“Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has long sought close ties to the Trump administration in its quest for powerful international allies and an end to its political isolation at home.
But as public sentiment in Germany increasingly turns against U.S. President Donald Trump and his foreign interventionism — in particular his talk of taking control of Greenland and his seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — AfD leaders are recalibrating, putting distance between their party and a U.S. president they previously embraced.
“He has violated a fundamental election promise, namely not to interfere in other countries, and he has to explain that to his own voters,” Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s national leaders, said earlier this week.”
“Observing U.S. and European operations in the far north, he finds that Nordic troops are much more agile and well-prepared for high latitudes than their American counterparts.
In fact, Rosen gets to compare these forces side-by-side when he follows a Norwegian ship on the way to a planned rendezvous with the USCGS Healy, the U.S. Coast Guard’s only Arctic-specific icebreaker. When the two ships meet, they are suddenly buzzed by a Russian helicopter. The Americans are “visibly unnerved,” Rosen notes. The Norwegians, on the other hand, dryly comment about how they do the same to Russians all the time.
An important lesson is that experience, rather than flashy equipment, makes or breaks a polar army. The cold quickly kills people and destroys machines. Snow does not behave like sand when building fortifications. Cross-country skis are faster than snowshoes. Sunburn is a surprisingly common problem despite the cold. Hooks and ropes have to be carefully maintained. Wind and weather at sea can change unpredictably. Even routine, peacetime shipboardings can be deadly.
The book argues that Europe’s comparative advantage in the Arctic can make NATO worthwhile for the U.S., by reducing the need for an American military buildup up there.
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Most people in Greenland are Inuit, members of the same culture that much of northern Canada and coastal Alaska belong to. For centuries, they chafed under Danish colonial rule. Now they enjoy considerable self-rule within Denmark and are deciding whether to pursue independence.
Polls show that most Greenlanders support independence in theory but don’t necessarily want to break away at the moment. The fact that Danish taxpayers pay for half of the Greenlandic government budget is an obvious, widely known barrier to independence. So is the potential loss of the mobility and export markets that European Union membership provides.”
The attack on Venezuela seems to have used a cyber attack to take out the city’s electricity and over 150 aircraft. The US suppressed Venezuelan anti-air capability by suppressing and destroying them. Many military targets were struck, most by relatively small and targeted weapons, and most anti-air assets. There wasn’t an attempt to more broadly destroy Venezuela’s military capabilities. The US may have used new one-way attack drones that are cheaper than missiles.
This US operation represents what is possible, but also required luck. Shoulder fired anti-air rockets were launched, and one helicopter was hit in the leg three time and still managed to land the helicopter on the attack. If those hits hit the helicopter or person a little differently, the operation may have gone differently. The US may have had to send more waves, giving Venezuela more time to respond. Success was not inevitable.
The Maduro regime is not gone. The US took the leader, but the rest of the regime stayed in place.
The attack was not authorized by Congress, and therefore unconstitutional.
“Greenland’s party leaders rejected President Trump’s repeated calls for the U.S. to take control of the island, saying that Greenland’s future must be decided by its people.
“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders said in a statement Friday night.
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Eighty-five percent of Greenlanders say they oppose a takeover by the U.S., the BBC reported. Most also say they favor independence from Denmark, though the Nordic country provides subsidies, military support and more for the autonomous territory.”
While Venezuela has a lot of oil, they don’t produce that much, and it will take a decade to really ramp up their production. The US doesn’t need Venezuelan oil and it’s probably not worth the risk of destabilizing the country just for oil. Cutting off China and Cuba from Venezuelan oil may have more value, but, China can get oil from elsewhere.
“here’s the most important thing about free trade that Trump fails to grasp: It is voluntary and consensual.
Rolling into Greenland with guns blazing—or making enough threats that Denmark eventually hands the island over to avoid that possibility—is the exact opposite of that. Trump’s centralized, nationalistic view of the world has no room for individuals or their consent. What do the people of Greenland want? What do the people of Denmark want? Heck, most Americans are not very keen on the idea of their government seizing Greenland. It’s not quite accurate to say that no one wants this—some very powerful people unfortunately do—but this would be something that the U.S. government would be doing against the will of most of the individuals involved in the transaction. That should matter—a lot.
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it is encouraging to see that the Trump administration is putting together an offer that will reportedly be presented directly to the semiautonomous government of Greenland. The Economist reports that the deal includes giving Greenland the same status as the Marshall Islands and some other small Pacific islands.
The people of Greenland have the right to vote on their own future. If Trump’s deal is accepted, then Denmark (and others) should stand aside. But it certainly seems like that deal would have had a better chance of being accepted without all the bellicosity that has gone along with it.
Again, one of the glorious things about free trade is that no one points a gun (or the whole U.S. military’s terrifying arsenal) at you to make a deal happen. Individuals buy and sell things when and how it makes sense for them to do it. Yes, it is impossible to apply that logic to every aspect of international geopolitics, but presidents ought to nudge the world toward more trade and less war whenever possible. Trump is doing the opposite.”
It’s not clear how long Venezuela will remain stable. There is a careful political balance to maintain stability. It’s also not clear how long the powers in Venezuela will put up with the US domineering over them. The US can destroy shit, but the Venezuelans can release chaos within Venezuela. Gangs in Venezuela are very powerful. The Venezuelan military doesn’t fully control the country.
Oil companies don’t want to invest in a country that requires huge investment and may not be stable, so their investment will likely need to be subsidized by the taxpayer.