Invoked Article 42.7 and joined a combined wartime command with the United Kingdom under the Lancaster House Treaties.
Twenty minutes into an Article 4 session the shouting starts. When France and Britain call a vote on mutual defence solidarity, the American delegation collects its binders and leaves thirty-one ambassadors sitting in silence.
Five heavy transports land at Keflavik in sleet. Royal Marines, French fusiliers, a SAMP/T battery on the Reykjanes lava, and Typhoons on continuous patrol. Iceland's demilitarised status ends overnight.
Aster interceptors light the sky over Reykjanes at 02:40 UTC. By 11:20 the British commander surrenders with his ammunition gone. By 15:30 there are armed cordons around the Althing.
British sappers cut the barrier interlocks at Gate 2 and 1,150 American airmen are interned in their own base housing. Paris activates Article 42.7. A second Vanguard leaves Faslane in the dark.
This morning the British Army entered three American airbases, cut the gates, disarmed United States airmen and locked one thousand one hundred and fifty of them inside their own housing. Those are not prisoners of war. There is no war. They are American servi…
The largest surface action between Western powers in eighty years. Gettysburg goes down with thirty-two dead. Keflavik's fuel farm burns. Forty-two percent of the American standoff stockpile is gone, and forty-eight allied warheads are still at sea.
The North Atlantic Council is convening in extraordinary session at the request of Denmark, Germany, France and the United Kingdom under Article 4 of the Washington Treaty.
The American delegation has left the chamber. Not adjourned. Left. Picked up their binders and walked out while the vote was being called. Thirty-one ambassadors are still sitting in there.
I have covered this building for nine years. I have watched every kind of disagreement in it. A diplomat who came out said one sentence to me and went back in: "That was the end of it."
We left the room. Thirty-one countries wanted to vote on what America is allowed to do in America's own hemisphere. You don't get a vote on us. That was never the deal. A lot of people are finding that out this week.
I have spoken this afternoon with Washington, Copenhagen, Berlin, Brussels and London. The Alliance remains in session. Consultation is not optional between allies and it does not end because one chair is empty.
There are helicopters. A lot of helicopters, very low, coming in from the sea. I have never heard anything like this here.
They are American. They are in the harbour and they are at the government buildings and nobody is shooting. Our people are just standing there watching them. I do not understand what is happening.
Confirmed by DR, AFP and Reuters. Landings at Kangerlussuaq around 17:30 UTC, amphibious insertion into Nuuk harbour. Danish Joint Arctic Command under cabinet orders not to engage. No shots fired as of this posting.…
BREAKING: US forces have landed at Kangerlussuaq and taken control of port and government facilities in Nuuk. Danish Arctic Command has not resisted. Cabinet orders were to document, not to engage.
My mum is crying and my little brother thinks it is exciting because of the helicopters. I do not know how to explain to him that it is not exciting. I do not know how to explain it to me.
I have been driving since 2004 and I have never once pulled over to read the news. I am pulled over. Greenland. We invaded Greenland. I am sitting in a truck stop in Nebraska trying to make that sentence mean something.
Nobody was hurt. I want to hold onto that tonight because I work in an ICU and I know exactly what the other version looks like. Nobody was hurt. Everything else can be argued about tomorrow.
Prime Minister Frederiksen to the Folketing: "This is an act of lawless aggression and unprovoked imperial conquest by our supposed treaty partner."
In Latin America we have a very specific feeling this evening and there is no polite English word for it. It is not joy. Nobody wants this. It is the feeling of watching someone finally do to a rich friend what they have done to you for a century, and hearing …
Frederiksen's voice broke on the word "partner". I have never had a strong opinion about her. Tonight she is standing in the Folketing saying the thing out loud that all five million of us are thinking in our kitchens, and her voice broke, and I am not embarra…
My fellow Americans. This evening, at my direction, United States Marines secured the airfields and the harbour of Greenland. There was no resistance. Not one shot was fired and not one person was hurt, on either side, and I want the country to hear that first…
For the record, because we will be arguing about this for a decade: Article 5 cannot be invoked. Its machinery runs through a Council in which the attacking party holds a seat and a veto, and it was drafted to describe an attack from outside the Alliance. Ther…
"Judge me in a month." I have covered this alliance for nine years. Six hours ago the delegation walked out of a room in Brussels and four hours ago Marines landed on the territory of a founding ally. There is going to be a month. I do not think it is going to…
Not one shot fired and not one boy hurt. That is a President. Say what you want. Eighty years of talking about that island and he went and did it in an evening and nobody's mother got a phone call.
