Probably many greedy reasons, but my personal favourite speculation: annexing Greenland surrounds Canada and stops any potential aid by its NATO allies in case of an invasion, since annexing Canada is one of the stated objectives of the US now.

In terms of strategy for actual national security, they already got all the access they wanted, if they wanted more all they had to do was ask. If they’re the ones doing the attacking of a common ally, though, they wouldn’t get that access. So it’s only of added strategic value to annex instead of maintaining the alliance if the goal is to attack members of the alliance.

Korean democracy is not dead yet!

Me, checking what the damage is: oh good, my European defence stocks went up 2 to 4 percent today while the American stocks are tanking, happy days!

Me, after thinking on it a bit longer: oh God, my European defence stocks went up while the world economy is taking a hit, better get ready for whatever’s coming

One caused by counting on internal division in the EU, the probability of which increases when we fail to have a unified response right now. Basically just gambling that countries like the Netherlands won’t be willing to defend, e.g., a Baltic country. Russia could certainly beat the militaries of small Baltic states one by one, if it is breaking even with Ukraine. No joint response would mean selling out member states and effectively disabling the whole concept of the EU. Joint response would mean war for everyone.

I would prefer a future that minimises the probability of this gamble being made, and nobody gets invaded.

I suppose this is karma for me getting too excited about European unity getting a massive boost as a silver lining to the state of the world. My own country is joining Hungary in attempting to sabotage it.

This is not the time to make an ideological show to your populist national electorate. If this doesn’t get implemented properly and the newfound unity is not credible, the continent and the EU will be faced with war. Which, if that on its own is not convincing enough, also tends to be somewhat suboptimal for fiscal stability and the economy.

I sometimes wonder now if the plan is to stop having allies, and instead just make an American version of Wagner. Privatised American military fights for the highest bidder, buys lots of material from the American MIC, makes the world a worse place but makes a lot of money of it. I doubt it would be more profitable than a permanent inflow of 2% of the yearly GDP from several of the richest countries in the world, but I wouldn’t put it past them to think that it would be.

This question changes a lot depending on if the non-EU partner in question is the US or a country like South Korea