By DIOGO FAGUNDES*
Trump has never hidden the fact that his views on foreign policy were openly chauvinistic, but unlike both the Democrats and the neocons, they were geared towards protectionism and isolationism.
Many are impressed by the way Donald Trump has been moving away from traditional allies to negotiate with Russia – although this is not exactly a surprise, since ending the war was a campaign promise of the Republican. The ultimate symbol of this turnaround was the bullying – worthy of Tony Soprano in relation to his subordinates – carried out against Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, recorded for the entire world to see.
The questions are inevitable. Why abandon the global vanguard role in defending the “free world”? Why give up the global leadership role of the “West,” recognized by Western Europe?
After all, not only NATO is threatened, but also the complex network of alliances and soft power patiently built over decades. This is manifested concretely in initiatives to end USAID or even in effects that go unnoticed but are significant.
For example: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think tanks specialized in spreading anti-China propaganda, announced that it will stop carrying out “research” on China due to lack of funds after the arrival of Donald Trump.[I] (Let's leave aside the issue of a body responsible for subsidizing public policies for Australia needing funding from a foreign power to deal with another country…).
Donald Trump has never hidden the fact that his vision of foreign policy was openly chauvinistic, but unlike both the Democrats and the neocons (whose symbolic alliance was consecrated by Dick Cheney's support for Kamala Harris), it was focused on protectionism and isolationism, characteristics that marked the US before Woodrow Wilson.
This is not new – before entering politics, he even wrote texts against the war in Iraq, in addition to having always denounced that unrestricted free trade harmed the US and favored China – but it seems that in this second term he incorporated a much more audacious and “monarchical” impetus (in the sense of not even considering Parliament) – in accordance with certain anti-democratic ideals of ideologues dear to Elon Musk, such as Mencius Moldbug – which gives him the power to dictate the pace of the country's and the world's agenda.
Just listen to any speech by JDVance, his vice president who claims to represent the spirit of “Rust Belt“, to note significant changes: there is recognition of the end of globalization that began in the 1990s, as well as the reality of multipolarity – a term also used by Marco Rubio, Secretary of State – and even praise for China’s foreign policy of not interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, recognizing that proselytizing in the name of democracy and human rights, a hallmark of “globalism” so criticized by the far right, was detrimental to US interests.
Let us not be fooled, however, by the speech, as it is unlikely that the US will completely abdicate its interventionist role – especially in its “backyard”, since the Monroe Doctrine is back with a vengeance – there will simply be a change in style, moving from pro-human rights rhetoric to something in favor of “freedom of expression”, as we see in Elon Musk’s stance against the Brazilian Judiciary.
Does it make sense? For some liberals, Donald Trump would be a kind of agent of Vladimir Putin – they hate conspiracy theories, after all… -, resurrecting the hysteria of “Russiagate” which set the tone for the Democratic speech against the first term of the current US president.
In reality, both the fabrication of war against Russia and the current retreat have quite rational explanations. Joe Biden was simply following the logic of a long-standing political process, which began with the dismantling of the USSR, involving NATO expansionism (which, it is worth mentioning, had lost its reason for existing after the end of the Cold War) towards Eastern Europe.
Many renowned American strategists criticized this policy as early as the 1990s, such as George F. Kennan[ii] (architect of the strategy of “containment” of the Cold War), but the old “hubris” (the name, by the way, of a very good book by Jonathan Haslam on the subject) spoke louder: it was about humiliating and isolating Russia, perhaps even further balkanizing it, instead of incorporating its interests into a new shared arrangement. By acting in this way, the North American leadership was repeating the old strategy of the British Empire of preventing Russia from having any access to warm waters, in the logic of controlling Eurasian land power (called “Heartland“) consecrated by one of the fathers of geopolitics, Halford Mackinder.
This strategy, crystallized in the famous book The Grand Chessboard Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was quite influential, especially in democratic circles, considered that Russia was too weak to react. And indeed, the Yeltsin years seemed to indicate this – Russia was barely considered during the Yugoslav war, involving Serbia, which was of special interest to Russians because of its Orthodox Christian and Slavic heritage. Even in the Putin years, until he reached the decision to say “enough” in his famous 2007 Munich speech, there were Russian attempts at friendship and cooperation with the US – as in the initial partnership in the “war on terror” after 11/XNUMX.
After the coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014 – in which US state figures such as Victoria Nuland played a decisive role – and subsequent events, triggering a deadly and sectarian civil war, this US policy was intensified, with some important gains for the US, contrary to what Donald Trump says: not only because of the economic role of the military-industrial complex (there are many who argue that the US is living a kind of “military Keynesianism”), but mainly because of the objective of distancing Germany's economy from Russia (again, something present in the old considerations of the British Empire), including the destruction of the Nordstream gas pipeline, which had disastrous economic effects for the continent, deprived of cheap Russian gas, but now dependent on gas offered by the US, extracted by methods particularly aggressive to the environment, the so-called fracking.
