The US was allowed to do businesses deals in Greenland, American billionaires have bought companies to do exactly that there, it was never an issue and the Danish and Greenland governments were always open for that.
I don't understand how you can defend this, a supposedly smart person on Hacker News is advocating for the invasion of an allied nation. It's flabbergasting to watch this kind of opinion appear even here.
I don't understand how any immigrant, let alone someone visibly darker skinned than the average European, could be in favor of this imperial expansion and domestic repression. Bro will be next on the boxcars spouting off about "it might be genocide but at least it's not woke".
The kind of far-sighted deal in which the US gets effective use of its allies territories to project military force far beyond its border, in order to contain its superpower rivals, the Russian Federation and China. This is done primarily to protect the USA's own interests (military and commercial), and secondarily (and as a quid-pro-quo) to defend the territory of its allies. That's what military alliances are about. You may recall the Iraq war when several allies of the US joined your country in fighting the Ba'athists, and then in the aftermath - when a multi-national peace keeping force was assembled (notably, including Denmark and Norway). Right or wrong, the US called, and allies responded.
Of course, if the USA no longer wants those bases all around the world, the US government is entirely free to withdraw them.
You're thinking too narrowly. It's not just about mutual trade. It's the fact that US companies have firmly planted the flag almost everywhere on earth - a feat only possible through the Pax Americana. If you want to see what the world will look like for the USA when it can rely on no allies to support its military misadventures, when it can rely on no favourable treatment from allies for its corporations, when it sees its former allies forming deals with former enemies, and when the cost of losing the US dollar's primacy as the reserve currency for world trade hits your country in its ability to raise (and service) debt - just wait. That world is slowly coming.
U.S. companies planted a flag all over the world for the same reason Chinese companies have done so. In 1930 the U.S. was the manufacturing giant that China is today.
I suspect the military misadventures will have to end, but that’s a good thing. In terms of reserve currency and trade deals or whatnot—I’m not persuaded it matters for economic growth.
GDP per capita is irrelevant to the benefits of being the world's reserve currency. You could search for it yourself but I'll do you a favour. Having the US$ be the world's reserve currency means the US government can borrow far more and on more favourable terms than other countries. It's why your country seems immune to the consequences of an ever-spiralling debt burden.
In addition, having the world's trade be denominated in US$ makes it incredibly easy for the US government to apply economic pressure to bear on other countries.
This is a privilege that few other countries share in any meaningful way.
Being the world's reserve currency just means that institutional investors around the world perceive U.S.-based assets as inherently more reliable, which leads to extra demand for these assets. That can degrade a lot quicker than you might expect when you see things like the current administration pressuring the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to lower rates and create more inflation, in direct violation of a very clear Congressional mandate.
> If none of that stuff makes the U.S. richer who cares?
Your bondholders certainly care, and you've been living beyond your means for quite some time.
I wish you the very best of luck with either massive expenditure cuts causing civil unrest, or hyper-inflation.
Honestly, I can't even believe that someone (who generally expresses reasoned viewpoints) would question the value of being the world's reserve currency. There's definitely downsides but it's allowed a lot more flexibility for the US since the 70s.
Denmark is a founding member of NATO, deployed troops to Afghanistan when the US was attacked on 9/11 and lost 40+ soldiers. Denmark has spilled blood for the US.
It's an ally as much as it could be, the US's presence in Greenland is entirely because it is in US's interests, and for that, as an ally, Denmark has always allowed the US to deploy as many troops as it wanted. Also as an ally it allowed Americans to do business in Greenland.
What else do you want? You aren't even American for the Trump administration, do not understand how you got so entangled in this bizarre worldview.
There are many more European countries in NATO than just Denmark, and all of these will have their trust in the US shattered if the US betrays such a close NATO ally as Denmark. You're literally betraying all your closest and largest allies.
I don't agree with what Trump is doing, but NATO is clearly more of a liability for the US at this point than an asset, distracting us and diverting resources from our primary theater of geostrategic concern (Asia-Pacific), and Europeans are generally arrogant, ungrateful allies, who, if opinion polls are to be believed, had tepid attitudes towards us even when we had a pro-Europe president (Biden) in the White House who provided Ukraine with over a $100 billion in aid, almost of all of which was either arms or cash (as opposed to loans, which the EU preferred). If that aid couldn't buy much goodwill with our allies, then why are they our allies at all, especially considering that they lack both the means and the will to help us should we come into conflict with China?
Since everyone here seems to love to argue in (naive) realist terms, here's some food for thought:
Outside of values, China and Europe have very few conflicting geopolitical goals. Core interests don't clash outside of Europe's conflict with Russia, and some rather minor disagreements in Africa. A Eurasian block with a weak Russia and a stable but balkanized Middle East would be very beneficial to both China and the EU. Even India could be largely integrated into that.
Even if the cost of NATO was higher than its immediate benefit, there is a very real risk of not only losing allies, but making new adversaries.
Europe has already been exposed as a paper tiger. It won't divert funding from its social safety nets to re-arm, even in the face of Russian encroachment into their frontier, and it's too dependent on the American consumer market to go tit-for-tat on trade, and Europe's economy has been stagnant for a decade. Them aligning with China would give every impetuous for the US to align with Russia, on which one presidential candidate (Ramaswamy) already actively campaigned and various rightwing pundits, like Tucker Carlson, advocate (I don't). Also "Europe" will not unite against America; the US could easily win over Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and probably the UK (technically not Europe), and maybe more, if it so chose. Europe's hand is weak, and while the citizens may not realize it, the policymakers (judging by their actions) clearly do.