I have voted for this administration twice and I preached for it once, which I regret. We took another nation's land tonight because we wanted it and because they could not stop us. There is a word for that and it is in the Book, and it is not a word about str…
"judge me in a month" buddy i am judging you in real time on my phone in a warehouse break room and it is not going great
Kremlin: no comment. Foreign ministry: no statement. State television: fourteen minutes on Greenland, no commentary, footage only. The Russian milblogger channels are the only ones talking, and they are celebrating. Moscow itself is saying nothing at all, and …
My son enlisted in August. He is nineteen. He is at Bragg. I am not asking whether this was right. I am asking whether he is going somewhere cold. That is the only question I have and there is nobody to ask it.
Pastor, I have read your post four times. I do not agree with you. I think you are wrong about the country and I think you will regret saying it from the pulpit. But you are the first person on this app all night who sounded like they were wrestling with it in…
Tanya — nobody can tell you and anyone who says they can is guessing. What I can tell you: if he is at Bragg he is with the best-drilled people in the world and they take care of the nineteen year olds first. Keep the phone charged. Do not doomscroll at 3am, i…
My grandmother is 84. She said one sentence at dinner tonight and then went to bed. "So now they have found out what it is like." She was not being cruel. She has been waiting eighty years for somebody in the west to feel this for one evening.
Ma'am, that is more grace than I have shown anybody today. Thank you. I would rather be wrong in front of you than right in front of people who are enjoying this. There are a lot of them tonight, on both sides, and they frighten me more than the news does.
Five heavy transports on the apron at Keflavik in horizontal sleet. RAF and French. Royal Marines coming down the ramps in cold weather kit. Iceland has no army. This morning Iceland has a garrison.
Prime Minister Frostadóttir to the Alþingi: "Iceland holds no armed forces of its own, but we will not allow our sovereign airspace and waters to become an unmonitored corridor for lawless aggression. Keflavik is restored to full defensive operational status."
There are Royal Marines buying coffee in my shop. They were polite. One of them apologised for the queue. Iceland has no army and now there are foreign soldiers here being polite about the queue, and everybody is being very normal about it, and nobody is norma…
Half of Iceland is proud today and half of Iceland is terrified and I have served coffee to both halves since six this morning. The proud ones say we finally have a defence. The terrified ones say we finally have a target. They are both right, which is the wor…
The Prime Minister to the House: "The GIUK gap is not an abstract strategic concept — it is the direct maritime and air shield of the British Isles and Western Europe. We are locking the gate."
Britain and France have just put a missile battery on Iceland. Seven hundred miles from our people in Greenland. Pointed west. Pointed at us. Remember who moved first here. It wasn't us and it wasn't today.
SAMP/T on the Reykjanes lava, Typhoons on CAP, Norwegian P-8s laying sonobuoy barriers across the Denmark Strait. Two hundred men and one missile battery have just turned an open ocean transit into a contested approach. That is what geography buys you. It is a…
A French missile battery. Seven hundred miles from our Marines. Eleven days after we secured the Arctic. Everyone screaming about aggression this month suddenly has nothing to say about this one. Funny how the escalation ladder only counts when we are on it.
It is an air DEFENCE battery. It shoots down things that are flying at it. It cannot hit Greenland, it cannot hit a ship, it cannot hit anything that is not already attacking Iceland. I am not being clever. That is what the letters SAM mean. If the presence of…
The whole sky over Reykjanes just lit up. Not lightning. It went up, not down. My daughter is asking me what it is and I am telling her it is nothing.
