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Jul 2, 2023
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As long as the result was not to question the Atlanticist orientation, they'd be fine. Francoist Spain being an example thst comes to mind.

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Jul 2, 2023
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Imagine if Germany voted in a nationalist party and tried to pull out of NATO. The USA would nuke it.

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They have already nuked it politically...Mama Merkel guaranteed that any nationalist revival in Germany would result in something just short of civil war.

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Jul 2, 2023
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Merkel completed the process. The US will reap the benefits.

Mass migration from MENA was part of the deal on trade and energy...opening up labour markets in the West to migrants in return for energy security and export opportunities for French, German and Swedish companies.

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The mistake you're making is thinking that Cold War USA is the same as today's USA.

The question to settle this is: why did the US State Department create this Minority Engagement Strategy?

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Because it provides an ostensibly moral cover for State Department Realpolitik.

Governments do this all the time, affect touching concern for oppressed minorities, but only sometimes.

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The French, including those around Macron, have described it as "subversive". Openly subversive. Open subversion of your allies is not "realpolitik".

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They also blame Russia on the basis of no particular evidence.

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The US State Dept. is dominated by neoconservatives such as Blinken, Nuland, and Sullivan. They are Idealists, not Realists. A Realist foreign policy would recognize Russia's desire to keep NATO at a distance.

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I don't see any ideals in Blinken, etc..other than pure sociopathic Will To Power.

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More parsimonious answer: the US pushes domestic agendas like these overseas not out of some 4D militarist chess but because the US actually, genuinely, honestly believes in Are Shared Values (diversity, gay rights, immigration, internationalism) and will go to great lengths to promote them overseas among both enemy and ally alike.

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The State Department, in a classified memo to Rex Tillerson (subsequently leaked) spelled it out in black and white.

The United States cares about human rights only to the extent that they provide a stick with which to beat countries the United States doesn't like, while ignoring far worse violations by countries that we do like. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/story/2017/12/19/tillerson-state-human-rights-304118

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Yes. Call it Humanitarian Imperialism. John Mearsheimer notes that the Liberal attitude (i.e., 18th century Enlightenment thinking) with its emphasis on individual rights is practically compelled to promote itself to others and to view them as benighted if they resist. It has a sort of messianic essence. The US believers see the US as the shining city on a hill, toward which all other nations aspire. And yes, they really believe it.

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