Why US Greenland standoff signals US imperial overreach?

Former CIA agent, Andrew Bustamante claims that the US Greenland standoff will lose prominence if there is no quick development. He described the Greenland “debacle” as a strange and “confusing” situation. According to him, Trump, being a showman, knows how the media works and people would “stop paying attention” once commercial or economic agreements are stuck.

He said that even though the US President Donald Trump has claimed that the US needs Greenland for its security interests. But it's more about US primacy that prompts it towards escalation in Greenland. Many critical theorists agree on the analogy.

The US is an empire, and every empire has hubris, which makes it blind to its decline. It was the case for the Spanish empire in the mid-16th century; the British empire in the mid-20th century; the Soviet empire in the late-20th century, and now the US empire in the mid-21st century. It has to project power to maintain its dominance. In the process, it overextends its military capabilities. The Soviets did it in Afghanistan, the British did it in India, Africa and World War II.

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In 2002, there was a Dotcom bubble crash, and in 2008, there was a financial crisis due to the Housing bubble crash. Now there is another bubble of AI. The US equity market is extremely overvalued, with a high price-to-earnings ratio compared to its peers, and has only been observed during the 1929 pre-Depression era and the 2000 dot-com bubble era. When compared to the dollar, the market is exponentially increasing, but when compared to gold its in persistent decline. Major US cities have housing prices that are detached from the local income, just inflated by foreign investments.

A collapse is not imminent due to the exorbitant privileges of the dollar as the reserve currency status. It lets US borrow cheaply and run large deficits, which then trickles down to other countries where there is dollar denominated assets.

Since 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has lowered confidence in the military might of the US. The overfinancialisation of the US economy has created a bubble around the dollar. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the value of the dollar has been in constant decline. In order to maintain confidence in the dollar as the global reserve currency, the US will project its military power and use coercion.

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“..Right now, he has a chance to basically continue to assert his power, strategic ambiguity because of his demonstration of power in Venezuela, so why not milk that for all it's worth and make people wonder whether or not they should just kowtow to his demands in Greenland?”, said Andrew Bustamante.

The US attempt to acquire Greenland "the easy way" or “the hard way” shows its disregard for its allies. Every ally is a vassal, to be subservient to serve the interests of a stronger partner. This is reflective of any empire which is in decline, trying to achieve its goal through coercion instead of diplomacy and soft power.