Keflavik is under attack. Confirmed: the French air defence battery has been destroyed. There are casualties. Runway is cratered at both ends. I am fifteen kilometres away and I can see it.
I have been awake since 02:40. Everyone in this building has been awake since 02:40. There is no shelter. There is no siren. There is no procedure. We are a country that decided eighty years ago not to have any of that, and this morning we found out what that …
They destroyed the air defences first, then the aircraft, then cratered the runway, then landed. I have read that sequence in staff college papers about my own island for twenty years. Watching it executed on a NATO member at four in the morning has been the s…
Sequence as far as we can reconstruct it: 02:40 — SEAD package off the carrier. AARGM-ER and JASSM. MAMBA battery kills four, is overwhelmed by the second salvo. Radar and generators destroyed. 03:15 — Four Typhoons scramble. Two shot down BVR by F-22s staged …
Neuf militaires français ont été tués cette nuit à Keflavík par des forces des États-Unis d'Amérique. Nine French service personnel were killed last night at Keflavík by the armed forces of the United States of America.
Neuf. Nine. Nine French families were woken up this morning by an officer at the door because of a decision taken in a room in Washington by people who will never learn their names. I taught for forty years that this is how it always begins. Not with a declara…
They put a missile battery seven hundred miles from our troops and pointed it at them. I am sorry about the nine. I am. But do not ask me to pretend those men were standing on that rock by accident, or that the alternative was nobody getting hurt.
The battery was invited by a parliament, eleven days after we took Greenland by force. I have been on the side of "the mission is the mission" my whole adult life. But you do not get to move first, twice, and then call the other man's rifle provocation. That i…
Confirmed as of 12:00: - Strikes began 02:40. French SAMP/T battery destroyed, casualties confirmed. - Two RAF Typhoons shot down. Both pilots ejected over Faxaflói and were recovered. - Runway cratered both ends. - Ground fighting at the a…
It has been going for six hours. You can hear it from the city. Somebody said the British are still holding the terminal building. There is no shelter plan here. There has never needed to be one.
At 11:20 UTC the commander of the British detachment at Keflavik agreed a local capitulation under the Geneva Conventions, with ammunition exhausted and casualties sustained. 154 British and French personnel are in US military custody. The Defence Secretary wi…
He is not in Iceland. I got two words this morning. "Not there." I have read those two words about four hundred times. I am not proud of how much of my week they carried.
154 prisoners and nine dead in six hours of close fighting. I want to say something about the nine, but the number that has stopped me is 154. Those are 154 people who woke up on Sunday as allies of the men who captured them by lunchtime. There is no medical w…
Six hours, no resupply, no air cover, against a MEB with naval gunfire and Cobras, in sleet. Whatever else is said this week: 45 Commando held Keflavik for six hours. That is not a defeat anyone should be embarrassed by.
A student asked me today if we are the bad guys now. Thirteen years old, hand up, whole room quiet, completely sincere. Not being smart. Actually asking. I said history is complicated and people will argue about this for a long time. He looked at me like he kn…
There are armoured vehicles around the Alþingi. I walked past that building every day for thirty-one years. I am not going to be able to explain this to anyone who was not here.
Iceland had no army because for eighty years it did not need one, and it did not need one because of a promise. Every small country in Europe is doing the same arithmetic tonight and it is not about Iceland. It is about what a promise is worth on a Sunday morn…
Prime Minister Frostadóttir, from a secure location: Iceland is under illegal, unprovoked foreign military occupation. We call upon the United Nations and upon every democratic nation to refuse to accept it.
Good evening. This morning American forces took control of Keflavik and of the island of Iceland. — Address to the nation, the Oval Office
He said "that is where it stops". I have heard a great many men say where it stops. My husband was in Korea. I do not remember it ever stopping where they said. I hope I am wrong. I have been wrong before and I have never wanted it more.
