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Why should Americans care what happens to right wing parties in Europe. They aren't even allowed to win. Even if they got the votes, they would just be retroactively banned as nazis and thrown in prison, assuming they're even allowed to get on the ballot in the first place. They'd probably be banned and suppressed well before then if their poll numbers got remotely close to winning.
And don't call uniparty parties like the Tories "right-wing." Name a single right-wing thing the Tories have ever done.
Why did Vance defend freedom of speech in Europe? Why care?
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The anti immigration right wing populist parties have won elections in various European countries like Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and Poland.
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For broadly the same reasons that the Soviet Union supported Communist parties around the world. Of course American citizens don't need to care about their ideological fellow travellers outside the US (to be clear, I'm mainly talking about Reform, FN, AfD, and so on - I agree that the Tory party are at best a 'post-ideological' organisation), and isolationism has always been and remains a choice that the US can make. If the US is happy to wash its hands of affairs in Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, or anywhere else, no-one is stopping them from doing that.
However, to the extent that US wants to secure markets for its exports, have influence on international organisations, gain intelligence on threats overseas, limit the rise of China, control immigration flows, and protect its allies, it will in turn need international partners. This will be far easier if they can help get some ideologically sympathetic parties into positions of power.
What I want is an American Empire in America. That is, north of Darien, west of Iceland, and east of Russia. I want Manifest Destiny, not overseas entanglements.
We're doing a piss poor job limiting the rise of China, mostly because the people in charge saw it as a way to make money, and sold out their country to do so. Apple doesn't become the most valuable company in the world without facilitating the rise of China, and the same could be said of most any successful "American" company in the last fifty years.
We just left four years of actively encouraging immigration flows in order to import a reliable voter base for Democrats. Nothing about Ukraine matters more than simply wanting it done, or want the country flooded instead.
The same could be said of Britain, or Germany, or France. Going to war in Ukraine isn't going to remove the Somalis from Minnesota or the Pakis from England. That requires the will to do it.
Literally our own history showed that we did the Manifest Destiny as far as we could (even going so far as to conquer Hawai'i, which is over a sea), and then like a couple decades after that, we decided to help push the Spanish Empire into the dustbin of history. If anything, Manifest Destiny probably led to the Spanish-American War, and I could 50-Stalins you and claim that the American Empire should not have gone west of Oklahoma or Texas.
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How are right wing parties relevant? Are they more sympathetic to the US than the left wing (excluding Trump of course)?
Trump might be burning bridges by spitting on the faces of others, but I don't see how the European right is relevant here. The US has been buddies with plenty of left wing regimes.
To be sure, if future US administrations want to hit the 'reset' button and go back to the old ways of doing things, then they can try to be friends with whoever they like, as they have done in the past, as you note. However, the mainstream European left, right, and centre is deeply committed to the Liberal International Order that Trump is crusading against.
That means a Trump or future Vance administration has to look to the fringes for real allies, and basically no Communist or radical left organisations would given him a look, not least because of his stance on Israel and Gaza (which frustratingly are the primary fixation for the European radical left right now). That leaves basically only one group of parties that would are openly to a close alliance (as opposed to a marriage of convenience), namely the non-establishment nationalist right - parties like FN, Fidesz, AfD, and Reform, all of who have relatively cosy relationships with Trump already. However, the more Trump acts in ways that harm Europe's security interests, the harder it is for these parties to maintain this relationship, at least without suffering political harm.
Rhetorically, perhaps, but certainly not when it comes to investing money and manpower in actually defending it. I'm pro-Ukraine, and not particularly pro-Trump, but I find myself frequently defending him against these sorts of accusations because they're so hard to take seriously.
Your statement also applies only if we consider the Liberal International Order to specifically encompass the region around Russia and Ukraine. For instance, much of the mainstream European political class is quite unconcerned with China's ambitions in the pacific, or Iran's actions in the ME, which aren't exactly in line with the idea of the LIO. These statements about the LIO are mostly window-dressing for standard geopolitical concerns - when it's happening close to us then it's all about high-minded values, when it's far away then it's not our business.
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