this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 77 points 22 hours ago (8 children)

The US attacking allied territory of the EU is basically the death of NATO, one way or another. WW3 is a hop and a skip from that.

I've not been following super closely for mental health reasons, but if it is just Denmark? We are looking at another Ukraine. Everyone is going to hem and haw and say "just give it to the pricks" to "avoid World War 3". Whereas, if we start seeing other EU/NATO nations deploying troops to protect Greenland... there is a chance that SOMETHING remains and we don't just have russia running over everyone else one by one.

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

It doesn't have to be the death of NATO, provided the US leaves it.

If they don't, though, yeah, probably the end of NATO. There's no mechanism for revoking a member's membership.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Germany just sent a first batch of soldiers, so that's a good sign IMO.

[–] akfdmfckwrl@feddit.dk 49 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

As did Sweden, Norway and France.

EDIT: And as a Dane, I am so grateful toward our real allies!

[–] MoreMagic@feddit.nu 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

We (swedes) love to tease you, but brother, I’m so fucking furious about this. The only positive about the development on the world stage in recent years is we in the Nordic countries have come closer than ever.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 minute ago

Exactly (swede in france here), and that europe starts to wake up.

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 16 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

And the Netherlands and Canada.... And my axe!

[–] khannie@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

There's talk of sending the EU rapid reaction force. It's only 5000 troops but they're the good shit.

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Now I imagine them like modern day spartans. In mechas.

[–] khannie@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago
[–] bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone -5 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Why does it matter if they are good? Are they actually thinking they can repel an invasion?

The GDP of Denmark is about half of the US war budget.

[–] GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

The GDP of Denmark is about half of the US war budget.

Why would that matter?

Remind me how did the USA with their mighty military spending won their wars against much much weaker countries, like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan? Oh wait... They lost all of those...

If anything, the track record shows that the USA is really terrible at fighting proper wars and only good at "drive bys" and "hit and run" operations, like the one in Venezuela.

Can the USA take Greenland overnight?

[–] lysol@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Afghanistan and Vietnam would like to have a word with you.

In any case, even if the US would win (they probably would I guess, kinda), it would not be a popular victory if hundreds of US soldiers died for an island no american cares about.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

No they don’t think they can repel an invasion, but they know they can make it very costly. Different bioregion, same advantage as the Vietnamese resistance, and cold is even harsher on troops and equipment than the jungle.

[–] Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

You can't really hide in the tundra or icecaps though.

[–] MoreMagic@feddit.nu 2 points 4 hours ago

You’re in for a big surprise.

[–] Vinylraupe@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 hours ago

10000 years from now they are gonna find McÖtzi 🤣

[–] zd9@lemmy.world 29 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

How can anyone say Trump ISN'T beholden to Putin? Even if you know nothing of their 30 year relationship, Trump is doing everything that a puppet of Putin would do. Russia really just... won the Cold War ultimately. They did it. They have a Russian asset as POTUS, Russian asset at head of intelligence at ODNI, and many many others scattered throughout.

All of this is straight out of "Foundations of Geopolitics" by Dugin.

[–] hector@lemmy.today 2 points 4 hours ago

Nailed it. Prez does not have the juice to straight pull out of nato. So this jingoistic adventurism is meant to gin enough support for it.

I do not think they will find the support they need here though. We all like europe and canada here.

[–] Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 6 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

and on top of that, it's very likely that china and russia have infiltrated a lot of critical IT infrastructure after the SolarWinds debacle. Haven't heard much about the cleanup; It's like a free for all currently.

[–] zd9@lemmy.world 16 points 19 hours ago

You don't even need to rely on adversaries to hack into the systems when you have insider threats right here in America. Musk is an enemy of the state and when he was muckin around in DOGE, exfiltrating all of our data to private servers, selling secrets to Russians, etc., after he exfiltrated data from NLRB within 30 min there were attempts with correct username and password combinations to access internal servers from Russian IP addresses. We're so fucked, and I don't think we'll get back to the same level of secrecy for at least a generation (maybe 20-30 years).

No one is talking about it anymore because there are even more pressing issues with American citizens.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 20 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Based on reports that generals are considering it a truly illegal order to attack Greenland or an ally I’m fairly certain Iran and a few South American countries are going to be sacrificed instead

So if anyone was wondering where the line for an illegal order was it’s probably here, attacking Greenland/NATO

That being said there is still a chance of anything happening so we obviously can never be comfortable

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 17 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

I assume there is no line for an illegal order, since Trump has purged military leaders who don't think Trump's word is law.

[–] GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Which also means that all the smart military leaders were replaced by idiots who probably couldn't come up with a strategy for anything more complex than a tic tac toe game.

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 9 points 16 hours ago

Yep. I love how people keep thinking there's still a rule of law in the US.

[–] khannie@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

Stalin 1939 vibes.

[–] freebee@sh.itjust.works 4 points 21 hours ago

The only certainty is that after Venezuela with 0 repercussions they now got the taste for it.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 16 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I’ve not been following super closely for mental health reasons, but if it is just Denmark? We are looking at another Ukraine.

