As a Canadian to a Svenskar. Your last sentence makes me wonder what we're really angry at the Americans for. Most folks in my country have pissed on Americans for as long as I can remember for thinking they are the world police and "keeping world order". Well uhm, turns out they were and now we're annoyed they don't want to do it anymore? It's interesting, feels like to a degree some folks are pissed off about America stopping the very thing they wanted them to stop? Interesting times.
There is more than one way to stop being the leading economic and military stabilizing force in the world. The "table flip" doctrine is not generally considered to be among the top candidates for "responsible and stable" transfer of power.
We are not angry at the US for defending the democratic world order. We are angry at the US for things like Gitmo, withdrawing from the Rome statute, supporting an alleged genocide in Gaza etc.
What they are doing now is saying might makes right, marking and end of the reign of the liberal democracy.
No dispute there, I think I was wondering aloud if there is a bit of cake and eat it too, going on? And if so, to what degree? I think it's hard to have that perspective well from my vantage point hence the question/pondering.
People have been critical of the US when their admin lied about weapons of mass destruction, did massive amounts of drone strikes on civilians and put people in a concentration camp. "World police" is just a polemic description of that, it's not the content of the criticism.
Now there's country that traded nuclear weapons for protection by the US that is being invaded by a fascist dictator. Meanwhile the US admin is gaslighting everyone and lying about these basic facts and tried to humiliate and personally attack their president in public.
>Now there's country that traded nuclear weapons for protection by the US that is being invaded by a fascist dictator.
Are you talking about the Budapest Memorandum? According to Wikipedia, it says
>Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
So AIUI, that's a guarantee that the US will defend Ukraine if Ukraine gets attacked by Russia with nukes. It's not a guarantee that the US will defend Ukraine if Ukraine gets attacked by Russia with non-nukes. So I don't think the US has violated the agreement. Russia violated the agreement by attacking Ukraine (Russia was a signatory, and the treaty also says the parties won't attack each other with any type of weapon).
But had Ukraine not agreed, they very likely wouldn't have been invaded. Meanwhile Putin was threatening to use nuclear weapons if western countries would have directly intervened. This threat is looming over _all_ negotiations and actions.
So really Russia is getting away with invading Ukraine and expanding their territory and use their nuclear arsenal indirectly to achieve that.
I had not heard of any real level of anger toward the USA from the average Canadian (the exception being as a response to the now-delayed 25% tariffs). Same applies here. Your average Swede is not angry at the USA for what it’s doing right now. The closest sentiment that’s broken through the mainstream is maybe “unease.”
I wonder if the “have your cake and eat it too” dissonant thinking you’re hitting on is actually maybe easier found in the USA, and sort of on the other side of the spectrum. Plenty of folks voted explicitly for Trump because of his inward-focused, isolationist agenda. What they don’t realize is the extent to which the prosperity that they’ve seen up this point was dependent upon the rules-based order that their chosen leader is actively dismantling.
