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PaperclipPerfector  28d ago (text post)   1191 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 17, 2026

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.

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Following up on last's weeks topic of the US/Trump administration's trade war on Canada:

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday embraced the prospect of his country becoming the European Union’s first associate member, saying closer ties with the continent would ensure no country could control Canada’s markets or undermine its sovereignty.

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola has told Euronews that countries including Australia and New Zealand could follow Canada in becoming “associate members” of the European Union as like-minded nations seek closer ties.

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.

The US has historically led a coalition of developed nations that was fairly biased towards US interests

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.

undermining US hegemony in a bid for marginal revisions in an already highly favorable status quo is a questionable strategy

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.

I don't really see how Europe is being "taken over by a green-red alliance." The electoral picture is pretty much the opposite.

Public sentiment vs. institutional sentiment. I can easily see it if we focus on the latter. Despite the popular support, many of the parties / politicians are locked out of power. Even if they do get into power, the EU is openly acting against them, and very little can be done about that regardless of how the European elections go (and it was designed to be this way on purpose). There's also the question of how meaningful that classification even is. The "center-right" of Germany is happily working on removing ano/pseudo-nymity from the internet precisely because they don't like how the public sentiment is swinging.

I think that overstates how uniform this supposed institutional lockout actually was. It certainly existed in places like Sweden, Germany and France, but it wasn't some general European rule. Even during 2010–2020, Wilders' PVV supported the Dutch government, Norway's Progress Party was in government for most of the decade, the Finns Party entered government in 2015, Austria's FPÖ in 2017 and Salvini's League in Italy in 2018.

And since then the direction has mostly been toward weakening those barriers, not strengthening them. Parties that were previously treated as beyond the pale have increasingly entered governments or supported them. Germany is the clearest major exception, where the firewall against the AfD still largely holds.

The same rightward movement is visible at EU level. The new migration pact introduces mandatory border procedures, stronger screening and faster return procedures for rejected asylum applicants. (EU Council) Whatever label you put on it, that's a shift in a more restrictionist direction.

Likewise, Merz opposing online anonymity doesn't demonstrate a left-wing institutional bias. That's an authoritarian/non-libertarian position, not inherently a left-wing one and the SPD opposed it. Being opposed to libertarianism doesn't make the CDU left-wing.

There absolutely was a broad establishment consensus on immigration in much of Western Europe, including much of the centre-right. But that's different from saying the institutions had been captured by the green-left. If anything, the fact that those old exclusions are weakening and EU migration policy itself is becoming more restrictive is evidence of the broader movement to the right.

Being opposed to libertarianism doesn't make the CDU left-wing.

That is true, but it certainly makes it mis-aligned with American values. In the US, at least, freedom of expression, freedom of political participation and robust societal discussion of current political issues has been a nationwide shared value. It is not the value of the Left anymore - which is why one is tempted to associate the similar positions of CDU with the left wing - but going back to the original topic, if even the supposed "right" in Germany is hostile to the values that many in the US hold sacred - one is tempted to ask, what kind of alliance do we have? What do we have in common? Of course, US history knows many cases where we temporarily allied with countries much worse than todays Germany - such as Stalin's USSR, for example - but that was the alliance of necessity, and it was dissolved once the need passed. Is this the kind of alliance we have between US and Europe, which was necessary when USSR was alive? Is it still necessary today? In which form? To what purpose? I think these are the questions that need to be asked.

It does seem fair to point out that America created modern Germany, in pretty much its current form. If I remember rightly, a lot of the German opposition to free speech, the censorship apparatus and one-party media was put in place by America for obvious reasons, and the CIA maintained a very strong grip over German media for decades.

