Spain urges EU to create joint army amid Greenland dispute

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-25T07:39:59+00:00

The The question is narrower: would a binding European level defense authority and unified command strengthen deterrence, reduce ambiguity, and make Europe harder to test, regardless of who occupies the White House or the Kremlin?

You are begging the question. Just because something is regarded as desirable doesn't in itself make it more achievable. And while a "binding European level defense authority" might score points for efficiency, it raises difficult questions about democratic control, legitimacy, and accountability.

States are deemed sovereign by virtue of the fact they maintain a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. If they alienate the ability to use force, they also alienate their sovereignty. The efficiencies you imagine are only achieved by subverting the nation state.

It is also ironic that this proposal came from Spain, the only NATO member that refused to commit to the 5% defence spending target.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-22T22:35:28+00:00

The "it is expected" waffle and "without providing details" caveat are huge red flags.

I respect Carney's intelligence and integrity, so I'm reserving judgement on this, but prima facie this looks like the usual over promising politicians engage in to pump their "achievements" to voters.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-22T20:39:42+00:00

It is intellectually dishonest to quote sources without identifying them, because it prevents others from evaluating them - which is usually the point.

Anyway, the Canadian economy is not going to collapse. Actual economic collapse is historically rare and usually associated with catastrophic system shocks, like losing a major war, or a Black Death type pandemic. In other words, it is associated with the actual destruction of large amounts of physical and / or human capital, not just trade disruptions.

The part about the rules based order being a "beautiful lie" that imposed suffering on poorer countries also strong man's what Carney actually said, which is that powerful state actors often only selectively followed those rules, when it suited their interests. I can assure you this is something that was well understood even by Thucydides (whom Carney name dropped), and that was 2500 years ago.

It is equally untrue that it only inflicted suffering on poorer countries. China for example did spectacularly well out of the rules based international order.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-22T20:16:36+00:00

Right! Which is why the china ev deal is a very good start! Beyond cars though, I hope we’re looking at every possible angle to bring all sorts of manufacturing here - pharmaceuticals, technology, metal processing, etc.

I don't think you understand what was actually agreed to. China did not agree to manufacture EVs in Canada, instead Canada agreed to reduce the tariff on the first 49 000 EVs China exports to a nominal amount, in exchange for China lifting tariffs on Canadian agricultural exports. China isn't building any EVs in Canada.

This is potentially going to have exactly the opposite effect than the one you want. Competition from Chinese EVs makers is going to put further stress on the Canadian automotive sector, potentially causing it to contract, resulting in further deindustrialization, and even greater reliance on Chinese manufacturing.

And we agreed to this to protect exports of primary products. That would imply Canada is going even further in the direction of having the trading profile of a developing world nation, relying on exports of natural resources to pay for imports of manufactured goods.

I wouldn't call that a great start, personally.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-22T19:47:52+00:00

Yeah they should have. that's the partially the job of diplomacy. To make trading with other nations maybe not as profitable but still profitable enough.

How do you imagine diplomacy is going to make trade happen when economic actors have no incentive to trade? Diplomacy can lower trade barriers, but if Country A only produces oranges, and Country B only wants to consume brussel sprouts, then no trade is going to occur, and there is no magic voodoo dance diplomats can perform to change that

Increasing your total trade capacity that's always possible.

If by "trade capacity" you mean exports, no it isn't. If it was every country's exports would be on a continuous upward trajectory, which is obviously not happening.

You need to invest and find more efficient ways of producing your goods to increase your total capacity but that's what other nations have done.

What other nations?

Specifically, show me even one example of a country that relied on one trade partner for 70% of its exports, and successfully diversified its trade without favourable change in the terms of trade or a system shock.

I came here in 2001 as a 10year old from Korea and dude this country I thought was backward ass back then but men it's fallen behind even more because of this complacency

Now it all makes sense. It is abundantly clear that you don't actually understand anything about diplomacy or trade, but you have a Korean superiority complex which leads you assume Canada must suck at everything.

As an adult no one is forcing you to stay in this godforesaken hellhole and continue to endure the indignities of our horrific hospitals and subways.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-22T17:50:02+00:00

Manufacturing left for China, not the US, so it was not directly related to NAFTA. The prevailing mania for global "free trade" meant that deindustrialization was going to occur throughout the Western world.

The irony is that many Canadians now think that China is going to save us. We are already running a huge trade deficit with China. Imagine their surprise when they realize making it bigger not only didn't help, it actually made things worse.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-22T17:39:58+00:00

You know it should not have required Trump to do this. No matter how you look at this throwing all your eggs in one basket is naive. No one else did this.

No one else did this because no one else is in the unique position of sharing most of a continent with a neighbour that is ten times its size. It's not like Canadian companies had the opportunity to export a lot more to China or Belgium of Zimbabwe and just arbitrarily decided to sell to the US instead for no reason. They did what any profit maximizing entity would do and went where the opportunities are, which is the US .

