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Notes -
I had a longer post that got eaten. But here it is in short:
Americans aren't turning towards Russia, but some are turning away from Europe. The reason is simple, Europe has picked a side in the American culture war, and it is the far left side. That is not a good formula for maintaining good relations with America because even when we have a Democratic government, you guys are still to the left of it by a lot. There's the immigration piece, the welfare, the speech regulations, the climate alarm. And it doesn't help that Brussels and Berlin's default position is "never compromise".
So now we turn to military spending. Europe has failed at this from not only a monetary perspective, but from a readiness perspective to an even worse degree for decades. And what are you asking Americans to defend (while you certainly attempt to appear unwilling to do so yourselves)? An increasingly authoritarian Bureaucracy who are so intent on being authoritarian they'd rather cripple their own economy than let a little freedom spill out.
So, we are at a point similar to the point where we were around 1916 or so. Is it really wise for the US to jump in yet? I'd argue it was far too early for us in WWI. We should have let the sides bleed a bit more and come in and swept it all aside instead of what we did, which yielded the ineffectual Treaty of Versailles and more conflict just a generation later.
While I think your statement here has a strong ring of truth to it with respect to Kulturkampf and the dispositions of the cultural elites, I generally find claims that "center in Europe is far-left in America" to be true only for a very limited definition of the political spectrum. "Center in Europe" includes certain elements that I'd wager the average Republican considers far-right: Literal hereditary monarchs (many such cases, some established within living memory)! Official state churches (many such cases)! States collecting taxes on behalf of churches! Blasphemy laws!
Sure, "center in Europe" also looks a lot more friendly to carbon taxes than even the DNC, and endorses a shorter workweek, more worker protections (although German unions look very different in ways I find interesting from their American counterparts), firearms restrictions (although those aren't uniform across the EU, they're generally stricter than the US -- although Sweden has problems with hand grenades that seem unbelievable as an American!), and so forth. I don't think the statement is completely wrong, just oversold.
Yes, but those monarchs are just basically tourist attractions or ceremonial figureheads to lend legitimacy to the government of the day. And those established churches are usually more liberal than our American unitarians. Lastly, the "blasphemy" laws in practice seem mostly to result in Koran-burners getting harsher sentences than some violent criminals, while doing nothing to protect, e.g., Christian anti-abortion protesters. Hard for American conservatives to really be all that in support of any of that substantively, regardless of the label it's all wrapped up in.
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We basically have never had any of this in America so it doesn't map to our Left-Right spectrum at all. In the instances we have something similar to those things, they basically map to the left: Hollywood dynasties, political family dynasties, state sponsored religious-like nonprofits, education centers, etc. They have all been left wing for generations.
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That accusation is a bit rich, because the causation is the other way around. It's not like a bunch of Blue Tribers somehow appeared in Europe and decided to pick a side in the US culture war. What in fact happened is that the Global American / Globohomo Empire poured lots of money and influence into its causes in Europe (among other places) through non-profits and NGOs which in turn recruited, trained and indoctrinated, directly and indirectly, the local cadre of Blue culture warriors and their sympathizers in Europe, all of whom incidentally consume no cultural and ideological products other than that produced by the US Blue Tribe, and adopt their talking points accordingly.
European leftism has been steadily feeding into the US via academia and the popular arts since the 1920s, if not earlier. The U.S. intelligenstia and trend-setters have always looked at Europe as more sophisticated and culturally respectable, especially its revolutionaries.
I agree, but @anti_dan was commenting on the current situation, when the feeding process is flowing the opposite direction.
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The major communist parties of Europe weren't American-funded. Europe has a quite a strong revolutionary-left tendency on its own, completely independent of and long-pre-existing Soros/GAE-bux.
But it isn't the few and marginal European communists and revolutionary leftists that picked a side in the US culture war, is it?
Are you sure? Which side is antifa on? Which side were Sacco & Vanzetti on? What side are the IWW and the student movements of the 60's and 70's on?
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I maintain that the involvement of these particular groups in the US culture war is probably marginal/negligible, because they are marginal themselves.
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"Its complicated". There are more "green" and more "old left" people. Current polls for the coming german election are about 2:1.
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I think the cultural poison that has spread across Europe is a Western problem more than it is solely an American one. Obviously, Neo-lib American influence played a major hand through the things you mentioned, but the progressive policy that our annoying American neo-libs try to implement are usually modeled after some European country's system. European countries have leftist policies that are highly touted by the American neo-lib establishment. I think it's more of a symbiotic relationship between European and American progressives that is being characterized by a lot of people, including @anti_dan, as a conflict between Europe and America. That's not how I see it though. It's an ideological war between progressivism, liberalism, and conservatism that affects all Western countries. We're having the same issues with Canada.
