Just think about all those EU politicians that are in business with Russian companies or are rumored to be paid by Russia. I never understood why the USA didn't find ways to finance all European political parties after 1989 instead of letting them go around looking for money (politics has costs, no shame) with some of them ending up in Moscow or Beijing.
I think that difference is that USA was not actually that deeply interested in secretly running whole of Europe. Meanwhile, Russia was deeply interested in doing so last two decades.
America's influence in Europe is much stronger than Russia's. Besides NATO, the US has set up all kinds of NGOs that are very influential, such as the Atlantic Council and the German Marshall Fund. When that soft power doesn't work, the US is not afraid to use sanctions to coerce European countries: see US sanctions against Germany over Nordstream II, or unilateral US sanctions that prevent European companies from doing business in Iran.
It would be great if US or someone managed to prevent Nordstream II back then. Eventually they did not. And still, US dont go into outrage threatening local admins when someone wants to rename the street (as happened with Russia). They dont engage in that much corruption of officials either.
> Besides NATO
NATO is not secretly running Europe. It is alliance European countries openly begged, pressured and asked to get in.
I think everyone knows who the dominant country in NATO is. This organization alone gives the US vastly more influence in Europe than Russia wields.
> US dont go into outrage threatening local admins
You should read a bit about how ambassador Richard Grenell behaved himself in Germany. The day after he arrived, he demanded that all German companies doing business in Iran wind down their operations. And the thing is, everyone knew that that demand was backed up by real power, because the US can and does go after European companies that do business in Iran. Grenell seemed to think he was some sort of proconsul, rather than an ambassador to a friendly nation.
Russia's influence consists mainly of its gas and oil deliveries, and the fact that various European companies have invested in Russia. It has comparatively little soft power. Outside of Hungary, Serbia and a few other small European countries, the media, politics and public opinion are fairly strongly anti-Russian.
Just to give you a flavor of how much soft power the US has, the largest private news media empire in Germany, the Axel Springer group (they own the largest tabloid and one of the largest newspapers), was literally funded by the CIA during the Cold War, and still officially lists support for the United States as one of its guiding editorial principles. Meanwhile, Russia's attempts to build up pro-Russian media have gone nowhere. You can't even access RT in a lot of Europe: its YouTube channel is blocked, and DNS servers don't even return results when you query RT.
I know. That stream of money got smaller or run dry. But new parties are born all the time in Europe. Some of them manage to run countries after not so many years. They need money to run their campaigns and they end up doing the best interests of their sponsors. You can see country by country who wants to really help Ukraine and who is dragging their feet even inside some government coalitions.
