Greenland

[Griz882]

He threatened to use it, and has attacked Iran and Venezuela in the past year. Are you telling me that you'd casually dismiss such a threat if you were in a decision-making role in Denmark.

Yes, I am. Denmark isn’t a well known enemy we have fought for years nor is it a tin pot South American dictatorship.

 

[sevenhelmet]

Exactly! That is the job of governments. Not to panic, or fall for loud rhetoric, but to respond in line with their needs. Trump has always postured for the American audience and cooled down when face-to-face with world leaders and they know it. Moreover, and I can’t stress this enough, if Trump’s rants are enough to end NATO…it is basically time to end it. If NATO can’t survive 48 months of finger wagging it certainly won’t last through 48 weeks of war - and the adults know that. Diplomats and technocrats like smooth, calm language and that isn’t Trump’s manner, so they adapt.

That’s the most athletic rationalizing I have seen from you in a while. Are you really arguing that Trump’s public actions don’t matter because of what you allege happens behind closed doors? Despite all his obvious flaws and lasting damage to US foreign policy, you are still arguing like someone who thinks Trump is doing the right thing. He publicly mistreated our allies (again) for zero tactical or strategic gain. Even most of the American audience (60-80% in the polls I read) thought taking Greenland was a dumb idea, so your domestic posturing argument also falls flat.

Trump only “cools down” with the market and his bluff being called. If Europe had equivocated, or tried to negotiate (and/or the markets hadn’t reacted), he would have kept up his bloody-minded approach. There’s a chance he still will, but most likely he will back down (for now) while acting like it was his idea all along.

If you think Trump was in the right, just say so. But if you think this isn’t having a negative effect NATO, on our ability to form coalitions, and the West’s ability to keep China and Russia at bay, you’re only kidding yourself. Our allies are rolling their eyes, and forming coalitions without us, and who can blame them? Our president is acting like the entitled rich asshole he has always been.

 

[Griz882]

So who all sits at the adults table, and who's at the kids table?

Seems like the line has been drawn leaving the current POTUS outside the camp of the "adults [who] know".

I have no issue saying that Trump’s style is both childish and petulant. But the whole world knows this.

 

[sevenhelmet]

I have no issue saying that Trump’s style is both childish and petulant. But the whole world knows this.

Yeah, they do, and it’s going to have lasting consequences for how our country is treated.

It isn’t hard to see that Trump is getting worse. The world can see that too, through his increasingly unhinged actions and a reduction in checks and balances after removing people who were the adults in the room during his first term. Whether Congress and the courts will ever take action to rein him in remains very much in question.

 

[Duc'-guy25]

Exactly! That is the job of governments. Not to panic, or fall for loud rhetoric, but to respond in line with their needs. Trump has always postured for the American audience and cooled down when face-to-face with world leaders and they know it. Moreover, and I can’t stress this enough, if Trump’s rants are enough to end NATO…it is basically time to end it. If NATO can’t survive 48 months of finger wagging it certainly won’t last through 48 weeks of war - and the adults know that. Diplomats and technocrats like smooth, calm language and that isn’t Trump’s manner, so they adapt.

I’m confused dude. Is he a man of action who puts his money where his mouth is? Or is he a talker. Secretary of State was very specific post the raid in Venezuela that he is a man of action who is going to do what he says he’s going to do.

 

[taxi1]

I have no issue saying that Trump’s style is both childish and petulant. But the whole world knows this.

It’s not even him. It’s that they know we voted for him.

 

[Brett327]

Exactly! That is the job of governments. Not to panic, or fall for loud rhetoric, but to respond in line with their needs. Trump has always postured for the American audience and cooled down when face-to-face with world leaders and they know it. Moreover, and I can’t stress this enough, if Trump’s rants are enough to end NATO…it is basically time to end it. If NATO can’t survive 48 months of finger wagging it certainly won’t last through 48 weeks of war - and the adults know that. Diplomats and technocrats like smooth, calm language and that isn’t Trump’s manner, so they adapt.

GTFOH... you're pretty sanctimonious with all that hindsight.