Progressivism gained tremendous momentum over the past 15-20 years because it was protected by the ideals and moral framework of Western liberalism. Liberalism could never properly defend or maintain itself, and once it became fully embraced it was destined to be consumed by whatever trending illiberal ideology the masses would be most tolerant of. That ideology was progressivism, and it has effectively Trojan Horsed itself into Western society and its institutions. Its supporters have leveraged those institutions in a way that proliferates their ideas and oppresses their dissidents and ideological opponents. It has gotten to the point that political moderates (mostly liberals) have started to be negatively affected.
We all get confused by making it about countries, or race, or income. These claims aren't entirely untrue. They have their own share of problems and issues to contend with, but they're less true right now than the suicidal, progressive ideology that has captured the Western mind.
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Perhaps it is best to consider the American Empire a separate entity from both America itself and the foreign peoples it administers.
Brussels bureaucrats, USAID and the network of NGOs that tie them all together have more in common with each other than they do everybody else.
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I mean, if you want to say Europe was easily colonized and seduced by the American left, I guess that is also accurate. But America has consistently presented Europe with the other option. From Reagan & Thatcher to Trump there has been another way prominently on display, and Europe shied away from those proposals.
What proposals from Reagan and Thatcher are you referring to, if I may ask?
Adopting a lower-tax, lower-welfare state system coupled with an emphasis on national defense.
Fair enough. But Helmut Kohl did at least try that, didn't he?
He I think embraced some parts of it. Then again, that was all before I was even in middle school, and it was during the era where Germany was trying to re-unite.
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I dont think it is only a matter of seduction. The International Community also wanted us to... not revive history, so to speak, and that means listening to supranational organisations and "civil society" and so on. It has annoyed the US right at times when it led to something especially leftist, but not enough to adjust imperial governance.
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It would be nice if they never presented us with either.
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I was going to reply with OP on similar lines but you nailed it.
Europe, plus Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are a bigger threat to me than China or Russia, and have been for a long time. The EU Digital Security Act was meant to be an end around of the US bill of rights by handcuffing multinational tech companies. It’s still a threat and I hope/suspect that Trump will apply maximum leverage on this issue. If not for Trump winning, we would be screwed. By our “allies”.
The list of offenses is too long even for an effort post. Good riddance.
Yeah... that was definitely one of those 'really bad ideas that no one will directly address because it would be acknowledging how bad an idea it was' that will probably be looked back upon unkindly. It was a case where the European desires to be the regulatory superpower create mutually incompatible interests with those who don't care to be regulated. There were non-trivial parts of the Democratic party who were okay with it for the same reason they were okay with setting up Newsguard-esque media policing via indirect regulation, but that's absolutely the sort of thing many of the American right would happily raze the internet for and let the world wide web be partitioned for, let alone other governments.
It's not run its course yet, so I fully expect it to matter more in the future, but since it was passed I've viewed that as the start of the European internet partition- it's just a matter of when others break from it.
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So basically my country - which has maintained a huge land army through conscription, one of the largest artilleries in Europe etc., and which has coincidentally now committed to also defending the Baltic states while upending its past defence doctrine due to a recent NATO membership - will have to get screwed due to what other countries have done regarding their militaries? Of course that is the prize for putting one's trust in foreign countries, but still.
Most red tribe normies would, if they knew about Finland’s defense policies, strongly respect them. They don’t, of course- if asked about Finland they’d say, uh, trees?
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Define 'screwed.' My bet on Trump would be no, not really, unless your government joins the French line on maximum-anti-Trump-resistance. At which point it's just classic patron relations.
The Trump-side of the Republican party is more about 'we aren't obligated to help people who aren't allies' and 'don't help those who don't help themselves' than 'don't help anyone.' The former is a reaction to scope creep- such as the resistance to leaving the Syrian conflict justified on the grounds of Kurdish partners that two elections prior would have been considered terrorists- and the later is one of the points of 'why Americans lose war' (because they try to fight instead of rather than along with partners).
Assuming you are referring to Poland, Sweden, or Finland, the Trump-end is far more sympathetic / willing to support those countries precisely because they have spent so much. That's not in the 'and bought American too', though that helps, but just in the general 'spending like it sees a threat.' Which is completely compatible with Trump's own past points, such as not helping NATO states that did not spend to the targets... but making no such claim about those that did.
The risk - screwed, if you will- is less about direct intention, and more of indirect complications of conflict with Germany on bases. The American presence / force flow for a Baltic contingency fundamentally relies on flowing forces into Germany, because that's where the infrastructure is. That risk, in turn, is that the bases close before an alternative is built up- and if that alternative is as good / reliable / not as vulnerable to disruption. It's not impossible to do so, but I wouldn't count on Trump setting timelines with that in mind.
Which leads to the risk that Trump closes bases over a basing break with Germany, and the US losing force-flow access into Europe for a contingency which occurs during the drawdown / before the alternative is created. It's not that alternatives aren't possible, but rather that they'd be less good / easier for the Russians to disrupt.
At which point my bet wouldn't be that your country would be screwed for lack of help, but rather screwed by the disruption to reinforcements before equivalent / alternative lines could be made.
