US President Donald Trump has scored another historic first – a sustained rebuke of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on the future of Ukraine’s war with Russia. Trump orchestrated on live TV what is normally hidden behind closed doors and showed what ‘America First’ stands for in world affairs – full-scale weaponisation of US power without any mention of international law, democracy or national sovereignty.
Trump and US Vice President J.D. Vance sounded like gangsters demanding respect and gratitude as they publicly berated Zelenskyy. They warned him about the utter destruction that would happen, should the US withdraw military aid, unless Zelenskyy complied with US demands for a ceasefire, including ceding Ukrainian territories to Russia and American access to scarce mineral resources. The Art of the Deal meets The Godfather. In the White House. The full brutal glory of a post-liberal, oligarchical United States.
It also exposed how far apart the US and European powers are, including Britain, the rest of NATO and the EU. They are slowly dividing into separate armed camps engaged in a tit-for-tat economic war, arguing over the spoils to be plundered from a war-weary Ukraine.
Trump’s war against the social state
Trump may appear puzzling but in practice, once we cut through the fog of political warfare and theatrics, his agenda is clear as day: he is strengthening the warfare-and-corporate-welfare state and destroying all aspects of the state that actually serve the people and workers – the social state. Elon Musk is merely the tip of the oligarchical iceberg: the millionaire and billionaire class has largely embraced Trump’s domestic agenda and will likely come round to most of his global programme as well.
Trump is putting the United States on war footing. His domestic and foreign policies are more or less fully-aligned to that end.
Trump likes to keep people off balance and overwhelmed with messaging. He flip-flops on issues, makes grand statements regularly and is a chaos-maker. America-watchers find it hard enough to keep up with him so it’s unsurprising that even well-informed members of the public are confused. An aura of madness, eccentricity, arbitrariness, reversals of previously stated positions, and even more chaos – real and falsely projected – is a hallmark of both Trump administrations. It has become standard operating procedure with ally and foe alike.
But it is not all that it seems: it is too easy to throw our hands in the air and cry “crazy”. Chaos and madness, projected or real, have their uses. As Machiavelli argued centuries ago, there is political wisdom in simulating madness.
Also read: Trump, Zelenskyy and the Gurugram Security Guard
Republican presidents are adept at the practice. President Eisenhower certainly practised it to push an armistice in the Korean War. President Nixon used ‘madman’ theory to project irrationality when dealing with his Soviet and Vietnamese foes. President Reagan increased US military spending by over 50% in the 1980s and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. And there was George W. Bush and the Iraq war.
Trump is therefore an heir to a Republican tradition, even if many in the grand old party (GOP) establishment find him unpalatable. They had found Nixon and Reagan hard to digest too, but eventually came round. Trump-ism will likely have the same result – as so many of his administration’s appointments have shown. Mixed in with a few mavericks and MAGA loyalists are former hardcore GOP mainstreamers – like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, secretary of state and national security adviser, respectively. And Wall Street and Silicon Valley are (almost) as one behind Trump.
Trump 2.0 – even more methodically oligarchical
There is a method in his madness. In fact, there is a lot more method this time round than in 2017-2021. Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the GOP’s Agenda 47, and the work of Trump’s own think tank, the America First Policy Institute, are underpinning Trump’s second term. That’s why he’s got off to such a flying start, with a record-breaking number of executive orders that are decapitating federal government workers and civil service. The knock-on effects on federal contractors’ workers are even more significant.
Trump is remaking the US federal government in his own image. It is increasingly resembling his private government – the Trump Organisation, a semi-criminal enterprise. It is an oligarchical system that orbits him. His is a consequential presidency at home and globally.
Trump divides and unites in almost equal measure. Uniting a swathe of US public opinion, for example, with those across the Global South who have grown weary of America’s “forever wars,” Trump appears as a welcome disrupter of the so-called liberal international order. Leftist critics, long concerned about US neo-colonial influence through USAID and various philanthropic organisations, find in Trump an unexpected ally. His stance has particularly resonated in regions traditionally skeptical of American foreign policy, from Latin America to Southeast Asia, where his criticism of traditional diplomatic frameworks has garnered surprising support.
Trump may proclaim himself as against war, but his slogan is “peace through strength”. He stands for overwhelming military and naval power. And the weaponisation of every aspect and dimension of US power – the dollar, its huge market, its control over international payments systems, the global flows of people and commerce. To be used, as necessary, against friend, ally or foe.
The gloves are off
Trump is replacing US soft power – which is really a mailed fist in a velvet glove – with naked power. No more American exceptionalism, or mythology of moral authority, or rules-based liberal order, or rule of law. He’s doing it on live TV to show the whole world how US power works.
