I'm European. While it's pretty childish to paint the US and the EU as two human being with a "relationship" it's of course pretty jarring to see a country that has for my entire life been the undisputed cultural hegemony simply check out of the world stage and suddenly treat everyone on "their" side (culturally, politically and economically) like an enemy, or at the very least an abuser.

I'm not an economist, but I don't think you have to be one to realize that kicking the entire global economy right between the legs will lead to a recession -- just look at the supply chain issues that echoed for years after Covid, and the massive "quantitative easing" that had to be done to avoid a recession.

The abandonment of trade partnerships I could live with, I'll make it through a recession and every country is free to elect their own politicians and make their own fiscal policies, dumb as they may be; I don't get my "feelings hurt" by Americans wanting to bring back manufacturing jobs -- although I have issues understanding the reasoning.

What worries, and actually saddens me, is the complete doing away with of values, that I do think have existed in the past. The US has never been a beacon of exemplary behavior, and I understand that "nations have no friends, only interests" -- one needs to look no further than the US treatment of the Kurds for an example of this -- but it's unbelievable to me how so many Americans can not see the American self-interest in making Russia pay for what they've done in Ukraine.

Russia has been the main antagonist of the US for the entire post-ww2 era. It's a totalitarian state and an obvious enemy to the US. Invading Ukraine was a massive mistake, and all the richest country in the world had to do to basically risk-free damage their biggest antagonist, was to keep pressing a dollar-button together with the EU. No boots on the ground, no Iraq- or Afghanistan scale disaster, just military and economic support for a country that could end up being an extremely close ally. There is literally zero chance Russia could win a war of attrition with this dynamic. Instead, it's like the Soviet union in the 70s would have given away Cuba for free and instead threatened to invade North Korea.

In the end, I think what makes me uncomfortable is that I truly do not understand what it is that the average American (or voter) wants, because the actions of the US on the international stage makes no sense to me, yet so many Americans seem to cheer it on.