The EU thread

[Zoupa]

European priorities for Trump's new National Security Strategy:



The highlighted part is crazy but the last point is taking the cake.

[The Brain]

The second point is encouraging, they want Europe to stand up to the US.

[Admiral Yi]

The last two struck me. No NATO for Ukraine (and Georgia and Rumania)? Managed economic stagnation a la Japan?

[Zoupa]

The whole document is absolutely insane    It's the love child of Peter Thiel, that Curtis Yarvin crazy dude, JD Vance and Stephen Miller.

It's cute how powerful they think the US is.

You can read it here:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

[Admiral Yi]

Ah, I thought it was written by Europe 

[Zoupa]

 

[The Minsky Moment]

The second point is encouraging, they want Europe to stand up to the US.

Not surprising since the Russians presumably wrote the first draft.  The editor fixed point 4 to refer to the US rather than Russian gas, but the rest seems to have carried over intact.

[PJL]

At this rate, Trump will get the Charlemagne prize for helping Europe unite against a common foe...

[Josquius]

European priorities for Trump's new National Security Strategy:



The highlighted part is crazy but the last point is taking the cake.

The second one rings huge brexity (ie Russian) bells....
Clearly stating destroy the EU there.

What does the highlighted one even mean.
What it clearly doesn't mean though the best interpretation would be Europe needs support to resist the far right slide. That's the reality. Not whatever delusion fox news tells them

The 4th is crazy. American business dominates Europe. Do they not know this?

[Sheilbh]

What does the highlighted one even mean.
What it clearly doesn't mean though the best interpretation would be Europe needs support to resist the far right slide. That's the reality. Not whatever delusion fox news tells them

It's the right-wing American obsession with the Islamisation of Europe/immigration in Europe. I wouldn't even describe it as far-right because this has been something circulating within the more mainstream right particularly on the Islamophobic front in the US for a very, very long time (see Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe).

I think what's emerged recently that is new is the emphasis on more blood and soil nationalism on the American right. So you have this weird combination of European countries constructing civic national identities that look a lot more traditionally "American" (an imperfect work in progress), while from the US there is a huge push with the Christian nationalist focus on "Christendom" v Islam on Europe as a sort of heimat of white folks.

So I think that point is tied to the point about building up relations with the "healthy" nations of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. Which I'd interpret as Hungary, Italy under Meloni, I think even with Tusk Poland (American right-wingers seem weirdly obsessed with Poland) etc. This ties into the civilisational perspective of Europe which is increasingly common here - that can go from more soft/liberal versions like Macron's, but there is a hard-edged version from someone like Meloni. What's very weird is seeing that picked up in the US which notes "over the long term, it is more than plausible [fantastic weasel words to avoid probability or statistics] that within a few decades [...] certain NATO members will become majority non-European". They consider this as a "real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure". But it's Vance in Munich or joking that the first Islamist country with nukes is Britain with a Labour government - it's that world view on steroids.

And as I say it's not one that is absent from Europe or necessarily opposed to the European project. This is what I'd warn against in civilisational language. But there is a specifically far-right version of it - I think Meloni is key the way she talks about "our nations" when she talks about Europe is very striking. The French election is less than 18 months away and from what I've seen Bardella is now leading in the polls (on second round) v all candidates. It's clear the US government is going to explicitly support those forces. Even aside from that sort of support while there are often fights (Meloni and Le Pen hate each other for example) it is really striking how, across Europe, arguably the most European parties are the Nationalist International - they learn from each other, there are networks to support each (for example I think Vox might not matter as much in Europe but is essential in the rise of the far-right in Latin America). I feel like there's a lot the mainstream parties could learn in that openness to change and interest in and learning from each other.

Edit: What is really weird and new is that I think the American right used to have that strand of Islamophobia and condescension to Europe - of the "Islamisation of Europe" etc. But I think they saw it as their problem. The more robust, open and successfully diverse US was the model they were behind. I think with some of the new right on America becoming a lot more blood and soil, bringing back scientific racism they view their perception of what's happening in Europe as their problem far more than something just going on over here.

[Valmy]

You have made this point about the international brotherhood of xenophobes for a long time. The key is these are all populist movements with general complaints for their compatriots in other countries can get with. For technocratic mainstream center left parties like Labour what they have to say doesn't even make sense to Americans, even those who support the center left mainstream technocratic parts of the Democratic Party. Because you really have to understand the British system and their specific issues to understand or care.

If they had a bunch of powerful ideological points about social values or whatever then some Democratic voters might feel solidarity and start working closely with British center leftists. But they don't so there is nothing really to attract their attention.

[Zoupa]

"The Left" is in shambles everywhere across the West. My 2 cents is that every generation post Boomer feels they are worse off than their parents. Economic indicators lean that way. The left does not propose a clear vision to solve that, apart from a brief interlude with Obama's Dream and Hope, which turned out to be bullshit. The Right promises to turn back the clock and does politics of nostalgia. It resonates a lot more with ppl these days.

My crystal ball tells me a worldwide conflagration is gonna happen in the next 20 years, after which a reset on income inequality is due to emerge.

[Sheilbh]

You have made this point about the international brotherhood of xenophobes for a long time. The key is these are all populist movements with general complaints for their compatriots in other countries can get with. For technocratic mainstream center left parties like Labour what they have to say doesn't even make sense to Americans, even those who support the center left mainstream technocratic parts of the Democratic Party. Because you really have to understand the British system and their specific issues to understand or care.