Two of my seniors signed today. Both of them told me it was because of this morning. One of them said "they killed our guys' allies, coach" and the other said "somebody has to". I do not think either of them could tell you where Iceland is on a map. I do not t…
Three weeks ago I wrote here that I had never posted about politics. Tonight my union is voting on whether to refuse work on American-owned buildings in Copenhagen. Me. A plumber. Voting on foreign policy because there is nowhere else to put it. I do not know …
Two days ago he was handed two binders. Binder one: how to take Iceland. Executable in 48 hours. Binder two: why the United Kingdom cannot be taken. Nuclear deterrent, layered air defence, 68 million hostile people, 350,000 troops needed. The recommendation at…
There are army trucks on the Brandon road going up to the base. Lots of them. Somebody at the shop said they have closed the gates from the outside. My kids went to school with their kids. This is not a place where this happens.
Breaking: British forces have requisitioned RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Fairford. Around 1,150 US personnel have been disarmed and confined to base housing. Seventeen US aircraft seized.
The word being used is "internment," and it is the correct one. These are the armed forces of a state now in armed conflict with the host state, on the host state's territory. Eleven days ago they were allies with base passes. The law changed the moment the mi…
They have shut the gates from the outside. Twenty-two years those lads have been in my pub. There is a bloke called Marcus who taught my daughter to throw a football on the green out the back. He is behind a fence this morning and my army put him there. I have…
Everyone in this thread has an opinion about international law and I have an opinion about Marcus, who is 24, from Ohio, and who fixed my generator for free in the storm two winters ago. He is behind a fence this morning. That is all the law I have got in me t…
The Prime Minister to the House of Commons: "American arms have shed British and French blood in an unprovoked, illegal act of war on sovereign allied territory. The alliance that stood for eighty years has been torn apart from Washington. We will defend this …
He is fine. He rang for ninety seconds on a landline and said he is fine and they are being correct with everyone. Our neighbour Sue brought a lasagne round at half seven this morning. She did not say anything about any of it. She just handed me the dish and s…
Le Président active l'article 42.7 du traité sur l'Union européenne. Les intérêts vitaux de la France sont indissociables de l'intégrité du sol européen. President Macron activates Article 42.7 TEU. France's vital interests are inseparable from the integrity o…
This morning the British Army entered three American airbases, cut the gates, disarmed United States airmen and locked one thousand one hundred and fifty of them inside their own housing. — Written statement, the White House
Two independent European nuclear deterrents have just been placed under a single combined wartime command for the first time in their history. A second Vanguard has sailed from Faslane. The French have dispersed nuclear-armed Rafales to secondary runways at fi…
1,150 Americans. Held. By Britain. I have listened to six weeks of lectures about norms from people who are now holding American kids in a fenced housing block. Every single one of you owes this country an apology and none of you will give one.
"There is no war." There has been an armed attack by the forces of one state on the forces of two others, on the sovereign territory of a fourth, with fatalities. The legal threshold was crossed at 02:40 on 9 February and it does not depend on anybody using th…
Eleven hundred and fifty Americans interned by Britain. I want everyone posting "they had it coming" to sit with that number for one minute. Those are 1,150 people who did not vote on any of this, who were sent there, who have kids in Suffolk schools. You can …
Two days ago American forces killed nine French servicemen and captured 154 British and French soldiers on the territory of a third ally. I am genuinely not trying to score a point, because I think you are right that those 1,150 people are innocent. But "held"…
Half of Cork spent tonight explaining to the other half that Ireland is not in NATO and never was. The other half's answer, universally: "and what good is that to us if it kicks off in the Irish Sea?" Nobody had a reply. Least of all me.
My husband is one of the 1,150. You are both right and it does not help me. He is innocent AND it happened second AND he is still behind that fence AND nine French families are burying people. There is no arrangement of those facts that lets anybody win this a…
I will say this once and then I am muting the replies. Do not post guesses about where the boats are. Do not post fishing fleet reports, do not post "my mate at Faslane," do not post sonar hobbyist charts. The entire value of the deterrent is that nobody knows…