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.
If you are talking about recent electoral pushback like AfD getting almost-majority in one state, then it's a reaction exactly on the consequences of the said takeover. And even this reaction is largely ineffectual - AfD does not have a majority and will encounter uniform rejection from pretty much every other party. All the problems that the emergence of the alliance caused - mass migration, crime, cultural destruction, welfare abuse, economic stagnation, military impotence, suppression of civil liberties, etc. - remain and I don't see any signs of anything improving there, however AfD or Le Pen are polling.
I don't know what the leftists are screeching about, and I don't care - they always screeching about something. That's not what I am talking about - I am talking about what's happening on the ground. I do not see Europe "moving right" in any substantial way, but I see all the problems I mentioned above, and really I don't see how they are solvable - you can not invite millions of migrants and not give them vote, if you're a democracy. You can not give them vote and not enact policies that they would like to have, if you're a democracy. And since nobody in Europe is ready to reject multiculturalism and declare assimilation to be the only way - they will have to change instead, to accommodate the people they have accepted.
"Faster" than "not at all"? Sure, I'd want that. But the question is not what I want, but what they do, and I don't see any reversal. Are we seeing mass deportations? Are we seeing welfare reform? Are we seeing Europe abandoning multiculturalism and adopting the policy of assimilation? Are we seeing deregulation, privatization and abandonment of speech controls? I don't see it.
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