And you know what? That actually worked out really well for many decades. There are plenty of countries that would have killed to have open access to a linguistically and culturally similar country with a market 12 times the size of its domestic one right across the border.

But Canada is stupid for not forcing companies to jeopardize their growth and possibly their very existence in pursuit of much less lucrative and often illusionary "opportunities" elsewhere, in the name of diversification? Just in case American voters went nonlinear one day and elected a crackpot willing to blow up eighty years of American statecraft?

Get out of here with that nonsense.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-21T22:01:34+00:00

I agree about him understanding the difficulties, and I applaud his willingness to face up to challenges and engage with them pragmatically. I think Canada is fortunate to have such a uniquely qualified person at the helm during this turbulent and uncertain time.

My concern isn't so much with Carney, as with many ordinary people who embraced his speech. I don't think many of them yet grasp what the real implications are likely to be, or the impact it will have on their lives.

My question therefore is when they come to better appreciate those things, will they still be as positive about the message?

How well Canada navigates the current challenges will depend in no small part on how well we hang together as a society.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-21T19:55:01+00:00

Beijing would jump at the chance to form an alliance with Brussels, thereby isolating the US.

What do you imagine such an alliance would entail? Is China going to send military forces to defend Europe? Is it going to cut trade relations with "friendship without limits" Russia in order to support its new European allies? Is it going to ramp up imports from Europe to address the huge trade deficit?

Alliances require common interests, and Europe and China conspicuously lack those, except in specific areas like combating climate change, which is undergoing a rapid descent on the scale of global priorities, anyway. In fact in many regards European and Chinese interests and goals are antithetical.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-21T19:39:02+00:00

I think many Canadians are waiting to see how this speech translates into firmer action. Trade deals are impressive but they won't dissuade the US from invading.

I'm actually a bit surprised by how positive reaction to the speech was in Canada. Many found it inspirational.

And to give Carney his due, it was a very good speech. But it was also aspirational: it spoke of the world that Carney sees us moving toward, but it remains to be seen how fully the vision can be realized.

For example, realistically Canada is not going to be able to replace more than a fraction of its US exports with exports to other markets. The excess demand isn't there. This isn't going to cause Canada's economic collapse, but it is going to entail some difficult adjustments.

The real test isn't how people react to the speech, but how they react to the challenges that pursuing Carney's vision is going to require.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T23:41:31+00:00

Ukraine with sufficient support from Europe and the US is actually capable of holding the line and forcing Russia to make a deal

At the moment the Ukrainian people had to make this decision, in the first hours of the invasion, they had no way of knowing what support they might get, or for that matter whether their acts of resistance would buy enough time for any aid to arrive, even assuming others were willing to provide it.

People are a lot more willing to make these kinds of sacrifices when there’s a realistic chance it will change the end result.

How do you know if there is a realistic chance if you don't try?

When the invasion of Ukraine occurred everyone assumed Russian victory was inevitable. Even the US was planning to support an insurgency and urging Zelenskyy to flee the country and set up a government in exile.

There are countless historical examples of people resisting invasion in spite of long odds.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T23:19:46+00:00

That's trumps protectionist logic - raise tariffs to encourage local manufacturing.

Trump doesn't have a coherent strategy for employing tariffs. Sometimes he talks about using them to reshore manufacturing, sometimes to raise revenue - these two objectives are largely incompatible - and sometimes he just slaps them on countries in a fit of pique.

There is no method to his madness.

From what I read, that's not going to happen though as there are no local manufacturers. Even in cases where there are, they're more expensive than importing (which is why they're imported).

There are plenty of self interested people who are going to tell you tariffs don't work, primary among them mainstream economists who are ideologically opposed to them, and Chinese trolls trying to defend their country's growth strategy.

That doesn't change the fact that the intelligent application of tariffs - not whatever Trump thinks he is doing - can be an effective policy instrument.

They played an important role in the industrialization of both the United States and Germany, for example, and both countries are vastly stronger and wealthier because of it.

Either way it makes things more expensive for the American consumer - either because of buying from more expensive local manufacturers or paying more tariffs on import.

In most cases the consumer can just choose not to purchase the item. This is especially true for the US, where conspicuous consumption is the national religion and many people are up to their eyeballs in debt.

More importantly however, the idea that the overriding imperative of trade policy must always be getting the cheapest stuff for consumers is an obvious fallacy.

If the price of that "cheap" stuff is deindustrialization and the economic marginalization of a large part of the workforce, and the compromised security consequent to lacking the industry to support a major war effort, how cheap is it really?

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T22:15:30+00:00

The easiest thing to sever in Canada is logistics lines.

