this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2025
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to acknowledge that the Pentagon has developed plans to take over Greenland and Panama by force if necessary but refused to answer repeated questions at a hotly combative congressional hearing Thursday about his use of Signal chats to discuss military operations.

Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee repeatedly got into heated exchanges with Hegseth, with some of the toughest lines of questioning coming from military veterans as many demanded yes or no answers and he tried to avoid direct responses about his actions as Pentagon chief.

In one back-and-forth, Hegseth did provide an eyebrow-raising answer. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., asked whether the Pentagon has developed plans to take Greenland or Panama by force if necessary.

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[–] brezel@piefed.social 104 points 8 months ago (3 children)

how can it be necessary to invade a country?

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 63 points 8 months ago

Whenever a republican president wants to be reelected

[–] liverbe@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Resources. The answer is always resources.

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 9 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Idk, the gdp of Greenland is only 3b a year and it's mostly from fishing. There's really nothing the US could extract from Greenland that would be worth the cost of invading it. There's some potential for mining, but you'd have to build an entire infrastructure to do it, and we don't even want to invest in building infrastructure in the US.

Realistically the only thing that makes Greenland strategically important would be controlling the shipping lanes up north. However, the only strategically significant rival we have that utilizes those shopping lanes are Russia, whom the administration wants to buddy up too.

I think it's just meat they throw out to the media anytime they want to distract from their failures, and of course our pathetic press just gobbles it up every time.

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Lots of great reasons that aren't the actual reason.

Greenland is very big on the map, and if it was apart of the United States then the US would look so big on the map.

Everyone says Trajan was the best roman emperor because the roman empire had the largest amount of territory under him, ergo if Greenland or Canada became part of the US then everyone would say the same thing about Trump.

That is the only reasoning behind this obsession.

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 2 points 8 months ago

I'd def agree with that before him wanting resources.

[–] SupaTuba@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's because of climate change. Rich Americans that pretend climate change isn't real) want to go there to bug out.

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago

Greenland probably has a shit ton of minerals that could be mined, but it takes investment and capital and labour to extract it where greenland is just fine with fishing. It's population is pretty small.

[–] KumaSudosa@feddit.dk 1 points 8 months ago

The Danish news ran a story as to why Greenland was so important to Trump.

Apparently the special deal we did with the Americans in 1949 or whatever is tied to NATO membership. The US presence on the island is entirely dependent upon them being a member of NATO. Were the Americans to withdraw they'd have to shut down Pituffik and give up all their interests in the Arctic.

As to why Greenland is important - apart from the hope that resources can be extracted in a profitabel way - is, as you say, the northern shipping lanes (and theoretically the Russian military threat) as well as various possibilities with the changing climate. And of course it's a classic "mine is bigger than yours" contest

[–] plyth@feddit.org 1 points 8 months ago

However, the only strategically significant rival we have that utilizes those shopping lanes are Russia, whom the administration wants to buddy up too.

If that doesn't play out, Putin will be dropped like Saddam.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 months ago

As long as you're counting location as a resource. Ex. Cuba was an advantageous location for the Soviet Union during the cold war.

[–] huppakee@feddit.nl 2 points 8 months ago

Necessary resources*

[–] Lembot_0003@lemmy.zip 15 points 8 months ago

Ask Putin. He is a big specialist in a related mental gymnastics. He'll tell you how Anglo-Saksonians forced him to invade Ukraine.