Admittedly, I don't know how to sunset NATO smoothly, but it ought to be done.
How are you unsure? You don't think the USA benefitted from the world order it set after WW2, with NATO, setting up a global system of economical hegemony and become the wealthiest nation on the history of mankind? What else do you want? More?
It's fucking bonkers that's even an argument to be had, it seems it's never enough for the empire.
The US's expenditure on its military was never to protect anyone from the Soviets but to impose its own world order against the Soviets, it's been always self-serving and for someone so educated it's a bit ignorant to not understand that.
> And what does my background have it do with my point? What Trump thinks of me has nothing to do with my analysis of any particular policy
It has to do with you aligning with the agenda, repeating the rhetoric about US's allies as not being worthy even though it built the USA as it exists today in 2026. The same applies to your background, it helped to build the USA as it exists today but given how you look [0] you'll also be considered not worthy when it's convenient by the agenda of the same administration you're aligning with to betray allies.
Good luck thinking the USA as it exists can do so without allies, it's a shame that "when education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor".
Your link actually proves the OP right and you wrong. Look at the graph of the running average of GDP and you see that after a huge spike in the 40s (due to the WW2 effort) GDP growth settles on a new higher average (with significantly less fluctuation).
The spike in the 1940s is the war itself and recovery from the Great Depression. Obviously NATO and the reserve currency and whatnot came after that spike. If you look at the second chart, we’re right around the same point as the historical 1.7% growth curve. If you look at the fifth chart, the large european economies also seemed to have grown slightly faster after the war than before it. So I’m not sure how much the U.S. is benefitting from being the hegemon.
The real reason the U.S. is so rich is that it was already the richest country in the world in 1900. The U.S. had almost 50% higher GDP per capita than western europe in 1900: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Population-GDP-and-GDP-p.... Today, its still about 50%.
> If you look at the fifth chart, the large european economies also seemed to have grown slightly faster after the war than before it. So I’m not sure how much the U.S. is benefitting from being the hegemon.
Nobody's denying that the US-created world order has been good for its partners but that doesn't mean the benefit was at the US's expense. International trade is not a zero-sum game - the lifting tide and all that.
The post I was responding to implied that the U.S. enjoyed a special benefit from being the one maintaining the hegemonic world order: “The US's expenditure on its military was never to protect anyone from the Soviets but to impose its own world order against the Soviets, it's been always self-serving.”
If the U.S. obtained such a special benefit, it should have grown faster than western europe from 1950 to 1990, but it didn’t. If that growth comes from peace, not being the hegemon—as you put it, a rising tide lifts all boats—then the U.S. is disproportionately bankrolled a peace that western europe equally benefitted from.
Part of the story here is that international trade just isn’t that important to the U.S. 90% of U.S. GDP is domestic. Just 1.1% is exports to Europe.
> If the U.S. obtained such a special benefit, it should have grown faster than western europe from 1950 to 1990
Not necessarily; the US could have extracted that benefit by staying ahead of the rest of the world in terms of its citizens' wealth, with all the benefits this entails.
We can't know the "what-if" (would the US have become even richer by being an isolationist MAGA dreamland), but we know for a fact that the world order was created and maintained by the US, so it must have had its benefits all this time.
That’s possible, but it’s a much more uncertain claim than the one being made above. The US became 50% richer than western europe by being an “isolationist MAGA wonderland” before reengaging with the world during the wars.
Did hegemony help the U.S. maintain that edge? Maybe! But I think that’s a harder claim to prove than suggested by OP. I think the direct cause of America keeping its edge in the second half of the 20th century is we have Silicon Valley. I can think of a mechanism how reserve currency status is an indirect cause: reserve currency status means the world invests in American banks, and banks then use that money to fund tech startups. But is that really what’s happening? As I said above, I’m unsure.
Reserve currency status makes increasing money supply easier (the US has run large deficits and monetary expansions with less inflation than peers). "Petrodollars" create persistent demand for USD, independent of US domestic conditions - countries that import oil must earn USD (via exports, borrowing, or reserves) or hold US reserves in advance. Oil exporters, on the other hand, invest surplus dollars into US treasuries. This process absorbs US money creation and lowers US borrowing costs. This is an enormous advantage that the US is likely to lose if it continues on its isolationist course.
What kind of ridiculous stupidity is it to endanger the greatest military alliance in history? You give up the credible deterrent that all member states enjoy and contribute for what exactly? A bunch of minerals you could have had with a simple treaty? Military access that you already enjoyed? China and Russia must be laughing hard at this amateur shit show
Specifically in this case Trump's stated rationale is to shove Denmark's face in it for not forcing the Nobel prize committee to give him a peace prize. I don't think minerals or national security factor into it.
The latter, exactly. And you are clearly ignoring the objective factors.
Effectively you've departed reality and you are now in a world of your own making where the facts are no longer relevant, just how you can stretch and twist everything to make it fit your worldview.
>> It's flabbergasting to watch this kind of opinion appear even here.
I don't agree with rayiner's opinion, but it's a completely rational point of view. Every empire thinks like that. Which part of it is so flabbergasting that is has no precedent many times over in our human history?
I don't understand how you can defend this, a supposedly smart person on Hacker News is advocating for the invasion of an allied nation. It's flabbergasting to watch this kind of opinion appear even here.