I’m really not clear on how you imagine those EU defense agreements would hold up if the NATO defence agreements don’t.

“Please help us, Greenland is under attack!”

“Uh, no, sorry, none of us are willing to go to war with the US.”

“OK, but what if we repeat the exact same request, but with EU letterhead instead of NATO?”

“Oh well why the fuck didn’t you say so? Our fleets are already on the way!”

A Christmas road trip helped me wrap up A Memory Called Empire. Absolutely loved it, fantastic book if you’re into scifi. Went straight on to the sequel, A Desolation Called Peace.

No, it wouldn’t. Not unless we end up with a world war.

Trump attacking Greenland triggers article 5. Denmark calls for NATO to support them against this act of aggression.

Either NATO steps up and together counters the US, or they collectively pussy out, and from there on every member knows that the alliance is a paper tiger. A promise on paper that means nothing in practice. And Putin immediately invades the Baltics.

The only version of this where NATO survives without a war is one where the alliance is able to strongarm Trump into backing down from an invasion by threatening war, without actually having to go through with it. But if we’ve reached the point of the US actually invading a NATO member, I really don’t see “backing down” being in the cards.

Be nice if Americans had their shit together enough that the rest of the world didn’t have to deal with this in the first place. But no, the electorate of the most powerful country on earth are a bunch of squealing idiot children, and now that’s everyone else’s problem to fix.

Hey, hey now, listen, don’t worry your silly head about that. Look, the US just illegally kidnapped a head of state. Isn’t that exciting? Go focus on that hot new story, don’t worry about this old nonsense.

“Brave whistleblower” should have picked less neoliberal / right wing papers to leak to if that’s the case. Like, for anyone else thinking of doing something like this, leak to smaller outlets that are willing to violate journalistic norms (and risk pissing off the government) and also to the big guys. Then when the smaller outlets report on it, the bigger papers are forced to move or miss the story.

Incredibly cowardly of AP to not point out that Kelly literally did nothing wrong here. Reminding people that they have to follow the law cannot, ever, under any circumstances, be considered illegal, unless it was somehow being done for purposes of coercion or intimidation. Just saying “You are required to follow the law” is the literal opposite of illegal. Trump calling that “sedition” is an open admission that his administration wants and intends to violate the law at every turn. Otherwise how could it possibly be an attack on the government’s authority?

I’m sorry, are we spending too much time talking about the rogue state with a fascist government, the world’s largest military, and a proven willingness to violate every international law and norm, that is currently threatening the safety of the entire planet?

Gee I fucking wonder why?

Newpipe / Pipepipe and it’s variants can play in background and have a repeat function (playlist or individual video).

If the US actually succeeds (huge if, they control exactly 0.00% of Venezuela right now), this is will crash the Albertan economy into the earth’s core. And Albertans will, somehow, blame the Liberals.

He’s aiming a little higher, I think.

This. No reason for the rest of us to give up just because they have. We’ll do it without them if we have to.

As far as I can tell, they genuinely do not have anything approaching a real plan here.

Best guess is that, as a would be dictator himself, Trump has so thoroughly bought into his own strongman hype that he actually does believe that’s how governments work. L’etat c’est moi. He seems to truly think that removing Maduro is the same thing as removing the government, and that by some kind of fucking boardgame-ass logic that means they’re now in charge.

America is already the gold standard for failing at regime changes, but this is truly their finest work yet.

Cuba is next. Then Columbia, Mexico and Greenland. Canada is pretty far down the list. Not saying we shouldn’t be taking this threat as being absolutely deadly serious, just trying to be realistic about how things are going to play out.

The good news for us - and only for us - is that they’re probably going to end up in such a deep quagmire in Venezuela that they maybe make it through one or two more of those countries before they stall out completely. Trump has not succeeded in putting the US public on a war footing the way Hitler did in Germany. By and large, MAGA are pretty skeptical of the idea that a war is going to make their groceries cheaper. They want to kick out all the foreigners, not waste money and lives “fixing” their countries for them. There is no lebensraum mandate in the hearts of present day Americans, no matter how much Trump waves around the Munro Doctrine.

Oh, yeah, no question that’s the plan, insofar as there is one.

They did fucking WHAT??!

You know what, I wrote a reply here, but I’m replacing it with this because there’s just no point. You’re still trying to argue that a potential invasion executed by a military with over 2,000,000 active and reserve personnel would so badly need a couple of thousand extra bodies that that alone would force Trump to put an end to his dictatorial cock waving in Democrat voting cities.

There’s a lot more I could go into here, but if you’re not already looking at the scale difference in those numbers and reflexively laughing at the ridiculousness of your own argument, nothing I or anyone else says is going to make a difference. You’re too far up your own arse to waste the breath on.

Wait, are you… Are you actually serious right now?

You think that an article saying the US military missed its yearly recruitment goal by 25% is proof that they need to recall the National Guard from Chicago in order to have the capacity to invade Venezuela?

Did you spend more than 10 seconds looking at the numbers before posting this nonsense?

They fell short of their yearly recruitment target by about 12,000 personnel. Between active duty and reserve forces, the total size of the US military is over 2 million. And there is absolutely no scenario where you would ever use a national guard unit in the initial wave of an invasion. (correcting myself on this point; the US did draw up National Guard units as part of the Iraq invasion, though as best I can tell their role was almost entirely restricted to support, logistics, and rear line security, not frontline combat. Still, those are essential components of any successful military operation and I’m sure they made significant contributions there.).

The US Marine Corps, on its own, is ~170k personnel. The entire Venezuelan military, across all branches, is estimated at around 337k personnel.

But no, please, do explain how the 800 national guard troops deployed to DC are absolutely vital to the success of a potential invasion.

Stick all that in (minus the mash) in a submarine roll with some provolone on top and you’d have a damn fine cheese steak.