JD Vance on Thursday accused Denmark — a fellow NATO member — and the rest of Europe of failing to protect Greenland from the intentions of Russia and China.
“I guess my advice to European leaders and anybody else would be to take the president of the United States seriously,” Vance told journalists at the White House when asked about Greenland.
After the US military successfully captured Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro last weekend, Donald Trump renewed his push to acquire Greenland, with the use of military force not out of the question.
Vance especially urged Europe to respond to Trump’s insistence that the United States needs the island for “missile defense.”
You’re confidently missing the point.
No one is saying Denmark should “break the treaty for fun.” The argument is about strategic preemption, not vibes. Treaties aren’t magic shields, they’re conditional frameworks that already collapse the moment an invasion happens. Yes, treaties have repercussions. That’s exactly why the discussion exists. Sanctions vs. occupation is not a hard comparison. One hurts your economy; the other erases your sovereignty. Pretending those are equivalent outcomes is absurd. And “waiting for us to incur repercussions” only makes sense if waiting actually improves Denmark’s position. If an invasion is imminent, waiting doesn’t preserve legality, it just burns time and leverage.
Also, international law explicitly allows anticipatory self-defense under imminent threat. This isn’t some Reddit-brained loophole; it’s been debated for decades. You acting like no one’s considered that doesn’t make it true.
So yeah — people have thought about this. You just seem locked into a cartoon version of how treaties and warfare actually work.
Please explain how this meets the “last window of opportunity” restriction on anticipatory self-defense.