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Do American on The Motte feel that the country is generally in favour of breaking from its old European alliances? I am not sure I have got that sense when visiting but I've visited only fairly D-leaning areas in recent years.
From the British/European point of view, one has the sense from current reporting that a significant rebalancing is happening, one that I would characterise as going beyond wanting to reduce American spending on e.g. Ukraine, and towards decisively breaking with European countries out of gut dislike, and beginning instead to form either a US-Russian alliance of sympathies, or if not that, then at least a relationship with Russia that is rhetorically much friendlier than that with Europe. I think the fear is starting to take root in Europe that the US would effectively switch sides in return for Russia granting it mineral rights in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. This heel turn seems unlikely, but things are murky enough that it is worrying people.
I feel that this rebalancing is already working in a way towards achieving stated Trump goals – it certainly is succeeding in restoring Europe's appetite for military spending (underinvestment here is one thing Trump has been consistently right about but European leaders have buried their heads in the sand on, hoping he'd go away). But the current situation re Ukraine is also sending confusing signals, as it had previously seemed as though the US wanted Europe to step up and be part of a solution for Ukraine, whereas currently it seems they actively want to stop Europe from having a role in peace talks. The motive for this appears to be stopping Europe from asking terms of Russia that would delay a solution the US and Russia find jointly satisfactory, though perhaps there is more going on beneath the surface.
I did not have the impression that the American population generally has gone through this kind of Europe->Russia realignment in their hearts, Russians still being a regular foil for the good guys in movies (said movies coming from liberal-leaning Hollywood, sure). I have the impression that moving towards Russia is an aspect of foreign policy that Trump has not built domestic support for. But maybe this is wrong. Maybe the average American now thinks not only "Europe should contribute more to solve their own defence problems", but furthermore, "Europe should get its nose out of international affairs and attempt to help only when it's spoken to. We, Russia and China are in charge now."
I'm writing this without especially detailed knowledge of foreign policy, but I'm more interested here in the emotional calibration of ordinary Americans generally. What outcomes would they accept, what outcomes are they afraid of, who do they feel warm to and who not, and to what extent do they feel entirely insulated from global events, alliances and enmities?
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.
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.
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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