The funniest part of this – or most tragic, depends on how you look at it – is that Denmark is probably the most committed U.S. vassal state in the entire EU.

Look:

• they’re a founding member of NATO
• they’ve participated in nearly every major U.S.-led military operation whenever the U.S. asked, even the most controversial ones like Iraq
• Denmark was revealed to be the base for the NSA’s spying on European leaders
  
• Denmark always buys American military equipment over European alternatives
• They’ve agreed to hosting a U.S. military base – in Greenland! (Thule Air Base) – which has been crucial for U.S. strategic interests since the Cold War

And yet here you have Trump apparently seriously considering annexing 98% of their territory (yup, Greenland is big, and the rest of Denmark very small)!

I mean, talk about cuckoldry…

The irony gets even richer – and sadder – when you look at Denmark’s response as per the FT’s article. Instead of showing any backbone, Mette Frederiksen, the Danish premier, offered “more co-operation on military bases and mineral exploitation.” This perfectly encapsulates the European leadership’s approach to U.S. relations: no matter how egregious the provocation, the response is more servility and more meekness.

Yet the KEY lesson here is that servility obviously gets you nowhere. Europe needs to wake up, fast. Its weakness means that it’s now very much not at the table anymore, it’s on the menu. And this should serve as an immense wake-up call for other U.S. “allies” too: submission only breeds contempt and disregard for your interests, you can be crushed on the altar of your master’s craziest whims.

I know I’m a broken record on this topic but Europe is about to step into its century of humiliation if it keeps behaving like this.

And the worst part is that no-one is going to care because of Europe’s double-standards and hypocrisy in its own dealings with the rest of the world, Gaza being the latest example of this. By choosing to openly abandon even the appearance of principles Europe has essentially announced it was ok with “might makes right”. A monumentally stupid thing to do when you aren’t mighty yourself…

Europe’s leaders (if you can call them so), in their eagerness to be “good allies” by supporting the violation of international law in Gaza, have forgotten that principles aren’t just moral luxuries – they’re shields, and once broken for others, they no longer protect you either.

Their forgetting this is especially egregious given Europe’s own history. Because we’ve we’ve seen this many times before and perhaps the most salient example is the response – or absence thereof – to Mussolini’s Italy invading Ethiopia in 1935, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian deaths.

Despite Ethiopia being a member of the League of Nations, the UN-ancestor meant to prevent exactly such aggression, major powers chose to protect their fellow European power rather than uphold international law. With the consequences we all know about: the death of the League of Nations as a credible institution and the clear message to other European powers that hunting season on weaker nations and peoples was officially open. Within a few months afterwards, Hitler started remilitarizing the Rhineland.

The century of humiliation that Europe is walking into has a uniquely self-inflicted quality to it, stemming from its own moral corruption and strategic myopia. Unlike China, which at least could claim to have been blindsided by European imperialism, Europe is actively participating in dismantling the very protections that could shield it from stronger powers. Which means it won’t even have the moral authority to protest.

Vir: Arnaud Bertrand via X