'Backfired spectacularly': European officials reportedly now view US as an 'adversary'
'Backfired spectacularly': European officials reportedly now view US as an 'adversary'
If Vice President J.D. Vance hoped to earn respect among international leaders with his speech in Germany last week, it wouldn't work, according to one senior diplomat. Vance not only didn't persuade his audience, he insulted them, the Financial Times reported Monday."His speech backfired spectacula...
If Vice President J.D. Vance hoped to earn respect among international leaders with his speech in Germany last week, it wouldn't work, according to one senior diplomat.
Let's not make the same mistake that was made in the US:
The people who - rightfully - lost respect for the US and now consider it an adversary are German diplomats, politicians and the press. But the ones with the voting power are the German public. And if German voters are anything like American voters, there may be a deep disconnect between them and the elites.
And so despite the outrage of the people who know better, the German population might just as easily vote for fascists in Germany as they did in the US.
My point being, we'll know if Vance's speech backfired when the German elections are over. I'm not so optimistic that it did.
The behavior of the USA was condemned by both left- and right-wing parties in Germany. The only party that didn't condemn the behavior, the far right party, is expected to get no more than 20% of the vote. So even though their popularity doubled from last election, which is a significant shift, they're still a minority who won't affect Germany's foreign policies.
Let's not downplay the threat of the AFD. 20% is a lot - more than enough to at least pull the Overton window to the right, like Reform is doing in the UK
Left wing elites can't help but call right wing leaders idiots for behaving like the average voter.
and despite what you think of them they are at least smart enough to make that connection.
Meanwhile the left keep making the exact same mistake by taking them at face value.
First rule of politics, learn to count.
Socialists who represent an interest in human rights for the working class had better step up. It's what alienated the American working class from parties that represented their interests.
The FBI and CIA is very, very good at spreading propganda about the 'scary leftists' who want to 'give your jobs to immigrants.' The same brain glitch that bodied us is a weakness for every human. Germans know that very well, their grandparents lived through it.
Convince them that the rich factory and farm owners are the ones to really blame, cite America's stupidity as an example, and people will avoid the mistake that we made on this side of the pond. I hope, at least.
The United States has become a self-parody, where political theater masquerades as diplomacy. JD Vance’s Munich performance wasn’t just cringe—it crystallized Europe’s realization that America’s once-stable facade is crumbling. When even allies label you an adversary, it’s not a policy failure—it’s a cultural decay. The GOP’s fetish for performative nationalism has turned statecraft into a TikTok rant, broadcast to a world that’s stopped laughing.
Now Europe scrambles to disentangle itself from this dumpster fire, proving democracy isn’t broken—it’s been outsourced to clowns. The Atlantic alliance? More like a hostage situation, where the captors forgot they need the hostages more than vice versa.
Upon leaving office in 2021, Trump claimed, "The world respects us again."
Yes, although electing him in the first place didn’t help, at least we had the good sense to vote Trump out of office. Now we’re the distrusted, disrespected laughingstock of the world, and I can’t blame the world one bit.
Yeah, the first go around we could think "they didn't know what they were voting for". Just a bump in the road for a democracy which would be corrected in the next election.
But now that benefit of the doubt is gone. This is what the US wants to be, a country that appeases enemies and betrays allies.
"Sir, a second Trump regime has hit the White House."
That's just him misunderstanding "has anxiety about" as "respects".
GOP in 2016. We need Trump because the rest of the world doesn't respect us.
GOP in 2025. Who cares what the rest of the world thinks?
It didn't "backfire". The insults were the point. Why does whoever wrote this think he hoped to earn their respect when the trump regime has no respect for them and doesn't give a flying fuck what they think? They want fear, not respect.
That doesn't make sense. Nobody fears them here in Europe.
As the article said, this just led to European leaders intensifying the decoupling from dependencies onto the US, which makes its current bully administration less powerful and less able to hurt Europe.
I agree it doesn't make sense, it's much better to have friends and allies that stand together. For some reason it makes sense to them to alienate our allies--I guess since they have no moral ideals and all they care about is enriching themselves, they find it more conducive to their aims to align with corrupt regimes. But I do think there is fear being generated by this, not the "oh no I hope they don't start a war with us" (though maybe that should also be felt) but more like "oh no the longstanding system of alliances and institutions like NATO that have kept Europe at peace since WWII are no longer viable and how are we going to deal with that?" Here, like everywhere, their strategy is to sow chaos and confusion.
This should have happened in 2001 when the US tried to strongarm support for it's invasion of Iraq under false pretenses.
