Trump Cancels Denmark Visit

[Teallaura]

You'll lose a place for a lot of your arctic bases, and you'll have to dismantle a lot of your nuclear missile radar installations. It's up to you if the whole missile defense shield is worth persuing, or arctic landing strips are something you're interested in. As for Trump, his reaction came out of leftfield, was unpredictable and hasn't hurt Denmark in the slightest. You will get another president at some point.

It would be unfortunate - but you are the one considering a break in relations, not me - nor, to my knowledge, the US government.

Did he, or did he not suggest that Denmark should sell Greenland in front of the Prime Minister?

He did NOT.
The Denmark PM's reply came when she responded to a media report (a reporter's question, I believe).

Trump DID NOT ask the PM AT ALL. No inquiry, of any sort, was made to Denmark or its Prime Minister.

DID NOT HAPPEN.

I've explained twice now that in a conversation, that did not involve any official from Denmark, the subject of purchasing Greenland came up and Trump inquired OF HIS OWN AIDE about the possibility.

I don't know why you're defending him so much, Teal. He made an obvious gaff. Embarrassing things he wasn't thinking of came out of his mouth. What's surprising about that? That's Trump. That's the guy a lot of US Conservatives voted for. Try reading some of the threads around here, or go back to 2016. People here was celebrating him saying things like that. All that happened is that our PM told him the truth about his proposal: It was absurd.
Denmark already practically crawls on its knees for you guys.

It wasn't a gaff - and your PM was snarky for no good reason whatsoever.

Denmark's PM did not meet with Trump - and won't any time soon.

We're part of your NSA organized spy ring, you've been given deep access to the network of Denmark, so that can also get some intel scrappings. We decided to go ahead with your fault ridden F-35 fighters, who do a massive data dump to US servers each time they land and we can't be told what that data dump consists of, and its just kinda part of the deal so far, oh and their batteries short out when they fly over areas we still have to patrol. Such as Greenland and the Arctic. We can get a fix, eventually, maybe. Also, we aren't allowed to do any kind of repairs to them other than using replacement parts, and we are not allowed to make those either, even though factories in Denmark make them. The parts have to be shipped to Florida and sold back to us. We are not allowed access to the software, or the drivers of the planes. We frankly don't know if they come with an off switch you guys can flip.

Denmark is an ally - it is not a powerful ally. Or indispensable. Y'all can be rude if you want to - we're good with that - but we can opt out of unimportant to us meetings as a result.

Denmark is not a critical enough component to our foreign policy that our president should kowtow to your PM's internal political point whims.

We participate in your wars. We let you build massive military installations on Greenland, and ignore the huge amounts of pollution and leaks that occur from that place. Or when you leave armed nuclear warheads sitting there, by accident, even though we have an agreement signed since the eighties about you not doing that. We let you build a missile base on Greenland in the fifties, where you also decided to put an experimental nuclear reactor to power said base, none of which you cleaned up when you abandoned it.

Which is a bad reason to smart off when you want to convince us to fix a problem.

But we've enjoyed a long and friendly relationship with you. We buy your planes, even though we might have gotten a better deal from the French. We look the other way considering the pollution you caused on Greenland, and delayed negotiations on that, after all Greenland is a big place. We smoothed it out diplomatically regarding those nuclear warheads.

So, not telling us 'hey, could you fix this' justifies being snarky for no reason?

Aside: I think this relates to something I notice about Europe - Europeans seem to forget that where they only have one US to address in foreign policy, the US, because of its superpower status, has 196 countries and a bunch of smaller entities to address. The result is Americans aren't going to know the details of every diplomatic relationship. There are too many. Russia, EU, China, NK and Israel/Middle East are about the extent of the average American's FP awareness - if that.

And this is why our State Department has specialists in regions and countries - no one person, including the president, could keep up-to-date on it all.

If a formal inquiry was to be made, the State Department would provide the relevant context before the president made the final decision. That happens regardless of the issue - or president. It's not humanly possible for one person to keep up with it all.

Back on topic.

For all that, I believe a modicum of respectful treatment from you could be asked for.

Trump wasn't rude to Denmark or its PM - he didn't even make a formal inquiry. Your PM was rude to our president in response to report about an internal, informal question he asked his aide. Your PM started the rudeness, not our president.

Practice before preaching.

Not for the US to swagger in and make outrageous suggestions about us selling a colony we're still paying reparations for our history with.

Did not happen. Literally, did not happen.

A diplomatic opportunity? What does that mean here Teal? A photo op with Trump?

A face to face with the US president - like I said, not a big one, but yep, an opportunity.

What negatives do we accrue? None. What benefits would we recieve, nothing significant. You're not going to give us a better deal on the fighter jets, source code access, or permission to manufacture spare parts ourselves, even friendlier presidents than Trump was adamant on that. The mess on Greenland will still sit there. And your Thule base will still be a mess we accept you have up there.

A over reaction to a literally innocent question caused a lost opportunity - and possibly worsened relations. Snarky for no reason, not knowing that Trump hadn't made a proposal of any sort- well, it was probably worthwhile to her political capital in Denmark - with little immediate cost.

But as a diplomatic move? Dumb.

[Tassman]

He did NOT.
The Denmark PM's reply came when she responded to a media report (a reporter's question, I believe).

Trump DID NOT ask the PM AT ALL. No inquiry, of any sort, was made to Denmark or its Prime Minister.

It was public knowledge. “Trump's want for resource-rich Greenland first appeared in a report by The Wall Street Journal and was confirmed days later by the president, who said that "strategically, it's interesting, and we'd be interested."

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-trum...enland-1456575

Once it was made public Trump did not have the basic decency to include the Danish PM in discussions about possible plans for her own territory.

It wasn't a gaff - and your PM was snarky for no good reason whatsoever.

Denmark's PM did not meet with Trump - and won't any time soon.

The Danish PM was understandably “snarky” at Trump’s public speculation about the advantages of acquiring Greenland, because these were public ruminations being conducted behind her back.

Denmark is an ally - it is not a powerful ally. Or indispensable.

Denmark is a part of NATO which IS important to the USA (if not Trump’s friend Putin). NATO promotes peace within Europe and deters major US adversaries from launching large-scale conventional wars. Plus, it promotes Western values of democracy and rule of law. Without NATO the US would be even more isolated and alone than it is rapidly becoming under Trump thanks to his systematic alienation of traditional allies and partners in war.

we can opt out of unimportant to us meetings as a result.

Denmark is not a critical enough component to our foreign policy that our president should kowtow to your PM's internal political point whims.

How very high-handed of you. Common courtesy (admittedly an alien concept to boorish Trump), does not condone a last-minute cancellation of an invitation from the Queen of Denmark for a state visit, which would have included a state banquet the preparations of which were already well under way. It’s just plain rude, but no surprise there.