Greenland really should be worried!

Jane Smiley wrote a pretty good novel about the final Norse settlements on the island as the island reverted to a much colder climate. It was covered with boreal forests 40 -50 million years ago, but that was before any human settlement that we know of.

If the United States follows through on the threat to invade Greenland, we need to be crystal clear about what happens the next morning. This is not a real estate transaction or a routine military exercise. It is the geopolitical equivalent of pulling the pin on a grenade in a crowded elevator. The moment American boots hit the ground in Nuuk to seize territory from a fellow NATO member, the world as we know it ends. The consequences will not be temporary sanctions or angry letters. They will be total, permanent, and devastating.

The first domino to fall is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization itself. NATO is built on the sacred promise of Article 5, that an attack on one is an attack on all. If the U.S. attacks Denmark, we are not just breaking the treaty; we are triggering it against ourselves. NATO dissolves instantly. The alliance that kept the peace in Europe for 75 years evaporates, leaving the continent to rearm and realign against the new aggressor across the Atlantic. We don't just lose an ally; we create a unified enemy.

The military repercussions will be swift and humiliating. Europe will immediately demand the closure of every U.S. military base on the continent. Ramstein in Germany, Aviano in Italy, Lakenheath in the UK, all gone. Our ability to project power into the Middle East and Africa vanishes overnight. We will be evicted from the very soil we helped liberate and defended for decades, forced to retreat to our own shores as a fortress nation, isolated and friendless.

Then comes the economic nuclear option. The European Union is the largest single market in the world, and they will weaponize it. Europe will likely move to call in U.S. debt and dump their dollar reserves, sending the value of our currency into a death spiral. The U.S. economy, which relies on the dollar being the global reserve currency, will collapse. Inflation will make the post-COVID spikes look like a rounding error. Your savings will be worthless before the ink dries on the invasion orders.

Corporate America will face an extinction event. U.S. companies will be expelled from the European market. Apple, Google, McDonald's, and Tesla will see their assets seized or their operations banned. Trillions of dollars in market capitalization will be incinerated in minutes. The stock market will not just crash; it will close. We are talking about the complete de-globalization of American industry, cutting us off from the wealthiest consumers on the planet.

The skies will go silent. European aviation authorities will almost certainly ground all Boeing jets and ban U.S. airlines from their airspace. Transatlantic travel will cease. If you are in Paris or Berlin, you are stuck there. The logistical arteries that feed our supply chains will be severed. We will be cut off from European medicine, machinery, and technology. We will be an island nation in the worst possible sense.

The cultural isolation will be just as stinging. The International Olympic Committee and FIFA will have no choice but to bar the United States from competition, just as they did with Russia. There will be no World Cup matches in New Jersey. There will be no Team USA in the Olympics. We will be treated as a pariah state, unwelcome on the global stage, forced to watch the world celebrate without us.

For individual Americans, the consequences will be personal and painful. Visa-free travel to Europe will end immediately. Americans currently living or working in Europe will lose their legal protections and residency status. They will become persona non grata, potentially facing deportation or internment. The "blue passport" that used to open every door will suddenly be a red flag at every border crossing.

This is the end of trust, and it does not reset. You cannot invade a democratic ally and then say "my bad" four years later. The psychological break will be permanent. Europe will realize that the United States is no longer a partner but a predator. They will build their own defense architecture, their own financial systems, and their own alliances that specifically exclude us. The West will continue, but the United States will no longer be part of it.

Invading Greenland is not a show of strength; it is an act of national suicide. We are trading our reputation, our economy, and our security for a frozen island and a handful of minerals we can't even process. The price of this real estate deal is everything we built over the last century. If we cross this line, there is no going back. We will be the lonely superpower, ruling over nothing but our own decline.

I think Marco Rubio should be King of Greenland.

We have subsidized Denmark, and all of the Countries of the European Union, and others, for many years by not charging them Tariffs, or any other forms of remuneration. Now, after Centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back — World Peace is at stake!

A - said to be - joking remark by US Ambassador-designate Billy Long has caused a stir in Iceland.
Long had suggested that Iceland could become the 52nd US state and that he could become its governor, which has caused discontent given the tense diplomatic situation between the US and Denmark.

A petition is now calling for his appointment to be rejected.

Signatures collected against new ambassador to Iceland

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has tried to position himself as a bridge between Trump’s Washington and Europe, used some of his strongest language to date to condemn the president’s threats. “Applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of NATO allies is completely wrong,” he said in a statement Saturday.

While the German government issued a muted statement promising to coordinate a response with European allies, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said Sunday: “We will not be blackmailed.” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is considered one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe, described the tariffs as “an error.”

Because the European Union is a single trading and customs bloc, the imposition of tariffs against some would effectively mean tariffs on all 27 nations, European officials said.

The scope of Europe’s response will be a key test for its diplomats as they balance the need to stand up for European sovereignty, manage delicate relationships with Washington and consider political and economic pressures at home. Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the E.U., said European ambassadors will convene Sunday afternoon in Brussels to discuss next steps.

“European leaders including the UK have tried not to provoke Trump,” Bronwen Maddox, director of London’s Chatham House think tank, said in a text message Sunday. “But this is such an offense against their principle and interests that they will stand up to say so and may hit back with sanctions, too.”

The threat to grab a sovereign territory of Denmark against its will risks fundamentally breaking the NATO defense alliance, which European diplomats said would divide the West and embolden Moscow and Beijing. “China and Russia must be having a field day. They are the ones who benefit from divisions among Allies,” Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s top diplomat, said Saturday.

On Monday, Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen and Greenlandic Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt are scheduled to visit NATO’s headquarters in Brussels for a preplanned meeting with Secretary General Mark Rutte.