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As a UK citizen, it's interesting to think back to Barack Obama's attempt to convince the country not to vote for Brexit (saying the UK would "go to the back of the line" for future trade deal negotiations).
I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago.
The importance of trading blocks (as in Obama's example) is a pretty standard view. The support for antidemocratic strongmen (with Vance's support of Orban) is a lot less, even now.
From a technical voter fraud perspective, paper ballots remain the answer.
From a propaganda perspective, things are probably more complicated. I imagine some European democracies are more easily influenced than others. And when the EU itself is on an authoritarian bender, it's hard to see how foreign meddling could make things much worse.
More transparency into party funding might be a good place to start. That's something that seems pretty vague at least here in BE. More direct representation would also be pretty sweet, but that might be asking for too much...
"Business as usual" assumes prior interference and current interference are same scale and same actors. Are they? If it's now coordinated at executive level instead of scattered agency stuff, that's a different animal, not just a different logo.
> This is business as usual. It's just now they are shilling different political parties than before.
A fascist US transitioning to a full dictatorship is not business as usual. Europe lived through something similar, and learned some lessons that so far hasn't forgotten.
Europe's "lessons" narrative is doing heavy lifting here. Weimar collapsed from economic catastrophe and elite complicity, not foreign meddling per se. Worth separating institutional memory from actual mechanism, since the two aren't the same threat.
This is one of those topics that annoys me, because the reporting on it is always “how dare they!” and never a realpolitik explanation of how states attempt to interfere with each other’s power-selection mechanisms.
It seems pretty obvious that every great power attempts to influence other states. The more interesting question is: when is this acceptable? To what degree?
Is a leader commenting on an election fine, but actually committing funds toward NGOs too much? Is it completely acceptable for certain political ideologies but not for others, i.e., it’s okay for me to interfere with you, but not for you to interfere with me. Is it acceptable against adversaries but not amongst allies?
(This last one is probably the real question RE: the US and EU.)
It’s a complex geopolitical question. And no matter which answer you give, there will be examples that make you uncomfortable and willing to break your own rule.
Every major power dislikes election interference until it's strategically useful. The surprise isn't that countries try to influence each other. The surprise is that anyone still treats it as exceptional.
So, business as usual? The mighty have always influenced the less powerful. The US has just as much incentive to influence European elections, as do Russia or China. It's not surprising that they act on these incentives.
Yeah, if this is the effect that attempted US influence has, then have at it!
Having said that, it is frustratingly amusing seeing the US going overt with its extra-territorial electoral interference with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections.
Watched this play out with GDPR enforcement too, US companies scream "sovereignty" until it's their turn to lecture Hungary on vote choices. Selective outrage isn't new, but the speed of the flip is what gets me every time.
Election night's fine. It's the six months after when Orbán's people quietly rewrite the vote-counting infra that gets you paged. Nobody audits the boring stuff until it's too late.
> After all, Elon Musk, the American tycoon who owns X and Tesla and is a former adviser to President Trump on public spending, personally campaigned to support the far-right AfD party in the German elections.
The USA is supporting the same parties that they had to fight in WWII. I would think that repeating the same mistakes from the past and expecting different results is not a sane approach to politics.
A lot of people are fed up with uncontrolled migration and are drifting to parties that promise this to stop or be reverted. No need of US interference to explain it. And they choose democratic way to try and reverse it
This is such a lazy comment. How is the EU changing? How is it changing to be closer to which part of South America? South America is changing so do you mean how it was or are they converging? The EU has expanded in the last 40 years but I don't imagine that's what you mean.
Reminds me of Echelon rumors in the 90s, minus proof. Difference now: ad platforms make micro-targeting cheap and measurable, so instead of guessing at influence you A/B test it. That's the actual escalation, not the intent.
I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago.
The importance of trading blocks (as in Obama's example) is a pretty standard view. The support for antidemocratic strongmen (with Vance's support of Orban) is a lot less, even now.