Talk about the dumbest form of diplomacy in world history… American embassies are reaching out to local governments and asking them to kiss Trump’s ass.
This, of course, immediately makes the American government most unwelcome in any host country. Sweden puts it plainly, as the Nordics are known to do.
Stockholm will never agree to it.
“It’s contrary to everything we stand for,” said Valeskog, the Sweden Herald reported. “They should withdraw these [anti-democratic] peculiarities,”
He warned that the American embassy has now risked future trouble with Stockholm.
“If the U.S.A. terminates its acquaintance with the City Planning Office, the embassy will have a hard time getting building permits if they, for example, want to rebuild. It’s their headache, not ours,” said Valeskog.
That’s the tip of the iceberg, in other words. Lack of new permits could shift to removal of permits and then lead to demands to vacate the space.
The American diplomatic gaffes span the continent: France’s Foreign Trade Ministry blasted “unacceptable” interference and vowed to defend their values; Belgium’s Deputy PM Maxime Prévot called it “regrettable” that America is “taking a step backwards”; Spain declared “no step backwards in defending the rights of women and the LGTBI community”; Danish officials are pushing for a united EU response; the Netherlands’ Foreign Trade Minister expressed “worry”; Italy, Luxembourg, and Bulgaria have all received the same demands; Barcelona’s mayor publicly rejected compliance with U.S. directives; and Germans just scoffed when the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria tried to flex. The fallout has been a full-spectrum rejection of American diplomatic and intelligence presence that will degrade capabilities from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.
As explained earlier, Trump is in the habit of destroying things just so he can feel powerful, with no positive outcome in mind. It’s like a toddler crashing through blocks others have spent decades carefully building. Why? He go boom! So here too, in the most basic diplomacy gaffe, he is destroying all the goodwill America had around the world, replacing it with disgust. This will slide American intelligence towards being deaf and blind, as all the ears and eyes are self-defeated by a fog of hubris.
It will lead to the same end as Trump steaks, Trump vodka, Trump airline, Trump casino, Trump university… all examples of what to expect next in the dustbin of history: Trump embassies.
While U.S. embassies enjoy significant privileges under the Vienna Convention, they must generally comply with local planning and building regulations, and making explicit demands on host countries would likely be seen as overstepping diplomatic boundaries.
In other words the Trump regime is reaching towards an obvious violation of the Vienna Convention.
Furthermore, embassies practically need to maintain working relationships with departments for their own facilities and operations, so acting like a big dumb bully in any diplomatic engagement will directly harm the embassy’s interests and trigger incidents that potentially undermine broader American objectives in the host country. Sweden has already said as much.