Oh come on. Did America also create Britain? France? Denmark? Austria? The pattern is the same all over Europe, everywhere the speech is controlled and restricted, especially the speech that is considered "offensive" or is threatening the narrative preferred by the government. The EU as a whole has a censorship law - DSA - that is actively used to suppress speech all over the EU. The Congress released a report a year ago detailing various aspects of this: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/foreign-censorship-threat-how-european-unions-digital-services-act-compels

I mean, sure, the deep state reptilians and all the orgs they run or used to run (no real reason to single out CIA, they are at practically every three-letter agency that exists) have no problem with the censorship and state control over speech. They would support any effort to increase the control, be it in the US or anywhere. We had it with "disinformation boards" (which was successfully repelled, fortunately), we had it with control over social media (which kinda died with Covid and Musk buying Twitter), we have the next fight now with the same people trying to seize control over AI tech, and we will see it many times more in the future. But to claim they caused the censorship push in Europe and Europeans are blameless agency-free puppets is complete BS. Europeans are doing it for the same reason bureaucrats everywhere are doing it - they want power. Not for CIA or somebody else, but for themselves. Control over speech means more power, and more secure power. That's it, no need to involve CIA.

This nonsense about "all the shit that is happening on the planet, CIA caused it" got to stop. Other people are people too, they can do stupid shit without the CIA.

We were not talking about Britain, France or Denmark. We were talking about Germany, where the history is as I've said. You're welcome to look it up.

Germany is of course the most powerful and influential country in the EU, and American woke contagion has been very influential worldwide - see the spectre of 99% white Ireland searching for some black people it could have wronged - but that does not make America responsible for all Europe's stupid decisions.

A big part of those decisions is simply management culture and the kind of tribal diplomacy that you end up doing once you have a foreigner in every conversation IMO.

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I think the Germans were censoring free speech since before Germany was unified; certainly they were doing it in the interwar period, when Hitler was censored.

This isn't a claim against the US using that for their own purposes, but the cultural or political tendency predates American involvement in German internal affairs.

The new migration pact

The one with relocation quotas and 20K EUR per migrant fines for not meeting them? The one that opens the door to 7 zillion Indians - no wait, that's a different deal.

Likewise, Merz opposing online anonymity doesn't demonstrate a left-wing institutional bias. That's an authoritarian/non-libertarian position, not inherently a left-wing one and the SPD opposed it. Being opposed to libertarianism doesn't make the CDU left-wing.

Does "a liberal society must still be able to adequately protect it's citizens, including from false information, from personal putdowns, from discrimination, and from many other things that ultimately define our personal lives in freedom" sound like he's about to crack down on Antifa to you?

There absolutely was a broad establishment consensus on immigration in much of Western Europe, including much of the centre-right. But that's different from saying the institutions had been captured by the green-left.

I don't follow. If even "right-wingers" are left wing, that sounds like institutions being captured by the left. And if you add on top of that all the environmental stuff they're pushing through, with essentially no one opposing it, that sounds pretty green as well.

If anything, the fact that those old exclusions are weakening and EU migration policy itself is becoming more restrictive is evidence of the broader movement to the right.

Again, if we separate public from institutional sentiment, I think it's perfectly accurate to say the institutions are taken over. Now that the public sentiment is getting bad enough, they are also seeing a need to appease the public, that doesn't mean they are willingly implementing a right-wing program, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, like they have been doing with left-green policies.

If even "right-wingers" are left wing, that sounds like institutions being captured by the left

Do you propose that people like the Koch brothers were leftwing and that Bernie Sanders was rightwing in 2015?

Kinda. Look at how all the anti immigration lefties were treated by their supposed fellow left-wingers. They were treated as enemies, and that means that whatever you want to call them, they definitely weren't left-wing.

The main reason the “right wing” has so many diverse policy viewpoints is that the left has a rolling omnicause, and anyone kicked out of the left will thenceforth be described as right-wing.

Reddit is firmly convinced JK Rowling is a “right-wing nut job” because she disagrees with trans ideology, despite holding fast to every other piece of the left’s policy platform. They believe famous Monty Python comedian John Cleese is now a right-winger because he's outspoken against Muslim migration to Britain.

