Greenland
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:
President Trump is working on acquiring Greenland. He announced the framework for a deal. Some people can’t figure out why he wants it. They look at the standard map and say “We don’t need Greenland to defend ourselves from a mass attack by Russian tanks, we have NATO troops in Germany. Why Greenland?”
Not everybody does original thinking, I get that, but it can’t be too hard to reason out from basic principles.
The first duty of the American government is to defend the territory of United States. Defending the territory of other nation-states comes second.
A Russian tank attack through the Fulda Gap does not threaten the territory of the United States. US troops in NATO countries are there to deter Russia from attacking Europe, not from attacking the US.
Preventing an attack on Europe is lower priority than preventing an attack on the US.
Stationing US defense forces in locations to protect the US is more important than stationing defense forces in locations to protect Europe.
The art of war has changed since World War II. The standard map is deceiving, the polar map is revealing. Modern war can take the polar route to strike us. Greenland is a better location for US defense forces than Germany.
We don’t need Europe. We need Greenland.
We should pull out of NATO and redeploy our defense forces to put America First.
How hard is that to understand?
Joe Doakes
Now that Europe has more people and GDP than the US, it makes sense.
their militaries are abiut 1/6 the size they were during the. Cold War, which does not.
January 22nd, 2026 at 12:05 pm
Maybe we don’t need Greenland. Maybe it’s a gigantic bluff to cover our withdrawal from NATO. Fine with me.
Google “moral hazard NATO” for articles explaining better than I can, why it’s time.
January 22nd, 2026 at 12:22 pm
I think Joe’s missing the basic point that when Russia was allowed to overrun Eastern Europe, China, and Southeast Asia, those countries quickly were turned to serve the Red Army, and their armies were then de facto merged into the Red Army. We’re seeing about the same with the areas of Ukraine that Russia controls–their young men are being conscripted into the Russian Army, which is the Red Army in all but name, IMO.
So even apart from the reality that Europe deserves its freedom, too, we’ve got the reality that if we don’t stand for Europe, we will soon stand alone against an opponent that has the resources to make life really rough for us.
January 22nd, 2026 at 8:25 pm
The EU doesn’t have as much GDP as the US. When the EU was first formed the US and EU were almost equivalent, but the European desire for control and safety has stiffled their economies.
The better measure, the purchasing power parity (PPP( is pretty close, but the PPP/person is still pretty low as compared to the US.
Still, I agree that we’ve been subsidizing Europe for far too long. I fully support a phased withdrawl from Europe over the next decade, which should give the EU the chance to rebuild their militaries — not that I have hope in hell that they’ll actually do so.
January 23rd, 2026 at 7:26 am
More than a century ago, the United States military was sent to protect Europe from itself. We still are. At some point, enough is enough. We should withdraw from NATO.
Now about Korea…