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Just want to reiterate this- my filter bubble is probably top 10%, maybe top 5%, for conservatism in the US. It does not see the federal government as a force for good.
Putin still has a somehow lower approval rating. Russia isn't seen as some based and trad country except among the already fringey, it's seen as one of a series of corrupt tinpot dictatorships propped up by organized crime and natural resources. The opinion of unironic russophiles is not high.
And yet it really seems as though the signals coming from the US administration are 100% favourable to Putin and 100% negative to Ukraine and Europe. "Ukraine shouldn't have started it", Trump says now. How can this music play well at home if home isn't full of Russophiles (and I'm sure you're right, it's not)? I think the extent of the reversal is becoming more exrtreme by the day, to the distress of Europeans, who are beginning to feel not abandoned (which would be one thing), but as if they are being suddenly turned on by a former friend, which is quite another and will go down in history.
You don't have to be a Russophile to think that Ukraine, collectively, made a poor national choice by trying to court a Western alliance when Russia was bound to react negatively. I don't actually think the "Ukraine shouldn't have started it" comment will play particularly well here unless Trump manages to steer the narrative very aggressively (he might be able to, I am sure there are interesting CIA documents he could declassify) but peace probably will.
And when I say predictable – Obama himself – hardly a Russophile, I don't think – said that Russia would always control the escalatory cycle over Ukraine simply because they perceived of it as a core national interest and the West didn't. Bill Burns' declassified cables reveal similar knowledge. It is not particularly shocking (although I do admit to being a bit surprised but not shocked by the SMO, if that makes sense) to anyone who listened to Putin, or Obama, that this would happen. Given that knowledge, you don't have to be a Russophile to believe that Ukraine played its hand poorly by choosing the West over Russia. (I am not saying that is the only opinion that is valid, just that it is a valid opinion.)
Outside of England, Europe has not exactly acted like our friend – we spy on them, they spy on us, they build massive natural gas pipelines to Russia after we tell them that is not a great idea and they should stop, they laugh at us when we tell them that is a silly idea, they try to tell Jeff Bezos what he can do with his own social media companies, they accuse us of human rights violations, we pass a bill authorizing an invasion of Belgium if they do anything about it. Friendly, maybe, but friends? Maybe that is overstating it.
And suddenly? The United States told Europe during the Obama administration that they needed to pay more in defense spending and that the United States was going to pivot to Asia. This is not new. This is longstanding US policy priorities working themselves out.
It makes sense based on these considerations that the US would reduce funding and expect the EU to step up to help it with a shared aim of containing Russia. That is not what is happening though. Rather the US is actively taking Russia's side in the conflict and ideologically allying itself with an autocracy over (most of) the world's democracies. Europe's minor encroachments on religious freedoms are obviously far more problematic ideologically to the US administration today than any number of assassinations of opponents, state control of media and corruption that happen in Russia. Don't pretend that this change isn't extraordinary and new.
The outcome is now looking like a US-Russia led alliance, with the EU trying to build an army and contain Russia with the hopes the US changes its mind before the conflict expands.
I hear the opinion that Ukraine did not act wisely in courting the west but it's a great players view of the world that doesn't come naturally to me. The people were given freedom and chose the west, you can say they could have collectively seen the geopolitical writing on the wall and gone against all their own preferences to avoid being invaded, but that sounds like victim blaming to me. Democracies cannot act strategically in that manner, it's one of the reasons they need and deserve protecting.
From what I can tell the United States is still providing Ukraine with weapons, which means they are actively taking Ukraine's side in the conflict.
European divergence from shared Western human rights norms is particularly problematic to Americans because Europe has (kinda sorta) been our ally in promoting traditional Western human rights norms. If Europe refuses to cooperate ideologically with the United States, it disrupts that traditional shared project.
Of course, Europe's encroachments on religious freedoms and other unalienable rights are not minor by American standards. The United States winked at this sort of thing in the past so as not to ruffle feathers and also because there are a contingent of Americans who agree with Europe's approach on these matters (more or less) but America thinking that European speech laws is a problem is not new at all and European leaders should have anticipated the possibility that right-wing leadership would criticize them. However, U.S. criticism of European actions is not surprising or new (again recall that the States passed the Invade The Hague act in 2002!) and does not mean that the US is going to leave NATO and join CSTO or anything like that.
On the flip side, United States is already willing to cooperate with regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, or France that assassinate their political opponents, regimes like England that have state control of media, and regimes like Ukraine that are deeply corrupt, and so on. It engages in trade with China despite that nation's absolutely atrocious human rights record. It should not be a surprise to you that it is willing to drop sanctions on Russia.
This does not seem like a serious possibility to me, and I wonder where you got this idea. I've seen the United States talk about lifting sanctions with Russia, which is not an "alliance" any more than Nordstream constitutes an "alliance" between Germany and Russia. Trump trying to hit the same reset button that Obama, Bush, etc. tried to hit does not mean that the United States is allying with Russia.