Really, there are three axes, and you can only be a left-winger if they say you’re on the left side of all three: anti-patriarchy, anti-colonialism, and socialism. The Kochs are for unbounded immigration, which is anti-colonial, but not socialism.

"Left Wing" and "Right wing" are fuzzy social categories, not mathematical primitives. You should sort by tribe, it's closer to the joints of reality.

If anything, the fact that those old exclusions are weakening and EU migration policy itself is becoming more restrictive is evidence of the broader movement to the right.

Too little, too late.

You might well believe that but it's also clear evidence against Europe being taken over by the left/green. Europe is moving in the other direction, and from a position largely defined by the rightwing.

By the right wing in a political spectrum that has shifted so far left that even the most tepid immigration control measures are considered the extreme of permissible politics. I'm sorry, but no, this movement to the right in no way proves that the left is not in firm control. Their electoral setbacks are, in the greater scheme of things, temporary and minor, while their social and demographic victories are permanent and far-reaching. Yes they overreached, did too much too quickly and alienated voters that way, but the left needing to spend some time without control of this or that executive or legislative and seeing a small fraction of their accomplishments rolled back is not proof of the lasting ascendancy of the right.

Even if this should be the full awakening of the natives to their intentional replacement and the imminent grab for power of the right over all the governments of Europe and even the end of all immigration, the demographic damage is done. The left can afford to let go of the reins of states for a while, or maybe even altogether. It won't change the fate of the continent at this point.

Call me when remigration is on the table. All else is mummery.

What you're talking about is ethno-nationalism, which could be left or rightwing.

A rightwing party not being in favor of ethno-nationalism doesn't make it not rightwing. It might make it unappealing to you specifically but thats a different question.

I don't really see how Europe is being "taken over by a green-red alliance."

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.

The left has already won.

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.

Or, conversely, US left is the Europe-influenced one. The switch from Marxist "workers of the world unite" framework to "long march through the institutions" started with Gramsci, why attribute it to the US? European Left enacted the shift no less than the US Left - while nominally preserving the "workers" rhetoric on the background, the actual focus went elsewhere - and has been much more successful at it. So I am not sure it is proper to call them "US influenced". The US Left may be getting more headlines - because the fight in the US is still on, while in Europe it has largely been concluded, with the remains of the Right waging guerilla campaigns on the margins of power - but that does not establish influence.

We had English rioters screaming "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" in a country where the police are famously unarmed. Unconscious bias and the push for diversity were justified by reference to the Harvard Business Review.

Woke came from America.

It's just "the current thing" manifesting. People scream what they see on TV. US TV is bigger than European TV.

Woke came from America.

Only in some narrow sense. US academia created the framework of wokeness. But European post-Marxist left created the US academia. Older US wokes still look at Europe with adoration, because that's where their ideological roots lie (even though I suspect diversity push would erase and replace those people quite soon, maybe even already happened, but the history remains). For the younger US wokes of course Europe is just a point on the map which has already been conquered and thus needs less attention than the current battles. For them, it's finally the time to get rid of the Western culture, and thus Europe is only a geographical location.

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.

The electoral picture is pretty much the opposite.

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.

The fact that there is a lot of leftist screeching online

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.

Perhaps you'd want the reversal of these policies to go faster

"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.

Text of von der Leyen's speech

Honourable Members,

These partnerships are a strategic choice for Europe. But they also respond to the fracture in the international rules-based system.

For some, the answer is to go it alone. But this is not an option for us. Europe will always lead when it comes to defending the rules-based system. But we can no longer rely on it as the only way to secure our interests. Or assume that its rules will shelter us from the complex threats that we face.

In this new world, we must urgently reimagine our partnerships. And build global coalitions for our resilience and democracies.

And here too only Europe—with its size and power—can take the lead.

And this is why I have invited Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada to be here today.

Mark, your presence here is a symbol of the enduring friendship between our people. Our cultural, historical and personal links run deep within the fabric of our societies.