If they had a bunch of powerful ideological points about social values or whatever then some Democratic voters might feel solidarity and start working closely with British center leftists. But they don't so there is nothing really to attract their attention.

I think I'm not expressing myself particularly well on this because I don't think it's necessarily a question of popular support or getting voters to care about other countries. Policy is the least important thing in politics and the least important bit of policy is foreign policy - no-one cares. There are three voters deeply invested in it and they all work for think tanks in our national capitals. What I think this Nationalist International is really good at it is observing, learning from and sharing knowledge about technique - about how to do politics. They don't agree on everything - Meloni is very pro-Ukraine, Orban is very pro-Russia; Trump is all about protectionism and state capitalism, Milei is Menemist neo-liberalism on steroids (the Latin American far right is really interesting). They're not united around policy or even necessarily ideology so much as they are around affect and style. But also, as I say, working out what works and applying it and sharing those experiences and that knowledge. They seem far more open to learning from each other's experience.

FWIW I think there is maybe something similar on the populist/radical left - perhaps just because they're generally less bound by established party structures. It's very new and a UK case but I find it really interesting that the new Green leader (who positions himself as an eco-populist) has done a thing with Hasan Piker. But more broadly his campaign was really galvanised by really slick social media videos. So it's not necessarily a surprise that apparently the Greens and Mamdani's teams have been in close contact and are sharing what they know/their experience.

There's always been a tradition of this in the mainstream parties - I think from a purely UK perspective it's more of an Anglophone thing just because most people don't have foreign languages. So Clinton and Blair shared teams, Labour people embed in Labor and Democratic campaigns in Australia and the US (Canada is a little more tough because technically their sister party is the NDP, but there are staffers going back and forth with the Liberals) - and the opposite is true for the mainstream right. I slightly wonder if part of what's happened is that they've shifted from there being a shared perspective/point of view underpinning it to a consultancy class. So Keating's Labor, Clintons Democrats and Blair's New Labour share a lot of DNA - it makes perfect sense that you have aides and staffers circulating between them. Skip forward 20 years and you have Obama's two key aides working for both the Labour and Tory campaigns for a fee. I know someone whose company did a lot of work for Labour in 2024 - they've since worked on (successful) campaigns for progressive in Portugal, Australia and Canada. But it's a for-profit consultancy. Maybe that goes to the wider authenticity challenge the mainstream has - like writing, political campaigning has moved from something you do for a few close friends to something you do for money.

I also would mostly exclude the US from this I think there are distinctive and particular angles to what's happening in the US. But also fundamentally everyone in the world has to care about what's happening in American politics - I think too much sometimes and it can suck the oxygen out of our own political systems, particularly in the age of the internet and particularly if you're in an English speaking country. For better or worse, we all live in America's internet. The line about if America sneezes the world catches a cold is I think now really true about cultural and political issues as well as the economy.

Also generally I don't think there's anything particularly exceptional or unique about any country's politics. I don't think any of it matters. We are seeing the same thing across Europe (I think the US is different) - I think it has similar causes, similar symptoms. Given that I think it is the same pathology and our superficial differences are a distraction. There are some aspcts of political systems that have a particular structural effect - for example, I think voting system matters in terms of the politics it produces. But in terms of particular issues or ideologies - I just don't think they matter. That's just local flavour.

[Sheilbh]

"The Left" is in shambles everywhere across the West. My 2 cents is that every generation post Boomer feels they are worse off than their parents. Economic indicators lean that way. The left does not propose a clear vision to solve that, apart from a brief interlude with Obama's Dream and Hope, which turned out to be bullshit. The Right promises to turn back the clock and does politics of nostalgia. It resonates a lot more with ppl these days.

My crystal ball tells me a worldwide conflagration is gonna happen in the next 20 years, after which a reset on income inequality is due to emerge.

I really hope you're not right.

My two thoughts on the wider problem for the left though - which I think are connected - are that it's maybe impossible to "solve" the economic issue because it is a product of an increasingly globalised world.

I don't think there's a way out of that. But I think the "left" is broadly so committed to the social and cultural aspects of a neo-liberal globalised world, they are not able to even imagine alternatives that could meaningfully address the economic effects of that system.

Relatedly generally the period the far and radical right are nostalgising for is the period of peak European social democracy, the short post-war order, the trente glorieuses. But again that is a period that was pre-globalisation and neo-liberalism. I think broadly they are willing and able to imagine alternatives that unwind a lot of that economic model - perhaps because the rise of the rest is starting to fundamentally challenge the position of local elites too not just, as it has for the last 25 years (and will continue to) the position of the rich world's middle and working class.

[Zoupa]

I don't think there's a way out of that. But I think the "left" is broadly so committed to the social and cultural aspects of a neo-liberal globalised world, they are not able to even imagine alternatives that could meaningfully address the economic effects of that system.

I agree with your post in general, but wanted to submit the following idea in response to this part: we need to figure out ways to get the money to sustain our social models. States need to get that money where it actually is these days, and increasingly it is not (barring the odd trillionaire) with the general population. We need to tax financial transactions and we need to tax corporations more.

Something like this could be a start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_financial_transaction_tax