsoever without us in Greenland,” she said in a post on social media.
…
News of the possible framework came hours after Mr. Trump told European leaders in Davos, Switzerland, that he would not settle for anything less than the United States taking ownership of Greenland. Mr. Trump had promised dire economic and security consequences for Europe if he did not get his way.
Addressing a room full of heads of state, billionaires and other world leaders, Mr. Trump said repeatedly that the United States needed Greenland for national security purposes. He said that only the United States was strong enough to defend Greenland from external threats, and that defending it made sense only if the United States owned it.
He called for “immediate negotiations” to discuss transferring ownership of the semiautonomous island to the United States from Denmark and derided European countries as dependent on the United States. “Without us, most of the countries don’t even work,” Mr. Trump said.
Charm offensive 101.
Rasmus Jarlov, chairman of the defense committee in Denmark’s Parliament, said in an interview that “we’ve heard a lot worse” from Mr. Trump. “I’m glad he’s ruling out military force,” Mr. Jarlov said. “I didn’t see in his remarks today an escalation. He insists he wants Greenland, but that’s not new. Of course, we still insist that we are not handing over Greenland.”
Mr. Trump left little room for compromise in his speech, however. Many European leaders have maintained that they cannot countenance ceding ownership of Greenland to the United States, but they also say they would be open to almost any other arrangement that expands America’s presence there. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump said, again, that would not suffice. “You need the ownership to defend it,” Mr. Trump said. A moment later, he added: “Who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease?”
Never rent; always own.
My theory is that Rutte sold Trump the current state of America’s treaty with Denmark regarding Greenland (The US can build pretty much any military base we want there, and keep people out of it) as if it were a win for Trump.
With tears in his eyes.
If there’s anyone on the planet who would fall for that it’s Trump.
I’m getting increasingly annoyed when people make a point of how America already has military bases on Greenland and are free to pretty much do what they want. So if they didn’t have have the Danish government’s permission to act as if they owned the place, that would indeed be a legitimate reason to invade? There’s a reason why negotiating with terrorists is considered such a terrible idea. If it were up to me, the American forces on Greenland would be given 24 hours to get the hell out the moment Trump put forth his threat (at the very latest).
As embarrassing as it must be (or at least should!) to be American these days, it’s hardly any better to be European. It’s been sickening to watch our leaders compete to abase themselves before the orange bully and sacrifice every shred of integrity, dignity and honor in exchange for less than nothing. If cringiness had mass, the world would have collapsed into a black hole long ago. Not only are they failing to protect Europe, but they’re turning it into something not even worth protecting. I don’t know whether the European spine died with Churchill and De Gaulle or simply atrophied out of existence through decades of disuse, but anyway it’s gone.
Think of Trump’s America as asteroid on a direct collision course with the Earth. You wouldn’t waste your time trying to talk the asteroid into changing its trajectory or argue about what we need the asteroid to do? It doesn’t care. You simply do whatever you have to do to push it out of the way. There is no harm the asteroid is going to do if you fail to appease it that it’s not going to do anyway. Same with Trump. He is going to do as much harm and evil as you allow him to do, and that’s it. There is no possible consequence of fighting back with everything you’ve got that’s worse than failure to do so.