Malazan Empire: Azath Vitr (D'ivers - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

the broken, on 12 January 2026 - 12:10 AM, said:

Of course I meant US sanctions. Congress did pass a law in 2017 (CRIEEA) to try to stop him from lifting Russian sanctions unilaterally, but the law requires a two-thirds majority vote to stop him from doing it:

https://www.steptoe....ctions-act.html

Trump also risks most of the rest of Europe kicking US troops off their soil if he invades Greenland---as the chairman of the "NATO enlargement committee" NGO predicted they would, though afaik no official NATO representatives have backed him up on that. (Unfortunately some news articles mistakenly implied that he had some sort of official NATO position.)

https://fr.wikipedia...nther_Fehlinger

Quote

"If you take it, we take every single base of the Americans from Aviano to Ramstein, from Romania, to all the other military bases will be confiscated, and you will lose it, and the whole position of American power since World War II, if you take Greenland, you have to leave, [...] And we can defend ourselves very well, and we will do that without the U.S. nuclear shield, without the U.S. troops in Europe, without the American bases. We will simply run the spaces ourselves, and we will run your boys home into Chicago and Ohio. And goodbye"

https://www.msn.com/...ing/ar-AA1TNSbX

So if Trump invades Greenland and (non-US) NATO nations do in fact respond by ordering the US to withdraw all US military forces from Europe---I wonder if they'd also try to forcibly prevent them from traveling over to Ukraine to provide "aid"... and then turn on the Ukrainians. Or prevent them from going over to Russia....

Perhaps more realistically though, if (non-US) NATO nations kick out the US troops, they'll almost certainly also attempt economic sanctions against the United States for invading Greenland---which might make it seem like a good time for Trump to drop sanctions against Russia. However, if CRIEEA is still in effect and Trump has not yet consolidated power to the point where he can just ignore it, he would have to submit a report to congress, wait 30 days for congressional hearings, and then veto the vote, and wait for congress to fail to override his veto.

But if the midterms force Trump to use his control of the military and federal law enforcement to seize power from congress and the courts, congress will become irrelevant. The probability of that happening this year is not small.

I thought he might be more on the libertarian side until he posted over in the "What's Making You Happy Right Now" thread about the US having "Storm Troopers"... c'mon Nico if we're aspiring to be the authoritarian evil Empire from Star Wars shouldn't we have an army of Emperors and Darth Vaders instead?... Storm Troopers have plenty of guns, but they're not particularly good at hitting their intended targets... so I guess that's an apter metaphor for most of MAGAmerica.

Though in all seriousness I might like some Storm Trooperesque armor... at least if it's comfortable enough, and it will stop rifle rounds (and ideally sonic attacks too... got to have my hearing to keep fiddling as Home boils & burns).

Mentalist, on 11 January 2026 - 10:19 PM, said:

What would happen if Trump lifted all sanctions and export controls on Russia and started actively aiding the Russian military?

Then again I'm not sure how much he could get away with without congressional approval... if he doesn't seize Putin-like power when confronted with the prospect of Republicans losing their majorities in the midterms (though in that case I expect he'd be preoccupied with solidifying his rule over the United States for a while, "if he can keep it").

And ICE may end up not just detaining protesters---at least anyone who doesn't have armed bodyguards will probably be relatively easy for them to abduct. (Not sure how much training or experience ICE would have with armed resistance---there have only been a few alleged instances of people shooting at ICE.)

And if Trump's military forces can abduct Maduro, they can probably abduct just about anyone inside the United States, provided Trump's found people to promote who are willing to do it (at least if he's found others to threaten their lives and their families)...

Cause, on 10 January 2026 - 07:13 PM, said:

... except now Trump has purged much of the US military and federal law enforcement, and has ICE ready to be deployed to brutally detain and murder more protesters... one big question is whether he's purged enough of the military and federal law enforcement for a successful auto-coup, and---if there are mass resignations---how functional the government would be afterwards.

So maybe a bit like January 6th, but it's the military and federal law enforcement---and militarized ICE---doing it...