[Livia]

Originally Posted by Maru

The Danish may be nice enough to us, but that doesn't go very far in the environment we are in now where hostile powers are growing and not much had been done about it. They're not going to be on the hook for defense if Russia crosses a line.

We are where we are partially because we've had all these smaller countries with no real military power politically veto many of the solutions to problems because they prefer to live in an ideal world and now have an ideology tethered to it. Our enemies have taken advantage of this. Ex: It's reasonable and normal to place checks & balances on the transfer of people and property across the border because it is a national security threat.

There's a psychological side effect also, is that it's putting our enemies firmly on notice and putting a pin in the map. It's also telling allies to stop interfering with whatever idealistic neurosis they come up with next and start actually treating our enemies like a real threat. Tackling Venezuela puts countries like Cuba and Mexico on notice, which is sensible as they're both narco-states and any sense of diplomacy will simply be ignored by them. Just mentioning possibly acquiring Greenland is a simple enough signal to Russia that we do take the threat seriously, so that may be enough to deescalate, at least somewhat.

Whatever I think of more American interference (much bigger topic), there's at least a reasoning behind it. The alternative is we close up our borders entirely and then leave the world to rest of it. That's a possibility that is always being weighed, I think.

Trump's actions and his threats are alienating allies and putting the future of NATO at risk. The US clearly thinks that's acceptable collateral damage, which is worrying. If the US really is worried enough about Russia to enter the sovereign territory of another allied country and take it by force, you'd think Trump would have been stronger against Putin in Ukraine. But his interaction with Putin bordered on appeasement. Now he's threatening to do exactly what Putin did when he crossed the border of another country. That's what it looks like to me.