 

[Griz882]

That’s the most athletic rationalizing I have seen from you in a while. Are you really arguing that Trump’s public actions don’t matter because of what you allege happens behind closed doors? Despite all his obvious flaws and lasting damage to US foreign policy, you are still arguing like someone who thinks Trump is doing the right thing. He publicly mistreated our allies (again) for zero tactical or strategic gain. Even most of the American audience (60-80% in the polls I read) thought taking Greenland was a dumb idea, so your domestic posturing argument also falls flat.

Trump only “cools down” with the market and his bluff being called. If Europe had equivocated, or tried to negotiate (and/or the markets hadn’t reacted), he would have kept up his bloody-minded approach. There’s a chance he still will, but most likely he will back down (for now) while acting like it was his idea all along.

If you think Trump was in the right, just say so. But if you think this isn’t having a negative effect NATO, on our ability to form coalitions, and the West’s ability to keep China and Russia at bay, you’re only kidding yourself. Our allies are rolling their eyes, and forming coalitions without us, and who can blame them? Our president is acting like the entitled rich asshole he has always been.

You are desperate for this to be simplistic back and white stuff - sorry the world doesn’t work like that. Do I think Trump,is right about wanting “own” Greenland…absolutely not. Do I think his approach to politics is entirely encapsulated in his imagination that he is the smartest guy around…yes, I do, and he is hardly the first. But the most important question of all…is he POTUS of the U.S.? Well, he is in fact and for 48 months the world (and America) has to deal with that. If the American people are displeased, they know how to vote and I don’t get weepy over who wins.

As for NATO, there is a lot of excess sentimentalism over an alliance that has been troubled from the start - yet somehow has managed to survive. Starting with the 1956 Suez Crisis, French withdrawal from NATO's integrated military structures 10 years later and ongoing problems of nuclear strategy stretching from ‘flexible response’ in the 1960s to the deployment of Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) in the 1980s NATO has long been discussed by academics and journalists as, at best, divided and at worst on the brink of dissolution.

The Soviet Union was the glue that held it all together and when that went away the German Foreign Minster expressed the hope that NATO would go away, an idea French President François Mitterrand similarly put forward the idea alluding to a future Europe without NATO. Yet, it survives.

Clinton publicly made it clear, to the consternation of Europes leaders, that he regarded NATO regarded as subordinate to US national interests. Indeed, his administration established the still standing notion that the U.S. should also be willing to act alone or in coalition or alliance with other nations as it sees fit.

Bush saw NATO as subordinate to US national security objectives, and as Rumsfeld famously said, “the mission determines the coalition, and the coalition must not determine the mission.” In 2003 Iraq was called, NATO's ‘near-death’ experience as the allies divided between a majority led by the US willing to initiate defensive support of Turkey and a minority involving France, Germany and Belgium who did not. Those in power in DC were so angry at the French that they were ready to punish Europe by helping to demolish NATO (you might remember Freedom Fries).

During Obama’s term NATO kicked back against expansion but Obama repeatedly made it clear that he saw NATO as an interventionist body in service of American national security interests, subject to US leadership and in need of ongoing adaptation. Europe’s leaders did not appreciate it, but they continued to support wars in the Middle East.

The things above are not opinions, they are historical fact. Put simply, there is a lot of dreamy imagining in this conversation that NATO and the U.S. are just recently troubled. It has long been a divided and existentially troubled alliance. In the first place, nearly two decades after the cold war ended, it is clear that NATO is unlikely ever to return to the narrowly circumscribed agenda which characterized its first four decades. The U.S. has forced NATO to globalize, to fight terrorism, regional conflict, and proliferation, and that push simply multiplied NATO's problems. It opened up a divide in the alliance and Trump, as is his style, simply ripped the band aid off and exposed the wound. But here is the trick…the alliance has managed to survive all of that and likely continue to do so.

 

[Griz882]

GTFOH... you're pretty sanctimonious with all that hindsight.

You are about the only person on these pages who doesn’t get to call people sanctimonious! I can’t help it if your partisan rage prevents you from dealing with the obvious.

 

[Griz882]

I’m confused dude. Is he a man of action who puts his money where his mouth is? Or is he a talker. Secretary of State was very specific post the raid in Venezuela that he is a man of action who is going to do what he says he’s going to do.

I’m not Rubio, I didn’t say that. But I have said that his talk of military action in Greenland was political rhetoric. Not nice, not diplomatic, not smooth, just his style.

 

[Dontcallmegump]

I have no issue saying that Trump’s style is both childish and petulant. But the whole world knows this.

