US plans to close European consulates and cut state department workforce
Critics say the potential cuts in the US diplomatic footprint coupled with the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) that provided billions of dollars worth of aid globally risk undermining American leadership and leaves a dangerous vacuum for adversaries like China and Russia to fill.(..)
Trump and Musk say the US government is too big and American taxpayer-funded aid has been spent in a wasteful and fraudulent way. (...)
Leipzig, Hamburg and Dusseldorf in Germany, Bordeaux and Strasbourg in France, and Florence in Italy were among a list of smaller consulates that the state department is considering shutting down, three officials said, adding that could still change as some staff were making a case for them to stay open.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/us-european-consulates-state-departmentOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
The consulat in Strasbourg has been opened since 1866...
This is so hard to build something but so easy to destroy it.
Damn they're pulling their spies out of Europe? Finally. US embassies and consulates have been known to be hotspots for spy activity for decades.
Not particularly restricted to US, all embassies and consulates have that goal. There's a reason diplomats have immunity and their cargo is exempt from inspection.
In theory a bit of isolationism is good, I'll explain why - because when a country is a world hegemon, its internal politics become international. So various foreign entities with power will attempt to play it to their benefit. Less connectivity - less benefit - less pressure.
In practice, other than indirect conflicts, there are direct conflicts. It's unwise to tear up alliances.
In the particular case of the US - I think EU countries are more vulnerable to such influence than the US.
In the current particular situation - probably more people will die than otherwise because of the US removing itself where it's a positive influence and reinforcing its effort where it's a clearly negative one. Though I've read an opinion that Israel is not so keen on bombing Iran now and they might even be situational friends against Turkey in Syria.
The US staged its Iraq invasion, which in terms of destruction and civilians killed does not need to hide behind Russias Ukraine invasion, was staged through EU countries and was joined by various EU/NATO countries from Europe.
The US influence needs to go and the EU and Europe need to emancipate themselves from them. The US hegemony is falling apart. Either we see the larger powers band together to wreck havoc on the smaller ones, or we manage to create a multipolar world where the EU is strong enough to fend off US and Russian attacks.
The EU is itself not innocent and its distancing from the US means more friendship with their common allies, which means Turkey, Saudia, Israel, Qatar, all that bunch. And even with Russia.
When EU was kinda reliant on the US for defense, it could pretend to not be too complicit in what said regimes do. Now it won't be able to and it's bad news.
Well, the EU could stop being complicit in what these regimes do. Incidently the best way to reduce dependency on those regimes is to push for a faster renewable energy and transportation transformation. Instead von der Leyen pushed for car makers to be allowed to use more fossil fuels, keeping the EU dependent on even buying Russian oil products that help finance the war against Ukraine and possibly direct war against EU countries in a few years.
The morale being - things are moved by power, not by ideas.
Awesome! For what I've heard, living near a Magastan consulate is a major pain. Checkpoints everywhere, military pressence, you can't take pics near the area...
Yeah, no problem, nobody wants to go there now anyway.
Except US “expats” that need assistance with passports, taxes, birth certificates, etc.
That's their problem. They should have voted a sane person into power. Now if they don't like it here, as maga says it: "they can go where they came from".
I'm sure the expat vote skews HEAVILY anti trump.
What more could you do to protest Trump than literally leave your home country and pay taxes into a different system?