Lord, that shit was infuriating. I hope Powell is roasting in hell if there is one.
I was watching it from afar. As I recall, he bailed on his presentation and got back to it after being talked to (and threatened?) and presented his schlock. Now, not saying the guy was at all blameless, but I watched him presenting and thought to myself, ‘this guy doesn’t believe this stuff at all’.
It pissed me off that the folks in the US were not seeing the whole picture.
To be fair the year for that was 2003 not 2001.
2001 is when we invaded afghanistan in response to 9/11. 2003 is when we lied about WMD and invaded Iraq to finish the job George hw bush failed to do in the first gulf war.
Goddam, you're right... How those years blend...
This is completely missing the poInt. He was not addressing european leaders, he was addressing citizens in an attempt to prop up far right parties across Europe, using the same argument that worked in the US: "free speech is restrained by your leaders!". And by that, he means hate speech, because everyone can see what "free except for whatever we don't like speech" enforced in the US.
But the fact is Vance was actively trying to influence the results of the elections.
And I've seen first hand the result in the comment sections of the newspapers covering that speech here (yes, they are a festering pit, like everywhere else, still interesting to take a peek at every now and then to see what craziness bubbles to the top these days)..
Splitting the US and EU was always the goal. Not sure how this is a backfire other than as copium for the EU while the US is busy drinking brackish Gulf water. Sad sad times.
The AfD in Germany needs to be banned and it's leaders arrested for trying to subvert democracy. Also Vance's speech and actions are proof that the US government is not only internationally fascist, but also blind to any form of international politics.
The one thing I noticed about racists and fascists in the US is that they believe that their beliefs are the standard and universal. Their own version of hatred towards blacks and hispanics they believe is universal and the normal. When they talk about things like the Arab slave trade or European views on black Africans, they believe that they 1:1 even if they are absolutely not.
Take for example in the Arab world. Is there racism against blacks? Yes there is. No one can deny it. However is it the SAME kind of racism? Hell no. There was no one drop rule, there was no segregation, there was no racial based slavery (anyone could be a slave in the Arab world) and when blacks came in, they were integrated into the gene pool. Take Egypt for example. Genetic studies from Ancient Egyptians until the Arab conquest showed that Egyptians had more in common with Eastern mediterrean Europeans and other Middle Eastern groups than sub-Saharan Africans. But since then they showed a bit more sub-Saharan DNA. Why? Because when black slaves were brought up from down south, they would be integrated more thoroughly into Egyptian society. Egyptian men would have children with female black slaves, and those children would not only be free, but also heirs to their father's household (unlike mixed-race people in the American South, who were neither acknowledged nor heirs to anything), and there wold have been freed black men who intermarried with Egyptian women.
Another case in point. There was an entire group of African-Arab people in Eastern Africa that suffered no discrimination when they ended up moving to the Arabian Peninsula. I forgot which group exactly, but you get my point.
Also there was no segregation in Europe. American racists don't get that. During WW1 when African-Americans soldiers were in France, they were surprised by how polite and accepting the French were towards them. You ever wonder why Cognac is so associated with rappers and African-Americans? Well, the origin lies there. During WW2 African-Americans soldiers in Britain and Italy also weren't discriminated against by the local civilian population, with all the trouble coming from racist white American officers trying to impose American-style segregation were it did not exist.
We are seeing EXACTLY this with JD Vance's speech. He is talking and acting 100% like some idiot 4Channer/gamergater/terminally online logic dude debatebro who has no understanding of how things actually work outside of their very small bubble and local history and simply refuse to acknowledge that other places are genuinely different from how they think they behave.
"Spectacular Backfire" is the fucking theme for the USA these days. Whole cloth, complete, utterly failed state engaged in the paroxysmal death rattle.
It would seem as though Vance's grift worked spectacularly well
This is the response he was looking for
Exactly, "backfired" for whom? This is just what Putin ordered.
Yeah. If he was hoping for approval from left and center. Big if
In what way could this possibly be construed as an attempt to garner approval from left and center?
Where's the grift? I think y'all have overused the word and forgot the meaning.
Grift: "to obtain (money or property) illicitly (as in a confidence game)."
Or is the US somehow scamming the EU for money?
Grift is a word that is interchangeably used with scam or con (as in a confidence game)
The con here is that there is nothing substantive in Vance's speech. It was simply designed to cause a rift between the US and Europe
The goal is to reestablish the Russian Empire in order to help facilitate a global plutocracy
Divide and conquer
Send a troll boy to do a man's job and this is what you get.
Excellent. Just keep pissing people off, the more the better for our side.
First time?
😭