Then riddle me, any countless others since 2016, this;

Why accept that kind of behavior, and its demonstrably negative effects, from the highest position of leadership imagineable? How does his "style" do anything positive for the general wellbeing of the United States?

 

[Hotdogs]

The things above are not opinions, they are historical fact.

You point out a lot of the consternation about NATO (and get a lot of it wrong, particularly intermixing national vs supranational interests), starting with the Suez crisis - which had way less to do with NATO and more to do with post-imperial order reckonings. Along the way you fail to mention a lot of the positives about the alliance. It’s difficult to prove a negative in a logical context when debating geopolitical issues (Mearsheimer is great at this type of stuff, I.e. Ukraine). Lastly, treaty allies tend to discuss these things in a pragmatic manner, particularly when it comes to collective security. None of which has been the case in this current administration.

I’ll save you and everyone reading this thread the multitude of others reasons why we’re in this position, but I’ll summarize it by stating stupid people shouldn’t vote.

 

[sevenhelmet]

You are desperate for this to be simplistic back and white stuff - sorry the world doesn’t work like that. Do I think Trump,is right about wanting “own” Greenland…absolutely not. Do I think his approach to politics is entirely encapsulated in his imagination that he is the smartest guy around…yes, I do, and he is hardly the first. But the most important question of all…is he POTUS of the U.S.? Well, he is in fact and for 48 months the world (and America) has to deal with that. If the American people are displeased, they know how to vote and I don’t get weepy over who wins.

As for NATO, there is a lot of excess sentimentalism over an alliance that has been troubled from the start - yet somehow has managed to survive. Starting with the 1956 Suez Crisis, French withdrawal from NATO's integrated military structures 10 years later and ongoing problems of nuclear strategy stretching from ‘flexible response’ in the 1960s to the deployment of Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) in the 1980s NATO has long been discussed by academics and journalists as, at best, divided and at worst on the brink of dissolution.

The Soviet Union was the glue that held it all together and when that went away the German Foreign Minster expressed the hope that NATO would go away, an idea French President François Mitterrand similarly put forward the idea alluding to a future Europe without NATO. Yet, it survives.

Clinton publicly made it clear, to the consternation of Europes leaders, that he regarded NATO regarded as subordinate to US national interests. Indeed, his administration established the still standing notion that the U.S. should also be willing to act alone or in coalition or alliance with other nations as it sees fit.

Bush saw NATO as subordinate to US national security objectives, and as Rumsfeld famously said, “the mission determines the coalition, and the coalition must not determine the mission.” In 2003 Iraq was called, NATO's ‘near-death’ experience as the allies divided between a majority led by the US willing to initiate defensive support of Turkey and a minority involving France, Germany and Belgium who did not. Those in power in DC were so angry at the French that they were ready to punish Europe by helping to demolish NATO (you might remember Freedom Fries).

During Obama’s term NATO kicked back against expansion but Obama repeatedly made it clear that he saw NATO as an interventionist body in service of American national security interests, subject to US leadership and in need of ongoing adaptation. Europe’s leaders did not appreciate it, but they continued to support wars in the Middle East.

The things above are not opinions, they are historical fact. Put simply, there is a lot of dreamy imagining in this conversation that NATO and the U.S. are just recently troubled. It has long been a divided and existentially troubled alliance. In the first place, nearly two decades after the cold war ended, it is clear that NATO is unlikely ever to return to the narrowly circumscribed agenda which characterized its first four decades. The U.S. has forced NATO to globalize, to fight terrorism, regional conflict, and proliferation, and that push simply multiplied NATO's problems. It opened up a divide in the alliance and Trump, as is his style, simply ripped the band aid off and exposed the wound. But here is the trick…the alliance has managed to survive all of that and likely continue to do so.

You seem desperate to make this about NATO. My arguments have been about mistreatment of allies and the strategic regression of us “owning” Greenland, to say nothing of the will of the citizens of that nation. Damage to NATO relationships is real, but incidental to my argument.

Thank you for the history lesson. As you are no doubt aware, NATO Article 5 has only been invoked once, on our country’s behalf, after 9/11. The country with the highest casualty rate in Afghanistan? Denmark.

“POTUS of the U.S.” (to use your redundant phrase) just flipped that same ally the bird and threatened to twist their arm with military force if he didn’t get something that isn’t really Denmark’s to give. Your argument is that it’s OK because NATO has always had issues?

