Niko Pyrhönen: Dealing with an influential ally

European public discussion about foreign political influence has developed around a familiar distinction. Adversaries, particularly Russia, are often covertly but demonstrably seeking to shape European politics from within. Allies, above all the United States, are partners with whom disagreements are managed through diplomacy – even if it is often conducted away from public scrutiny. Under the second Trump administration, this distinction has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Washington has not merely disagreed with European governments over defence spending, trade, Greenland, or Ukraine. It has increasingly taken sides in political conflicts within EU member states. Importantly, the dominant Trump administration narrative – defending freedom of speech and the will of the people against odious liberal elites – increasingly aligns with how the Kremlin justifies its political influence campaigns in Europe. Three recent cases from this year illustrate both the differences in how the two powers exert influence transnationally and the alignment of their near-term political goals in Europe.

The recent election in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt offers an unusually clear example. Russia conducted an information campaign targeting politicians and parties considered hostile to Moscow, while conspicuously sparing the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the Russia-friendly BSW. Parts of the operation were deliberately obscured: fabricated media content was circulated through networks designed to conceal its origins and, in some cases, reached wider German audiences through amplification by American MAGA influencers.

The American involvement was strikingly different in method. Elon Musk had for years publicly promoted the AfD and congratulated it after its landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt; AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund thanked him for his support. President Donald Trump soon publicly celebrated the result as well. Russia, too, made little secret of which political forces it preferred, but many of the mechanisms through which it sought influence were deliberately concealed. The American intervention was different above all in its openness. Germany’s government responded by stressing that foreign political intervention was unacceptable and postponed a planned call between Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Trump.

During Hungary’s parliamentary election in April, this lockstep between Moscow and Washington was even more striking as both pursued their shared goal of keeping Viktor Orbán in power. Even as European authorities warned about Russia-linked information operations spreading fabricated stories against Orbán’s challenger Péter Magyar, the Trump administration could take a more direct approach. Following Trump’s repeated urging of Hungarians to vote for Orbán, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Budapest in a highly publicized show of support. Five days before the election, Vice-President JD Vance travelled to Budapest, appeared alongside Orbán and accused the European Union of foreign electoral interference while openly endorsing the incumbent. Orbán nevertheless lost decisively.

While Russian influence operations characteristically seek to conceal their provenance, the American intervention was much more straightforward to execute: a US vice-president could just stand beside a European prime minister and tell voters which outcome is better for them. The asymmetry of the transatlantic relationship makes such influence quite different from an anonymous bot network or fabricated news story – but not necessarily less politically consequential. Nor does influence simply travel from Washington into passive European political environments.

The Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen’s prosecution for inciting against homosexuals had become a cause célèbre in American conservative networks by 2022, when five Republican senators formally requested the US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom to monitor the case, calling the Finnish prosecution “alarming”.  In February 2026, Räsänen met senior State Department officials and testified before the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing explicitly framed around European threats to American free speech. In March, when Finland’s Supreme Court convicted her of agitation against a population group, the US Embassy publicly called the decision troubling for freedom of religion and expression, prompting Finland’s Foreign Ministry to remind the US ambassador of the independence of the Finnish judiciary.

Räsänen should be understood neither as an American proxy nor as a passive catalyst for foreign propaganda. Rather, her case shows how influence can be co-produced by domestic and foreign actors. Much European public discussion of foreign influence still portrays politically alienated citizens being lured to consume disinformation and propaganda produced elsewhere. Yet an increasingly important vehicle of both transatlantic and Russian influence campaigning consists of actors who possess substantial domestic authority themselves: elected politicians, movements, think tanks and intellectual networks whose interests overlap with powerful actors abroad. The Räsänen controversy illustrates this reciprocal side of foreign influence. Domestic political actors can themselves carry their conflicts – and their audiences – into transatlantic networks, where they may find powerful allies willing to intervene back.

This is now becoming institutionalised. The US State Department has offered grants of between one and three million dollars for European organisations working on priorities including free speech and national sovereignty. According to Reuters, French applicants were excluded partly because Washington feared accusations of foreign interference ahead of France’s presidential election. The exception is revealing: the US government itself recognises that such support can cross the boundary between promoting values abroad and intervening in another democracy’s political contestation.

Europe has well-developed concepts for dependence on adversaries and equally familiar concepts for cooperation with allies. It is much less prepared to think about dependence on an ally whose government may simultaneously seek to influence European domestic politics. This is where the historically loaded concept of Finlandization may still contain a useful warning. Contemporary Europe is obviously not Cold War Finland, and the United States is not the Soviet Union. The relevant similarity is narrower: sufficiently asymmetric dependence can begin to affect political behaviour even without explicit coercion. As politicians in European countries learn which policies and practices risk provoking costly responses from the more powerful partner, they have strong incentives for avoiding those costs. Such anticipatory adaptation can quickly create path dependencies in which the current moment is never right for pursuing policies that risk costly displeasure in Washington.

The tempting European response is therefore also the wrong one: endure the Trump administration and wait for transatlantic normality to return. A future US administration may indeed abandon many of the current preferences and practices used for pursuing them. But while Europe should hope for this outcome, it shouldn’t build its strategy or public narrative around this best-case scenario. Trumpism has demonstrated how much political leverage can be extracted from European dependence when Washington is willing to use it. Europe must not allow that lesson to fade over time.

Paradoxically, a genuinely Europe-friendly administration would provide the best opportunity to address the current dependencies and to reverse some of the most objectionable measures for pursuing American interests in Europe. At the same time, such an administration would also create the strongest temptation to defer building autonomy. If cooperation again works well, measures for building additional defence capacity, introducing technological redundancy, and safeguarding political autonomy can easily begin to appear wasteful or needlessly provocative. Yet a less dependent relationship across the Atlantic can only be conceptualized and measured against scenarios in which European interests do not readily coincide with what Washington is pursuing. The easier part is learning the correct lessons now. The harder part is remembering those lessons when the pressure next relents. Such a moment must be used to establish policies and practices that can prevent backsliding into anticipatory accommodation when a future American administration is again prepared to use existing European dependencies as political leverage.