Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
2d ago
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Transnational Thursday for September 17, 2026
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Notes -
Following up on last's weeks topic of the US/Trump administration's trade war on Canada:
One of the more baffling aspects of Trump's foreign policy (in both terms, but especially in his second) is how he's made a point of being hostile towards long-time US allies. The US has historically led a coalition of developed nations that was fairly biased towards US interests, with the implicit tradeoff that the US was also footing the lion's share of the costs. The integration of democratic middle powers into an American-led world order both gave the US leverage over its members (see, for example, the arrest of Meng Wangzhou or leaning on ASML to freeze out China) and discouraged the emergence of a rival power center.
Of late, however, it seems that the American Right has shifted to a model that assumes that US allies have no leverage and thus have no choice but to accept wildly unfavorable terms. There's a element of truth to the idea that US could push its allies harder and that the US was not getting the most favorable possible arrangement out of its alliances. However, the maximalism of the current administration seems to be underestimating the possibility that alienated allies may simply look for ways to work around the US, and undermining US hegemony in a bid for marginal revisions in an already highly favorable status quo is a questionable strategy. What's more, it comes across as a highly emotional approach, driven more by dominance seeking and sense of grievance than material benefit.
Historically, yes. But is it still the case? Europe is increasingly being taken over by the green-red alliance, and it's not entirely clear why the US should keep financing Europe's security while Europe is rebuilding itself as a woke socialist caliphate. It'd be nice to get the old, Western-civilization-aligned Europe back, but the US can not enact this change. Only Europeans can. And they do not seem to be able or willing to.
I am not a huge fan of Trump's "bull in a china shop" diplomatic style, and it does not seem to be practically effective that much - at least, I am not seeing a huge improvement in the terms of improving US standing and achieving US goals by diplomatic means. His only major success so far that I can identify is freeing the Israeli hostages from Hamas (which is extremely close to my heart personally but I suspect is not super high on the US priority scale) and some advancement on the Abraham accords (even though it is compensated for by increasing radicalization of Turkey). Beyond that, I can hardly name any diplomatic win attributable to him. Stuff like getting rid of Maduro sound a big win to me (at least so far) but there was not a lot of diplomacy involved there.
But while I am skeptical about his methods, I recognize that his approach of trying to get more favorable arrangements makes sense. If EU or Canada put tariffs on US goods, why the US should be fine with it? I think it makes sense to act towards achieving more friendly arrangements. The problem is it seems like Trump is very good in getting into the fight, but less good in figuring out how to end the fight in a way that achieves the goals that the entire fight was about.
Unfortunately, the hegemony is coming into question whether we want it or not, for the reasons I named above. When the fundamental values of the countries are misaligned, the alliance can be maintained either by the US spending huge piles of money - pecunia non olet - or by US aligning more with the woke green-red alliance. The Left has no problem with either part of this, but the Right does. So the realignment is inevitable as long as the US does not succumb to the same alliance. The question is what form that realignment would take.
I don't really see how Europe is being "taken over by a green-red alliance." The electoral picture is pretty much the opposite.
As of September 2026, CIDOB's breakdown of the 27 EU governments classifies 15 as centre-right or right, compared with five centre-left/left, six centrist and Germany's grand coalition.
The European elections point in the same direction. In 2019 the Greens had 74 seats and S&D 154. After the 2024 election they were down to 53 and 136 respectively, while the centre-right EPP remained the largest group with 188 seats, and the ECR and Patriots for Europe held 78 and 84. (European Parliament)
And that trend hasn't exactly disappeared since. In Germany, current national polling has the AfD at 27–29%, compared with 18–20% for the CDU. In France, Le Pen is leading first-round presidential polling at 33–36%, and would be replacing a center right government, not a leftist one.
Even the UK's Labour landslide was a landslide in seats, not popular support: Labour won 33.7% of the vote but 63.2% of the seats under first-past-the-post, in what the House of Commons Library describes as the most disproportionate result on record.
So whatever you think of the direction politically, describing Europe as undergoing some growing "green-red takeover" isn't accurate. The fact that there is a lot of leftist screeching online that is then signal boosted by rightwing cw influencers is largely unconnected to electoral reality.
Europe is moving right, from a rightwing position, not left. And many of the policies people here have found objectionable were introduced by rightwing governments, often for largely rightwing reasons. Perhaps you'd want the reversal of these policies to go faster or further than they currently are but that's not the same as Europe moving in left/green direction.
You don't see it happening because it already happened.
Yes we currently have an upswing of right-wing sentiment as the leftist strangelhold on public discourse slackens, but that's because the leftists, in their time of triumph, overreached somewhat while already on the finishing line. But it's only a stumble; they can and most likely will recover, and if the footrace metaphor holds, then this stumble makes no difference because the right is crawling along far behind with its legs hacked off and bleeding out.
Alright, enough metaphor.
The left has already won. The takeover happened, and it held, and still holds. All public institutions all over Europe are firmly in the hands of leftist partisans. All the predominant narratives that public discourse rests on are shaped by leftist framing. And above all, greatest accomplishment and final victory of the left, demographics are a done deal. The natives are on an inescapable track towards becoming minorities in their own countries, and foreigners will become the majority in Europe within this century. There is no fixing this, and there is no suriviving it for the right.
The current electoral successes of the Right are too little, too late. Fait very much already accompli.
There is an important point that is being left out: The left that "won" is the US influenced left. Not the traditional "workers rights"-left but the "We must always consider the feelings of BIPOC LBGTQ people"-left.
No. I refer to the European left that can trace its roots right back to the earliest Worker' organizations. Nowadays one might be able to see a difference between the socialists and the woke, but go back a few decades and they all blend together. And it doesn't do to just look at the current state of affairs - they started their great social project early in the last century, and made their great breakthroughs after the right thoroughly discredited itself in the middle of the last century, and prepared the way and the materials and the institutions and the narratives for all who followed later. The US left barely factors into it, and has not been the driving force behind the left's most singal victories. The leftist most influenced by the US left are the ones that showed up after the great work was already accomplished.
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