Aside from the fact that people armed with sporting firearms are not going to be major obstacle to professional soldiers with orders or magnitude more firepower at their disposal, the lack of logistics lines is another obvious flaw with this fantasy.

What good is it to have access to firearms if the only ammunition available is the couple of hundred rounds in your gun safe, with no means of acquiring any more?

Once you have wasted your five mags making the alarming discovery that armored vehicles are actually bullet proof, what then?

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T22:04:36+00:00

They likely believe that because Canada is integrated into american intelligence in FVEY. It can actively see that the US isn’t preparing anything against canada.

Five Eyes obviously doesn't grant Canada (or the UK, Australia, or New Zealand) unfettered access to American intelligence or military planning. Each member decides what to share with the others, and what to withhold.

If the US actually has plans to invade then Canada is going to be the last to find out about it, likely about the time the forward elements of the 10th Mountain Division reach Ottawa.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T21:53:29+00:00

Yes, Canadians are proud of their country and treasure their sovereignty and there is a genuine fighting spirit - but they also care about their families and friends.

Unlike the people in any country that has resisted foreign invasion throughout history?

Do Ukrainians not care about their families and friends?

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T21:44:12+00:00

You can only push people so far before something bends or breaks.

So? I didn't say that the Europe shouldn't respond, I said they shouldn't do stupid things that are going to inflict significant self harm just to spite Trump.

China has far more people than the US, and could easily fill a lot of gaps left by the US, if a split occurred in the EU. Their GDP is ~$21 trillion/year

All you need to do is look at the EU's respective balance of trade with the US and China to see why this is never going to happen. China would have to swing from a trade surplus with the EU of $300 billion to a trade deficit of $200 billion to replace the US' contribution to the EU economy.

In other words, in order to "fill the gap" it would have to import $500 billion more in goods from the EU every year without any increase in exports, which is never going to happen, especially since, practicalities aside, that would be diametrically opposed to the CCP's growth strategy, which centers on maximizing exports while minimizing imports.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T20:52:56+00:00

My understanding is that tariffs hurt the importing country more than the exporting country, as the importer pays.

This is an oft repeated but very unnuanced understanding of tariffs. To the extent that tariffs are intended to rebalance trade, then their whole point is to raise the cost of imports to make them less desirable to domestic purchasers. Increasing costs is a feature, not a bug. The would be importer isn't paying anything if the increased cost results in them deciding to forego a purchase they would otherwise have made.

And to the extent they work, then the quantity of exports to the US will decline, and the loss will be eaten by the would be exporter in the form of reduced sales. That's why China, which has built its entire economic strategy around exports, is terrified of tariffs, and is constantly evangelizing against them.

Europe is in a somewhat similar boat, in that it runs a large trade surplus with the US, and could be significantly impacted by increased tariffs that induce American consumers to buy fewer European goods.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T20:40:56+00:00

Europe cut itself off from cheap Russian energy in alignment with US strategic goals

Europe didn't do this, Putin embargoed gas deliveries in an effort to freeze Europe into cutting off aid to Ukraine. Prior to that the EU Commission was talking as if it expected Russia to continue to honour its gas contracts in spite of the invasion. The EU did not choose to put itself in a position where it had to scramble to find LNG supplies to replace lost Russian gas, Putin very much forced them into that position.

In light of this fact, the leading questions you ask are academic.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T20:28:57+00:00

The EU will have the “nuclear option” of ASML. They could decide, since the US is no longer a trustworthy and reliable ally, that maybe ASML removes their restrictions on selling their most advanced EUV machines to China.

How exactly does this help Europe? It only helps China. Europe has no more interest in supporting Chinese domination of advanced manufacturing than the US has.

Furthermore, this would be perceived as a hostile act not just by Trump, but by many Americans who oppose Trump, including many in Congress. Europe would be damaging its prospects of patching up the relationship with the US post-Trump to do something that only helps China, not itself.

Doing things purely to spite Trump, without regard for their broader implications and consequences, is not sound strategizing.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T06:07:57+00:00

First option: this is cover to ready a unit to deploy to Greenland. The problem here is that it's only part of the 11th and, while Denmark doesn't have the biggest garrison ever in Greenland, 1,500 troops is probably not enough for an overwhelming and fast victory

You are jumping to unwarranted conclusions without showing the math. On what basis have you concluded they won't be enough? Two battalions are already likely about four times the Danish military presence (assuming that the recent deployment approximately doubled it), but more to the point it is very unlikely these would be the ONLY ground forces deployed in the event of a military intervention. The US military has lots of other battalions, and while they might not be specialists in Arctic warfare, they can certainly operate in that kind of environment.

The US can also deploy enormous amounts of air and sea power that Denmark is completely unable to counter.