The bright side to this is that Sweden and Finland entering NATO has significantly reduced the ability of the Russians to project disruption power into the western baltic, which in turn makes Poland more viable an intervention route than Germany, especially as American airpower can base in the northern baltic rather than also have to compete through the more dangerous southern baltic coast region.
Surely you must be aware that stefferi is Finnish? It's even in his flair.
Not everyone is aware what Suomi is in reference to.
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The first order of business is selling your allies on reforming themselves. I think, unfortunately, your politicians were quite unwise in their plunge into NATO as opposed to a negotiated entrance that required many of the constituent states to live up to obligations. NATO's Eastern front needed Finland more than you needed NATO at the time of entry.
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The biggest threat to Finland is not Russia, it is mass immigration.
Excluding Ukraine, Finland lets in about 0.7% of its population EVERY YEAR. And its not taking the best. In fact, the IQ gap between Finland natives and its immigrants is the worst in the world. And, of course, the immigrants have a fertility rate far above the Finns.
https://x.com/arctotherium42/status/1891483969486545295
Russia controlled Finland for a century and couldn't destroy the Finnish nation. But mass immigration is permanent. Left unchecked, Finland will be an entirely different country within a generation. In fact, it's already probably too late. Finland will be gone, and it won't be the Russians that did it, it will be suicide.
As an American, this is sad but it not my problem. We shouldn't spend blood and treasure defending countries that don't even recognize their own right to exist.
A large portion of the current rise of immigration is labor immigration from low-fertility Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Philippines (including changes like seasonal berry pickers being required to apply for residence when they didn't need to so permanently) or nonpermanent student visas for South Asians (see here. Presumably some portion of them will say, but it's not as such by itself the sort of a culture-destroying moment being portrayed here.
In any case, this is an odd reason for doing a military alliance rugpull. I'm not aware of the US tying its other alliances to migration policies.
This happened specifically during a time when the Russian Empire was a ramshackle premodern empire that was, as a system, built in a way that facilitated Finnish autonomy (due to being a collection of nationalities under an Emperor) and quite simply couldn't assimilate minorities to the same degree as a modern state could due to having very little in the way of state instutions beyond the very basic ones to speak of. This was already changing during the last years of the Empire, which were also related to attempts to start Russification campaigns in Finland and, of course, changed drastically during the Soviet times due to rapid modernization, though this was counteracted to some degree korenizatsya. Still, it was the Soviet times when many Finnic nations in Russia that had survived thus far started disappearing. Finland being theoretically conquered by Russia - admittedly still a low probability - would face a completely different situation from the Grand Duchy.
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Not that I disagree with the core idea of the argument here, but it's not unlikely that Finland would ultimately end up the same as a Russian province in comparison to staying part of the Western system. Russia is undergoing demographic change as well, and while it's not as fast as in Central and Western Europe, the Russia of 2100 will be a whole lot more Muslim and Central Asian than it is now, at least based on the trends of the last few decades. Whether that's better than the Afro-Arab Finland that seems to be the destination at the moment is of course a matter of debate.
It will be darkly amusing if-when anti-western sentiment in Russia shifts from being because of ethnic-Russian-centric narratives, and more from Islamic-centric sentiments that make political alliances with them.
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Please no, even Finland is going to be overrun by Indians.
On a side note I didn't realize native emiratis and other gulf states were so retarded. Does this exclude migrant workers or are they counted?
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That's what one gets for dissolving oneself into a federal union.
Do remember that foreign policy is a EU prerogative now.
But it's not one! If it was one, our security situation would be better.
Look I fully agree with you that the current setup for the EU is a stupid mess that only hamstrings itself, but you decided to join this stupid mess by signing stupid mess treaties and devolving your powers to stupid mess institutions.
Now you get to feel the consequences.
If you don't like this you can either leave or attempt to change the institutions from the inside. Good luck.
I wish there was a simple solution, the way I see it it's just headed for implosion in a future financial, political or military crisis. The rot is far too widespread now. And the way the institutions are setup is too locked down to contenance any sort of reform.
Americans have been making similar comments about Federalism on this side of the pond for probably two centuries now. While some of those criticisms ring true, I think it'd be wrong to dismiss the American Experiment as having failed on that account. Americans are still having those very same arguments over our "stupid mess institutions" even now.
I'm not convinced that the idea of the EU is what's failing in practice. The most obvious difference I can point to is American chutzpah, which somehow seems more important than even the intra-EU language barriers.
As an American looking from the outside, I'm inclined to agree.
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This is only a net negative for Finland is Moscow's actions are dictated (at least in part) by perceiving NATO as a threat.
If Moscow is a mad dog attacking the weakest neighbors in its vicinity then a weak military alliance is better than none.
By failing to adhere to agreements, eastward expansion and providing support and aid to its enemies, and formenting color revolutions in allied states.
It's more than perception.
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