Ukraine's armed forces alone are 15x the total population of Greenland. This is more of a Grenada than a Ukraine.

Whereas, if we start seeing other EU/NATO nations deploying troops to protect Greenland… there is a chance that SOMETHING remains and we don’t just have russia running over everyone else one by one.

I would be much more worried about the power projection of the world's largest military by a factor of 20 than the country currently caught in a quagmire halfway into the Donbas.

[–] arrow74@lemmy.zip 11 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The US could theoretically take island in days with raw force, but if a coalition Europe force holds enough territory to bring in more troops through then it's going to be a bloody brutal slog.

All becuase roughly half of America voters preferred a pedophile war criminal over a relatively normal politician

[–] Tanoh@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, but she had a weird laugh and a less than ideal reply to a gaza question.

[–] RunningInRVA@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago

Lordy we are fucked.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 22 hours ago

Ukraine's armed forces alone are 15× the total population of Greenland

The Forsvaret (Danish Army) has the obligation to also defend autonomous territories of Denmark, i.e. Greenland and Faroe Islands. Its personnel is 100,000.

Ukraine now has 6 times more army personnel than before the war (~2022).

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 11 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

In terms of escalation with Europe: next would be any European territory in the Caribbean / Gulf of Mexico (e.g. BVI’s; side note: no fucking way will I ever use the regime’s idiotic rename of that body of water), then any European holdings in South America (e.g. French Guiana), then straight up annexation of countries in central/South America. Then probably an attempt to sweep up any other extraterritorial European enclaves in other areas (Canary Islands? The Azores? Who knows?).

This is what “sphere of influence” politics means. This is the new reality.

Computer, end program.

Computer, door.

Fuck.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

America totally sucks at actually annexing territory (so, not merely conquering, but actually all the way to making it part of its own territory), with the last successful instance of doing it being Puerto Rico during the Spainish-American War back at the end of the 19th Century.

So of those you listed, maybe Greenland would be possible to actually annex due to its tiny population - Americans could literally just kick everybody else out, by which point the place is just empty land which can be treated like some kind of North Atlantic oil platform that just happens not to be floating, which is fine if all you want to do there is exploit mineral resources that don't require much manpower to extract - as well as the small european occupied islands like Azores (though what would be the point of getting Azores since it has zero mineral resources and the only real value of its economic exclusive area is for Fishing which is a low economic value activity that requires quiet a lot more manpower than oil extraction).

Certainly actually annexing a South American country would almost certainly turn into a quagmire for America in the same style as Vietnam.

I mean, if you currently look at Venezuela, for all of Trump's strutting like a rooster on it, it's not actually occupied by America (zero boots on the ground) and any real American gains extracted from it (which in reality are far less than Trump's proclamations would make it seem) come from literally blackmailing the individuals in leadership there with "if you don't do what I demand I'll do to you personally the same I did to Maduro" - that situation is not at all one where America owns Venezuela.

[–] lividweasel@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago

Sorry, someone else already turned off the safety protocols. We’re screwed.

[–] thericofactor@sh.itjust.works 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Trump seems to forget Europe has nuclear missiles as well. It doesn't take thousands for mutual assured destruction.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Do you think Europe is gonna fire a nuke over Greenland? Be honest

[–] thericofactor@sh.itjust.works 9 points 20 hours ago

Honest? I don't know if politicians are adamant enough.

However, Trump (bullies in general) only respond to strength and violence.

Rolling over will only embolden them more. Hopefully pointing a few nukes at the US mainland will cause their government to rethink their strategy. But this will only work if we're willing to execute when push comes to shove.

For some reason Russia causes Trump to roll out the red carpet, when Putin decides to grace Trump with a visit. This when he could easily force them to end the war in a few days. They are suffering terrible losses at the hand of a small country supported by NATO. I think it's because he perceives Russia as "strong", but in reality the only edge they have is nuclear power.

So in short - yes, honestly I think Europe should stop trying to be diplomatic and start drawing a red line and seeing that strategy through.

The united states' government is now so obviously an enemy to Europe that diplomacy is clearly no longer an option.

I think as soon as Europe starts putting their big boy pants on, Canada will join. Because if the US controls both Alaska and Greenland, Canada is next. They will probably already realise that. Hopefully talks are already underway between Canada and European nations. I would be surprised if this isn't already a scenario they take into account.

Mexico in the south, joined by a few other south American countries could also join in. As soon as the us is facing pressure from 3 sides, bringing the stakes to their physical borders, the tables might turn.

And then there's like 80% of the us population that could rise up against this. The public opinion is heavily dependent on how close the fight is to their borders.

I believe if Europe starts reaching out NOW to Canada and south america, stop diplomacy with the US, call them out for every Nazi shit they're pulling, and start economic, political and military pressure, we might avoid escalation.

I really hope they already have this scenario on the back burner.

[–] freebee@sh.itjust.works 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Think I read Germany is sending 13 soldiers.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 hours ago

Yes, trigger troops and recon, no doubt.