Make America Weak
Deep Dives
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Budapest Memorandum
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Finlandization
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Historical concept describing how a democratic country can be pressured to align foreign policy with a neighboring power - directly relevant to discussions of European nations potentially being pushed toward pro-Russian positions and the weakening of NATO
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Alternative for Germany
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The article mentions Vance and Musk encouraging votes for the 'neo-fascist AfD party' - understanding this party's origins, positions, and rise provides crucial context for the discussion of nationalist movements in European democracies
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The new White House “National Security Strategy” announced that the Trump regime will treat the democratically elected governments of most Western European nations as adversaries of the United States, and unveiled a plan to join longtime adversaries in seeking to undermine NATO and the European Union.
While such a course of action would gravely damage the US, it is of a piece with Trump’s assaults on the nation he was elected to lead.
As the first year of Trump’s would-be dictatorship concludes, it’s clear that the president considers the rules-based democratic and economic order a barrier to his goal of establishing an autocracy. Given his dictatorial ambitions, it makes perfect sense for his regime to cozy up to strongmen while treating America’s principal democratic allies as enemies.
The future of the United States, and likely of many of our allies, will depend on whether Trump’s systematic assaults on democratic nations and institutions here and abroad are successful.
Weakening allies, strengthening adversaries
Trump’s “National Security Strategy” declares that the US will focus on “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.” That amounts to a declaration that America will promote regime change in countries that remain governed by pro-democracy parties that support the existence of the EU and NATO.
In attempting to justify this bizarre remaking of US foreign policy, the “Strategy” complains that the leading democracies of Europe — which collectively represent one of the largest and most prosperous economic zones in the world — are in a state of crisis. It even declares they are at risk of “civilizational erasure,” purportedly because they — perish the thought — continue to permit immigration.
In place of our longstanding and prosperous European allies, the “Strategy” indicates Trump will attempt to build a new core of allies, comprised largely of those European nations that have elected highly nationalist (and in many cases, pro-Russian) governments, such as Hungary. It also implies Trumpers will try to use their newly reconstituted core of pro-Russian European allies as a mechanism for weakening both the EU and NATO, despite the fact that the US is the leader of the latter alliance and has long promoted the former.
In fact, the plan set
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