Well for context keep in mind that Ukraine was split on the question of Western rapprochement. In fact the people you mention violently overthrew their own elected government in a coup because their elected government decided not to pursue the West and elements of the people, backed by Western intelligence services, did not like that. In response, the people in other parts of Ukraine, backed by Russian intelligence services, violently overthrew their own government in a counter-coup. None of that is according to normal democratic political norms, at least in the West.
As far as victim-blaming goes – I think that the government has a responsibility to protect its people from adversaries. If a country's government fails to build up its military and is invaded, the invader is morally at fault for its decisions, but the government failed in its responsibility and it is more than fair to assign blame to its actions. But military readiness is not the only way to protect your citizens, and it is perfectly fair to criticize the actions a government takes if those actions lead to back outcomes regardless of whether or not the bad outcomes are the result of malign third-party actors. You can believe that Ukraine made bad political decisions while still believing that moral culpability for the invasion(s) of Ukraine rests with Russia. Criticism of a government's actions is not only defensible but necessary because criticism is how you learn from failure.
If democracies cannot act strategically [which is not my position], then they deserve to be replaced by a form of government that is better at protecting its citizens.
I mean, the US is probably paying some DEI consultancy bills still too, but it doesn't say much about the direction of travel or the intended end point.
Where I got the idea is just listening to the drumbeat of criticism of Ukraine and praise for Russia, and the US's willingness to throw away all the bargaining chips immediately. Has a technical alliance emerged, no. Is it apparent to Europe that they now face a transformed world after 80 years of relative confidence in the US's ideological preferences, yes.
Regarding religious freedoms in Europe, I think that American concerns are pretty much bullshit and an excuse, and that if Trump introduced things like protest exclusion zones outside, I dunno, military hospitals instead of abortion centres (such things were seemingly the thing JD Vance is mainly exercised about at a time of grave geopolitical danger) ... if Trump introduced those then the same people complaining about Europe's restrictions wouldn't bat an eyelid.
If the United States had ended sanctions and weapons deliveries, they would have thrown away their bargaining chips (although not really since they could resume them both at a moment's notice). But instead they are expecting concessions from Russia. That's how bargaining works.
I think that wise European actors (the French) have more or less always understood that American ideological preferences (or perhaps more relevantly, interests in Europe) were contingent and not permanent.
Certainly I don't think J.D. Vance giving a speech is at the level of the United States threatening to destroy the British economy (which we did in 1956 after they invaded Egypt) so I'm not sure I buy this idea you seem to have that the United States has just been a team player to Europe since the end of World War Two.
I mean I dunno what to tell you, it might be that it's an excuse for the administration, but the bottom-up sentiment is real. My recollection is that mainstream right-wing media in the United States has been complaining about this for a long time. Certainly I've complained about this sort of thing on here.
Aren't military hospitals likely to be on military bases where your rights are already restricted...? I assure you if Trump followed the U.K.'s lead of cracking down on silently standing outside of abortion clinics many righties in the United States would be angry. But of course one of Trump's first acts was pardoning anti-abortion protestors.
To reply to a couple of other points, the bargaining chips they gave away are (1) saying ahead of the negotiations that Ukraine will have to make territorial concessions, and (2) saying ahead of the negotiations that NATO membership is off the table. These things may not be achievable but it seems malevolent for the US to say so unilaterally before the negotiations.
And whether Vance's speech was at the level of 1956 ... I admit I don't know the story there. And what I do know as a matter of fact is that Europeans are interpreting what's coming out of the US as seismic shift in US policy. Assuming they don't wind this back, it is shaping up to be a realignment on a scale much bigger (and frankly scarier) than anything in my lifetime, though I guess I wouldn't know about 70 years ago.
Maybe, but on the other hand it might have been necessary to get Russia to even come to the table, I'm not certain. Particularly on the second point it might not be in perceived US interests to attempt to give Ukraine NATO membership.
This seems plausible, but it seems to me that if they were caught completely flat-footed by this it was because of willful ignorance.
Good. The United States cannot fight Russia and China at the same time alone. European NATO should have the resources to deter Russia single-handedly or with limited support from the US at most, the US should not need to hold its hand every step of the way (this is entirely consistent with the US being an enthusiastic NATO partner and assisting with deterring Russia, by the by).
As far as Vance criticizing Europe for suppressing political parties, free speech, and immigration, I think on balance he is correct on the merits, at least directionally. Now, with that being said, I am not European, so I do hesitate to tell other nations what to do. But this is part of my reflexive American isolationism and if you like the part of my reflexive American isolationism where I say "you know what, Europe can do what they want with their own internal politics" you won't like the part where I say "you know what, Europe can do what they want with their own external politics."
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