And thanks to CETA, our trade in goods has grown by 75 % in less than a decade.

This shows the power of our trade agreements. We see the world with the same eyes: from AI to climate change, from the Arctic to geopolitics. And we have stood together: on Ukraine, on defence, on raw materials and on supply chains.

But above all, dear Mark, Europe and Canada believe in democracy.

We believe that power does not belong to the strongest, the richest or the loudest—but to all of us. That democracies have the freedom to choose with whom to work.

So, we are joining forces voluntarily. We will move from CETA to an Alliance for the Future to create a common prosperity and economic security space. We will work on intelligent manufacturing. We will create a tech alliance. We will integrate defence industrial bases. We will make the Arctic a flagship joint project. We will work on energy, critical minerals and batteries. On AI, quantum, cyber and economic security.

This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength.

In short, we want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible.

Dear Mark,

I said we must urgently reimagine our partnerships. So, I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.

We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world. And we will now build our shared future as well—thank you for being here.

Of course the remorseless globalists like Canada. That standout state of de-nationification.

The usual suspects clapped in Australia and wrote stories about Ursala's comments that Australia and New Zealand could do the same.

The EU has nothing to offer the Anglo states but regulation and replacement.

I think the Anglo states are doing pretty well as far as replacement and regulation go, even without the EU.

Exactly. Hold my beer.

What's more, it comes across as a highly emotional approach, driven more by dominance seeking and sense of grievance than material benefit.

Yes, that's exactly how said allies are behaving. I honestly don't get this impression from the US, but then again, I'm the one who has to pay the bill for Boomer cultural posturing and said Boomers have made me poorer in the first place because of that posturing, so my perspective is slanted in that way.

There isn't a damn thing Commonwealth countries are going to get from Europe outside of "more resource extraction from an even less competent ally". Canada pretends it'll just make gear for war to maintain its industrial supply chain, but it has no need for it and Germans would quite rather those jobs be made in Germany (to preserve its industrial supply chain). These deals are merely cope.

German industry is already idle, so agreements these countries make will be contingent on their winding down their own manufacturing capacity to keep European capacity (and hence political power) alive. The same wouldn't be true for Britain, but their supply chains packed it in in the Thatcher years, so they have no use for any former imperial possessions.

What now remains is the resolution of the teething pains of countries that permitted themselves to be hollowed out (and sold their ability to maintain a national identity to keep their real estate prices high) collapsing under the weight of their own bureaucratic-welfare complex. If Canada can't resist economic destruction on its own, and realistically it can't, the others have no hope either.

Why are Macron and other French politicians suddenly tweeting like european leaders just had that final Baron von Shoen <> Viviani meeting before WWI started?

why are the Swiss publishing stuff about their comprehensive approach to security?

Im usually not very alarmist but is there something happening or about to happen that is causing all this at the same time? it's almost New York market close (3:15pm ET right now as I write, so another 45minutes). Is this another "we bomb from market close to market open"? Or is this different?

Is this 'just' about Russia-Ukraine and how Ukraine will lose if NATO does not directly step into the war? (from X.com - 'WarMonitor' post about large russia+belarussian military exercise)

More likely it's due to the numerous instances of what's very likely Russian sabotage having been found recently. And of course then there's the basic fact that Russia threatens nearly weekly some European country with war.

This whole current European round of warnings isn't particularly major news in Finland, which is what I'd consider it to be if this was really a sign of something major coming up. The president said something about preparing for possible hybrid warfare stuff and there's news about Baltic preparations, but neither of these is anything new. The biggest ongoing news stories concern plans for a big Google data center in Finland and a 40+ female CEO dying as a consequence of a dodgy plastic surgery operation.

I'm gonna bet on nothingburger, nobody seems to be moving in serious ground forces, though there are some exercises going on.

Why are Macron and other French politicians suddenly tweeting like european leaders just had that final Baron von Shoen <> Viviani meeting before WWI started?

Can you quote any standout examples?

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