And as one US senator cynically put it: this is military money well spent, because no Americans were dying! Nothing better than using distant territories as cannon fodder.
So what went wrong? Well, Brzezinski, who disparaged Russia in his aforementioned book, assessing that the Eurasian giant would not be able to react, already said what the worst-case scenario would be: an alliance between China, Russia (who traditionally have been at odds, including during the Cold War) and Iran. Well, that's exactly what happened.
Contrary to what Democrats predicted, the Russian economy did not collapse under sanctions – on the contrary, it grew significantly – and the partnership between China and Russia only intensified with Russia’s “turn to the East”, which was necessary after the break in ties with Europe. Ukraine, despite a lot of money, technology and men, was unable to recover significant territory in its spectacular counteroffensives (such as Bakhmut) to the point of changing the course of the war.
It is currently difficult to foresee a victorious exit for Ukraine, which is stuck in a quagmire, unless a third world war were to break out, with all the nuclear dangers involved. After all, Russia has made a point of saying several times that this is an “existential war” for them, in other words: they cannot lose under any circumstances. As many analysts with a more realistic profile, such as Jeffrey Sachs, have already warned:[iii] and John Mearsheimer, the bet on Russia's defeat was delusional.
Does this mean that the US and Russia have now become strategic partners? No. The negotiating stance does not imply that Russia will separate itself from China, the main US enemy, against whom Donald Trump wants to focus his efforts, instead of exploring several fronts. The analogies with Nixon and China in the 70s are misleading, because at that time, unlike today, relations between China and the USSR had already been frayed for more than a decade.
In several decisive and strategic areas, such as the Middle East – where Iran is Russia's main partner – interests clash head-on, as Donald Trump is an unconditional ally of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose wildest dream is to go to war against the Shiite regime.
Europe, without military and strategic autonomy for decades, is now staging an “independence” capable of ensuring it leadership of the so-called “free world”, since the Father has abdicated the task, but the reality is that this is unlikely to have a concrete effect on the course of the war. What European is, in fact, willing to give his life for Ukraine? That’s a lot of posturing. Donald Trump does not see them as independent and relevant political forces, hence the lack of an invitation to participate in the negotiations, and he is not entirely wrong about that – excessive vassalage does not generate respect in anyone.
Unfortunately, European leaders seem to live in a fantasy world characterized by an eternal Cold War. The somewhat childish propaganda that it is good versus evil, embodied in Vladimir Putin, a new avatar of Hitler who decided, out of nowhere, to invade Ukraine and not stop until he reached Berlin, is ridiculous, but it still dominates the European mentality, addicted to congratulating itself as the navel of civilization even when it no longer represents much.
Rarely have we seen leaders of such high responsibility act in such a childish and senseless way, as in the case of Kaja Kallas, head of European foreign policy, declaring that victory over Russia is necessary for a subsequent victory over… China![iv]
This useless war, completely catastrophic for Ukraine – which is about to sign a neocolonial agreement to hand over half of the profits from the exploitation of unexplored mineral resources to the US – could have been avoided on many occasions: if the two Minsk Agreements, signed with the approval of the UN and aimed at guaranteeing, in a federative model, linguistic and cultural autonomy for eastern Ukraine (yes, they simply decided to eliminate the basic linguistic rights of almost half of the country…), had been respected; if NATO had committed to never accepting Ukraine’s accession, in a proposal made by Moscow in 2021; if the negotiations in Ankara in 2022 – the true initial objective of the invasion – had gone ahead, instead of the unilateral Ukrainian break, after pressure from Joe Biden and Boris Johnson – who went so far as to say that the war was necessary to guarantee the “hegemony of the collective West”… –, including the mysterious death of the Ukrainian negotiator.
In light of recent events, it seems clear that those who were saying this was a proxy war between NATO and Russia – which was later admitted even by Jens Stontelberg, former NATO Secretary General[v] – had his analyses and forecasts validated. Volodymyr Zelensky, who was dragged into the spotlight and ended up believing too much in false flattery, handed over the fate of his country to the Western powers, mired in a hellish meat grinder with no way out.
He, who had been elected promising peace with the end of the civil war (and therefore had a large number of votes in the east of the country), deepened all the disastrous processes that began in 2014: war against Donbass, explicit Russophobia, elimination of the Russian language and culture lived by almost 40% of the country, incorporation of Nazi militias into the security and defense forces, celebration of the ultranationalism of “heroes” such as Stepan Bandera, genocidal of Russians and Jews in World War II, banning of media and popular parties in the east (such as the relevant Ukrainian Communist Party, now banned).
The old lesson from Mao Zedong remains: you must always count on your own strength. Or in the version of Henry Kissinger, another great mind who warned against the American strategy that led to the current war: it may be dangerous to be an enemy of America, but being a friend of America is fatal.
* Diogo Fagundes he is studying for a master's degree in law and is studying philosophy at USP.
[ii] See this article from 1997: see here
[iii] His recent speech at the European Parliament is particularly enlightening: see here
[v] “So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to its borders”. Here
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