Stephen Miller’s real world
Trump’s Chief Goon says the US gets to tell all the other countries what to do. It’s the Playground Bully school of foreign policy.
Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted on Monday that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted.
In what sense does Greenland “rightfully” belong to the US? Please explain. Note: “Because Trump wants to” is not an explanation. Trump’s wants are not foreign policy or international law.
If Greenland belongs to the US then Trump’s Manhattan penthouse belongs to me. Hand it over, Steve.
“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Ohhhh, that kind of “rightfully”. I see. Nothing to do with rightful at all: he’s just saying we can grab it. He’s the teenager taking a 5-year-old’s chocolate bar and then yanking on her ponytail by way of farewell.
“The United States of America is running Venezuela,” Mr. Miller said, dismissing international treaties enshrining a nation’s right to independence and sovereignty as “international niceties.”
Next up: China starts running the US, as Miller applauds. He would applaud, right?
“We set the terms and conditions,” Mr. Miller said. “We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission. So the United States is in charge. The United States is running the country.”
Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, denounced Mr. Miller’s remarks soon afterward, saying on CNN that “Mr. Miller gave a very good definition of imperialism.”
Also quite a good reenactment of Might Makes Right. Fun times.
It’s all fun and games for these people until they run into someone stronger than them. And there are countries stronger than the US now. So he may want to consider what he’s wishing for.
I may have said this before, but if China wanted to install an administration in Washington that would allow it to become the dominant world power, it would look an awful lot like these clowns.
I’m sure Miller’s musings on Lebensraum sound better in the original German.
Clumsily expressed but not entirely untrue. Or, perhaps, it’s wrong but not false.
China and Russia don’t care at all about international law except insofar as it’s convenient to them. China is engaged in illegal aggression in an area of the ocean that doesn’t belong to China. It’s involved in genocide against Uyghurs and Tibetans. And no aspect of international law or norms is preventing them from invading Taiwan tomorrow. Only the idea that they would not win is stopping them, which is to say only strength, force, and power. Likewise, Russia never gave a damn about international sovereignty until the US meddled with its client state in Venezuela. Look at what Russia does in Georgia, in Ukraine, in Moldova. They would already have either killed or brainwashed all Ukrainians if they could, and what stopped them from doing that was not international law, or norms, or kindness. It was strength, force, power.
The Greenland matter is a bigger threat to the world than anything Trump or Putin has yet done. If the US sends troops to Greenland in a hostile posture, NATO will be obligated by treaty to respond in kind (one assumes that, at that point the US would also be ejected from NATO. If French, English, etc. planes and troops were engaged in active warfare with US troops and materiel, diverting their assets from the East, Russia would invade Poland, Finland, Moldova… An American invasion of Greenland would thus be the beginning of WWIII.
It is not outside the realm of possibility, either, that orders to invade Greenland would lead to a military coup within the United States.
The war over Greenland would indeed be the nightmare we have [just barely] escaped since 1945. I’m not looking forward to it.