Sounds an awful lot like horseshoe theory where the far right and far left both support Putin.
It bears repeating that NATO was created “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. I always had the impression that Western European countries were pressing for it, afraid of any risk of renewed isolationism in the US as had happened after WW1.
No. It’s about America being largely dominated by religious fanatics who are willing to sacrifice everything and everyone else for their beliefs. Right and Left has nothing to do with it.
Trying to force all politics into a one dimensional line distorts actual politics into incoherence.
Per capita it has historically been Canada and Norway for crisis and peace keeping and Germany, Swizzerland and Spain for development aid.
And the distrust started at least with Vietnam, BTW, if not already the Bay of Pigs. And then came Nixon and then came Reagan and then came Irak and Afghanistan and drone murder and trump. And it is not finished yet, so we will see.
Europe and the rest of the world could always rely on the USA pursuing their own interests, which could be made to align with ours, more or less. What is changing right before our eyes is that the USA does not even know what their own interests are, they have become irrational. They are hurting themselves, and unfortunately that hurts the rest of the world too.
As others have said, per capita, it’s not the US. Unless you’re not thinking per capita, and are expecting small European countries to outspend the richest country in the world.
Yes, this is key. You can work with purely self interested people, organizations and nations because they are predictable and under the right circumstances even reliable. You can’t work with ones that are irrational and ignore their own self interest because you simply can’t predict what they’ll do. You can’t even reliably placate them, much less trust them.
Some people are shocked countries like Canada are musing about closer ties with the likes of China. But this is the point right here; China is predictable. You don’t have to like their regime, but you know where you stand.
Maggie Thatcher’s comments about Gorbachev come to mind:
I am cautiously optimistic. I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together. We both believe in our own political systems. He firmly believes in his; I firmly believe in mine. We are never going to change one another. So that is not in doubt, but we have two great interests in common: that we should both do everything we can to see that war never starts again, and therefore we go into the disarmament talks determined to make them succeed. And secondly, I think we both believe that they are the more likely to succeed if we can build up confidence in one another and trust in one another about each other’s approach, and therefore, we believe in cooperating on trade matters, on cultural matters, on quite a lot of contacts between politicians from the two sides of the divide.
I can’t say anything like that about Trump and his supporters in Congress.
The US has long been a mixture of the best and worst. Of course American self-interest was always in the foreground, but things like the Marshall Plan and Lend-Lease were enormously influential and at just the right time.
Unsure if greasy eminences was meant to refer to éminences grises but a clever pun regardless of intent.
A common retort is that the total amount of aid is what’s important, not per capita. In which case, let’s at least compare the EU to the US. The EU donates about 50% more, even now sans UK.
The USA got involved in WWII because, well Pearl Harbor and both Japan and Germany declared war. It was certainly untenable for Japan to keep taking Asia and the USA could have just retaliated against that. Yet certainly intelligence knew about German rocketry and they took, and the UK could not take back, Norway for its Deuterium production abilities which could only mean they had some kind of nuclear program in mind. As it turned out, Deuterium is only good for Hydrogen bombs, and to ignite them you need a regular Fission Atomic Bomb. Nonetheless, the Germans were a concern so war declared right back at you.
The USA had the materiel and force to operate just fine in the Pacific and at least go to the UK to train up. As things would turn out, D-Day etc… was really liberating Europe from a vengeful Russian Army who at the very least would have taken Germany.
Anyway, sorry for the unbidden history lesson, yet the notion that “The USA saved Europe’s ass” in WWII is not a certainly. Certainly the good-will was shared in turn by the Americans. I reckon much of that has been spent - mainly by Trump. That Maggie Thatcher quote above could have been said by Reagan yet never by this president.
I haven’t spent enough time in Continental Europe except to say the Finns and Dutch/Netherlanders (?) are really nice people who do genuinely like Americans and speak excellent English.
I can speak for Ireland and the UK where I have lived for years. They generally like Americans. Since November 2016 when I got asked about Trump my answer has been something like “I didn’t vote for him and I hope he dies in jail” and that’s about it for politics.
They dress better (even outside of the uniforms for schools) (I dress sloppily as always), attend school longer both in hours and months. They don’t subscribe to the textbooks that Texas seems to be the source. Smarter? Not really. Better educated and able to really speak other languages, indeed.
If Americans once had the reputation for being brash, out loud proud and good people, the first two remain true yet the third is on a case by case basis.
I read a quote by Vladimir Lenin today: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”
It’s been 8 weeks since Felon 47 and it’s still bewildering to me that he is president and not in jail. And for all he’s said about NATO being split into Europe and North America, and taking Greenland and not helping Ukraine, there is no rational reason Europe should trust the USA.
Sign of the times