The level of rationalization and selective reasoning that people will go to in excusing the bad behavior of one Donald J. Trump never ceases to amaze me.

 

[Swanee]

You seem desperate to make this about NATO. My arguments have been about mistreatment of allies and the strategic regression of us “owning” Greenland, to say nothing of the will of the citizens of that nation. Damage to NATO relationships is real, but incidental to my argument.

Thank you for the history lesson. As you are no doubt aware, NATO Article 5 has only been invoked once, on our country’s behalf, after 9/11. The country with the highest casualty rate in Afghanistan? Denmark.

“POTUS of the U.S.” (to use your redundant phrase) just flipped that same ally the bird and threatened to twist their arm with military force if he didn’t get something that isn’t really Denmark’s to give. Your argument is that it’s OK because NATO has always had issues?

The level of rationalization and selective reasoning that people will go to in excusing the bad behavior of one Donald J. Trump never ceases to amaze me.

We've all served alongside great officers, NCOs, and soldiers, from sister nations while fighting the GWOT. "But seriously, why are you here?" "Because, Yank, you asked for our help. We said yes."

We're pissing on our ride or die allies. These are the allies our WW1 and WW2 vets earned with their blood. We're going to need them again.

I hope that when we do they'll ignore this point in history. I fear that they won't.

 

[Faded Float Coat]

You are desperate for this to be simplistic back and white stuff - sorry the world doesn’t work like that. Do I think Trump,is right about wanting “own” Greenland…absolutely not. Do I think his approach to politics is entirely encapsulated in his imagination that he is the smartest guy around…yes, I do, and he is hardly the first. But the most important question of all…is he POTUS of the U.S.? Well, he is in fact and for 48 months the world (and America) has to deal with that. If the American people are displeased, they know how to vote and I don’t get weepy over who wins.

As for NATO, there is a lot of excess sentimentalism over an alliance that has been troubled from the start - yet somehow has managed to survive. Starting with the 1956 Suez Crisis, French withdrawal from NATO's integrated military structures 10 years later and ongoing problems of nuclear strategy stretching from ‘flexible response’ in the 1960s to the deployment of Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) in the 1980s NATO has long been discussed by academics and journalists as, at best, divided and at worst on the brink of dissolution.

The Soviet Union was the glue that held it all together and when that went away the German Foreign Minster expressed the hope that NATO would go away, an idea French President François Mitterrand similarly put forward the idea alluding to a future Europe without NATO. Yet, it survives.

Clinton publicly made it clear, to the consternation of Europes leaders, that he regarded NATO regarded as subordinate to US national interests. Indeed, his administration established the still standing notion that the U.S. should also be willing to act alone or in coalition or alliance with other nations as it sees fit.

Bush saw NATO as subordinate to US national security objectives, and as Rumsfeld famously said, “the mission determines the coalition, and the coalition must not determine the mission.” In 2003 Iraq was called, NATO's ‘near-death’ experience as the allies divided between a majority led by the US willing to initiate defensive support of Turkey and a minority involving France, Germany and Belgium who did not. Those in power in DC were so angry at the French that they were ready to punish Europe by helping to demolish NATO (you might remember Freedom Fries).

During Obama’s term NATO kicked back against expansion but Obama repeatedly made it clear that he saw NATO as an interventionist body in service of American national security interests, subject to US leadership and in need of ongoing adaptation. Europe’s leaders did not appreciate it, but they continued to support wars in the Middle East.

The things above are not opinions, they are historical fact. Put simply, there is a lot of dreamy imagining in this conversation that NATO and the U.S. are just recently troubled. It has long been a divided and existentially troubled alliance. In the first place, nearly two decades after the cold war ended, it is clear that NATO is unlikely ever to return to the narrowly circumscribed agenda which characterized its first four decades. The U.S. has forced NATO to globalize, to fight terrorism, regional conflict, and proliferation, and that push simply multiplied NATO's problems. It opened up a divide in the alliance and Trump, as is his style, simply ripped the band aid off and exposed the wound. But here is the trick…the alliance has managed to survive all of that and likely continue to do so.

Casuistry (cas·u·ist·ry)
/ˈkaZHəwəstrē/

noun

1. the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry.