alt Hacker News> and membership in the fraying NATO military alliance
That framing is.. strange.
One member of NATO has lost the plot. For everyone else, it’s stronger than ever.
If the US tries to attack a NATO member they’re going to find out just how serious the alliance is.
For example, Maersk shipping line in Danish, and carries 15% of the world’s shipping containers. If the US were to invade Greenland it would be illegal for Maersk to keep doing business with them. It’s unlikely NATO members will fight the US with bullets and bombs, but I guarantee they can still seriously hurt them. All NATO members selling all their US treasury bonds instantly would also be devastating.
> It’s unlikely NATO members will fight the US with bullets and bombs, but I guarantee they can still seriously hurt them.
I am not even sure the US would be able to completely dominate a conflict. While it obviously has the largest military, it's set up to depend on European military defensive and complementary roles in a large scale conflict. In particular US aggression supply and comms critically depend on Europe as ally. Not to mention nuclear defense and early warning infrastructure. Without Europe, there is a big, big ocean between the US and most everything.
For example in terms of military roles, the US lacks the stealthy submarines of European navies. Incidentally, it relies heavily on aircraft carriers for force projection. I think there is a chance European subs could wipe out US carriers and therefore significantly disable US attack abilities straight-away. There is evidence from prior combined exercises, where the US navy was pretty much owned by a single Swedish sub. They are really damn good. So, without deploying ships, what's the US gonna do? Bomb Greenland's tundra? Fly big, slow transporter planes there and hope the European subs won't use their AA missiles? The whole point of those subs is to be a massive pain to aggressive forces and the US assigned that role to Europe...
War against Europe means losing comms and nuclear defense/early warning infrastructure located there. The US would also immediately become vulnerable to Russia and China, and every conflict in the middle east too.
I think attacking Europe would be pretty idiotic from every perspective. Sadly, that doesn't mean much anymore.