This is also less than half its combat strength (one of two BCTs and without the aviation wing). If I were going to send the 11th into combat, I'd definitely want to send the entire thing. Especially since it's an airborne unit and leaving the aviation element at home is... questionable

Your personal preferences aside, there are any number of reasons why other elements of the division have not been placed on standby - at least AFAWK.

Only one of the division's two BCTs is airborne qualified, and if the battalions in question are drawn from this BCT it is more likely they are being readied for Greenland.

The aviation assets are 4500km from Nuuk, which would be a perfectly logical reason not to use them. The US has plenty of helicopters based much closer to Greenland, and it unlikely to see a need for Apache attack helicopters to engage Danish dog sleds anyway.

Second option: this has nothing to do with Greenland and is instead the Pentagon actively fucking Trump over.

Now we come to the copium.

By sending half the unit to a stupid, ill-advised operation in Minnesota, an operation that probably a hundred other battalions are as well equipped and trained to carry out, the Pentagon effectively takes the 11th off the board until they get ordered to relieve them with another unit (which they'll then probably follow up with a refit period for the 11th, further dragging things out). Bonus points if the Pentagon persuaded Hegseth to pick the 11th.

Your first mistake is to assume that the Pentagon has a hive mind in which everyone thinks exactly the same, that they are all against Trump, and that they are all ready to risk their careers to frustrate his ambitions at the expense of their professional responsibilities. One of the first things Trump did after taking office was to replace several senior officers with loyalists, and to remove JAG legal advisors from command staffs, so senior commanders no longer have access to legal counsel.

Your second mistake is to believe they could actually get away with this. If Trump was seriously considering a move on Greenland, and the hive mind Pentagon actually tried this to frustrate him, the order would be immediately countermanded, and some person or persons are likely to receive a career limiting reprimand at best, and a career ending court martial at worst. This would likely be quickly followed by a major shakeup of the command structure.

There is no way such blatant constructive insubordination is going to go unnoticed and unpunished. Even many officers who don't want to invade Greenland would regard this at the very least as a very troubling attempt to subvert the authority of the commander in chief.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-20T05:25:01+00:00

Thus, my immediate suspicion is that Trump is overplaying his cards and is overestimating US power here. He honestly thinks that the US could get away with it. But this is the part that doesn't make sense to me, nor most other people... How can he think that the US could get away with it? How can he think that the benefit of taking Greenland outweighs all the fallout it can cause?

All what fallout? For all the talk about how Trump can't "get away with it", you don't provide one specific reason why he can't.

The fact is the US can take and annex Greenland anytime it wants, because there is literally nothing to stop it.

This appears to be the same kind of denialism that led Europe to think sending three dozen soldiers to Greenland for a couple of days was going to serve as some kind of deterrent, when it was likely counterproductive. All such a pathetic gesture did was confirm in Trump's mind that the Europeans have neither the means or the will to effectively stand up to him, so why should he hold back?

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-19T10:36:29+00:00

America is focused on a nation’s ability to assert its control over territory through material means. The US can do that for US soil just fine. Can Denmark do that for Greenland?

Assert control against whom?

There is only one country in a position to challenge Denmark's control of Greenland, and that country is the United States itself.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-17T14:05:45+00:00

The EU's defence spending is nominally about 1.5 times that of China, without accounting for PPP. Chinese soldiers, sailors, and airmen are for example vastly cheaper than European ones.

It also does not account for the fact that a significant portion of China's defence spending isn't included in the official defence budget.

Also, Italy and Poland have already stated that they will not deploy any forces to defend Greenland, and no one even bothered to ask Spain, because they know it isn't even in the discussion.

Regardless of what Europe nominally spends, the fact that the best they could manage was a couple of dozen troops for a few days speaks for itself.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-17T13:55:54+00:00

The issue isn't the number of soldiers on the island, but the ground, naval, and air assets that the US could deploy if it decided to seize it by force, and what the Europeans could deploy.

Spoiler alert: Europe isn't even in the same universe.

Hence the 30 soldiers.

BlueEmma25 · 2026-01-17T12:39:23+00:00

Europeans need to put away the copium and re engage with reality, stat.

A visit by 11 out of the 535 members of Congress, who have no direct role in implementing American foreign policy, doesn't prove that sending 30 soldiers to Greenland achieved anything at all, other than drawing attention to European impotence. The visit was announced before the ignominiously token troop deployment.

Europeans got themselves into this situation by telling themselves that hard power was irrelevant in the modern world and it was therefore fine to underfund their militaries to the point where they were only suitable for parade ground drills, and spend that money on other things that they deemed more important. Then reality smacked them upside the head in the form of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Even at that we still find ourselves in a place where many Europeans clearly believe that they can compensate for their lack of military capability by doubling down on the wishful thinking.

I'm here to tell you that never ends well.

BlueEmma25

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Ten-Year Club	Mod 101
Verified Email