US President Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3 has emboldened him to proceed with the annexation of Greenland, a Danish-owned, self-governed territory, spelling the effective end of NATO and furthering Russia’s war aims in Ukraine, experts tell Al Jazeera.
“The move on Venezuela illustrates the Trump administration’s determination to dominate the Western Hemisphere – of which Greenland geographically is a part,” said Anna Wieslander, Northern Europe director for the Atlantic Council, a think tank.
“If the United States decides to attack another NATO country, then everything would stop – that includes NATO and therefore post-World War II security,” Frederiksen said.
“The pandering to Trump has been an element of our strategy over the last year, leaving observers hoping, but not entirely trusting, that another element of the strategy is preparing urgently for the final rupture with the United States,” Giles said.
Giles told Al Jazeera that Europe’s best option was to place a military deterrent on Greenland now, believing that putting allied troops in the Baltic States and Poland after 2017 deterred a Russian attack there.
And he played their stupidity just right.
Russia just employed a firehose of falsehood tactic. That could only achieve a low level distrust of government and institutions. It was American social media algorithms that matched up the falsehoods to the people that would believe them and presented people with an endless stream of false but consistent information. I don’t think the social media companies were colluding with Russia (that would be evil but not stupid) they were just maximizing profits for the shareholders without any consideration for how what they were doing would negatively impact society.
What Glavset did wouldn’t have been impactful had it not been for the stupid greed that permeates American culture. It’s still happening, though obviously Russia is less of a factor, and it’s more China and Iran doing these things now. Though Iran is less significant than China and may be out of play soon enough. But the damage is done and the US will never fully recover.