At home, for example, Trump’s pardoned the Proud Boys, a violent white supremacist antisemitic and Islamophobic paramilitary force. These are Trump’s guerrillas, locked, loaded and standing by. Simultaneously Trump is Israel’s staunchest defender. It appears contradictory but isn’t. Israel is a strategic ally in an oil-rich region. It does a lot of dirty work for the US and the West. It is possible to be antisemitic and pro-Israel at the same time, just as it is to be Islamophobic and pro-Saudi Arabia.
But when it comes to public economic messaging, there are significant contradictions. These are becoming clearer and will generate mass discontent and resistance. Trump’s trade wars will add revenues to the US treasury but hit American workers as living costs rise. He champions next-generation technology and automation while simultaneously promising to restore manufacturing jobs in America – the very technologies that are eliminating traditional factory work. His vision of revitalised American manufacturing relies heavily on automated systems that inherently reduce human employment, undercutting his promise of blue-collar jobs.
Even more striking is his stance on supply chains. While trumpeting the virtues of reshoring and near-shoring to reduce dependency on distant suppliers, he pushes policies forcing other nations into extended energy supply chains by compelling them to import American LNG. This selective application of supply chain principles – short chains for America, long chains for others – reveals a pragmatic opportunism masked as economic principle. Operating with an almost messianic self-assurance, Trump demonstrates a remarkable ability to justify contradictions through sheer force of personality. His supporters’ cult-like faith in his decision-making suggests a political figure transcending normal standards of accountability.
More geopolitical coherence than madness
However, there is a coherent grand strategy, particularly regarding China. Trump’s approach is an adaptation of classical geopolitical manoeuvring, reminiscent of the Cold War era. The cornerstone of this strategy appears to be engineering a split between Russia and China, reversing the Sino-Soviet split that proved crucial to American victory in the Cold War. And subordinating even further America’s European allies.
Similarly, the emerging divisions in Europe on ideological lines are reminiscent of the Cold War era. Trump’s approach relies heavily on building ideological alliances through direct interference in democratic processes abroad, promoting illiberalism. He’s effectively attempting to construct a right-wing international, mirroring Hitler and Mussolini’s efforts at building a fascist international. The fascists took the world to war and their ideological project ultimately failed. But it never quite died. The question remains whether Trump’s right-wing international – based around the slogan of “peace through strength” – is leading the world in the same catastrophic direction.
This strategic vision helps explain Trump’s seemingly contradictory approach to Russia. His apparent accommodation of Putin’s interests is transactional, but aimed at China, and subordinating Europe. Trump wants hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Ukrainian minerals, especially its rare earth metals. Such supplies are currently dominated by China. Hence, geopolitically, and to the same end, Trump aims to prevent Russia from fully aligning with China in a continental alliance. Further, by potentially securing Russian acquiescence for future actions against Iran, Trump intends to isolate China, depriving it of another crucial Eurasian ally. Combined with pressure from the QUAD alliance in the Indo-Pacific, this multi-pronged approach aims to emasculate China.
Trump’s broader geopolitical vision is focused on preventing the emergence of a dominant Eurasian power bloc. The method for implementing this strategy, however, raises serious concerns. Unlike the relatively straightforward ideological binaries of the Cold War, today’s political landscape is far more complex. Trump’s attempt to simultaneously support right-wing nationalism while maintaining American global leadership creates inherent tensions. His domestic polarisation of American society could ultimately undermine the very power base needed to execute such an ambitious global strategy. Oligarchies generate their own resistance – an iron law of democracy.
The success of this strategy ultimately depends on whether the United States can maintain its global influence while actively undermining (to say the least) the liberal international order that has historically undergirded American power. Trump’s bet seems to be that raw power politics can replace institutional legitimacy.
What’s clear is that beneath Trump’s apparent contradictions lies a coherent, if controversial, vision for maintaining American primacy in the face of rising Chinese power, or any other power bloc for that matter. The humiliation of Zelensky must be seen in that context. While the Trump administration’s approach is at variance with Biden’s, the goal remains the same: bolstering American supremacy by preventing the consolidation of continental power in Eurasia.
And that also requires an even more violent lawless state to deal with rising resistances at home. Deconstructing the federal state is a vital part of America’s war preparations to maintain global primacy.
Inderjeet Parmar is Professor of International Politics at City St George’s, University of London.
Atul Bhardwaj is Visiting Research Fellow at School of Policy and Global Affairs, City St George’s, University of London.
