Days after November’s Trump/MAGA election victory, a senior Russian diplomat asked how great a historical transformation it signaled. Was it the equivalent of the Civil War, or the Depression era New Deal? Soon it was clear. Jamille Bouie wrote in the New York Times that Trump and his cronies were “waging war on the American system of government.” Corrupt billionaire plutocrats led by Trump have captured the state to increase their immense fortunes, to eviscerate our limited social safety net, and to turn the clock back on 70 years of civil and human rights gains. We are in the midst of counterrevolution, with Trump citing Napoleon Bonaparte as he asserts that he and his co-conspirators are above the law.
As demonstrated during the Munich Security Conference and with his tariff threats, the fascist Trump/MAGA wreaking ball is wreaking havoc. Which of their actions are more horrifying and dangerous? Europe reduced to being a marginalized geopolitical pawn? The Musk/Vance embrace of the neo-Nazi AfD and Britain’s Reform Party and the boast of “new sheriff in town” encouraging the fascist right to seize power in Europe? The Hegseth/Kellog diktat that Washington will determine Ukraine’s and Europe’s futures without them having seats at the negotiating table? Encouraging Russian invasions of European countries don’t massively increase their military spending to 5% of GDP, while Trump plans to cut the trillion dollar U.S. military budget? Tariffs directed against allies as well as rivals? Insistence that European AI research be subsumed into that of the U.S. in the competition with China? Secretary of State Rubio meeting with Netanyahu to press the ethnic cleansing/Gaza Riveria resort campaign and discussing possible destruction of Iran’s nuclear program? The deadly dismantling of the US Agency for International Development and eliminating the food and medicines that countless people in the world’s poorest countries depend on for survival?
The MAGA government believes that Europe is so dependent on the U.S. militarily, economically, and technologically, that it can demand European compliance. Caught between Washington and Beijing, and with fears of Russian imperialism, they believe that Europe must kowtow to Washington’s new imperial disorder.
That era of liberal imperialism is over. Instead, Trump/MAGA “peace through strength” is being inflicted in the sovereigntist imperial tradition.
Contradictions and rivalries abound within the Trump/MAGA cohort, but there is an ideological foundation that holds it together. The New York Times explained that the early 20th century sovereigntist movement sought “not only America’s formal sovereignty…but also the traditional forms of rule to which its white, native-born leaders were accustomed…they understood international cooperation as a threat to their personal sovereignty as well that of their nations.” Sovereigntists played leading roles in the 1930s’ fascist “America First” movement. They opposed creation of the UN, the International Court, NATO, and the WTO as infringements on U.S. sovereignty. They supported racist Rhodesia as a “brave little country,” defended apartheid South Africa, and now seek to impose a white supremacist world disorder. The Trumpist Project 2025 proclaimed that “International organizations and agreements that erode our Constitution, rule of Law or popular sovereignty should not be reformed. They should be abandoned.”
The conservative Trump critic Brett Stephens describes Sovereigntism as a means for “ a country doing what it wants to do…an indifference to the behavior of other states, however cruel or dangerous, so long as it doesn’t impinge on us.” It means that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” With Europe divided. their economies stagnating, and dependent militarily on the U.S, Europe is seen as among the weak who must suffer to benefit the new U.S. elite.
Some governments, for example Poland, Japan, and Columbia, are kowtowing to Trump’s crude demands. Others – including Denmark, France, and even Germany, at least in the face of Trump’s imperial Greenland demands, are insisting on respect for their national sovereignty.
As always, Trump has sown misinformation, confusion, and uncertainty in his approach to Russia and Ukraine. Before Munich, he said Putin is “destroying Russia.” He threatened further, if useless, sanctions against Moscow. And he offered continued military support for Ukraine in exchange for rare earth metals that are essential and needed for the technological, industrial, and military competition with China. And his special envoy for Ukraine, General Kellog, threatened both Ukraine and Russia if they refused to engage in negotiations on U.S. terms.
Then came the reverse course. Secretary of Defense Hegseth dictated the outcome of future negotiations with his fellow NATO chiefs. No Ukrainian NATO membership and accepting Russian seizure of four Ukrainian regions. No indications about how to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and future security. No reference to a possible truce leaving forces in place and decisions about sovereignty of the conquered districts on the diplomatic shelf. Kellog pronounced that it isn’t realistic for Europeans to join the negotiations over Ukraine’s and the continent’s future.
Following the predictable outcry, Trump pledged that Ukraine would have a role in peace talks and Hegseth offered that “Everything is on the table.” But within days the Trump’s Ukraine team was meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Saudia Arabia in the absence of Ukrainians and other Europeans.
Surreally, among Trump’s driving ambitions is winning the Nobel Peace Prize. While moving to brutally deport millions of immigrants who play essential roles in the U.S. economy, Trump and a number of his acolytes fear the danger of nuclear war. Even as he wreaked havoc in Europe, Trump voiced hopes for renewed arms control diplomacy with Moscow. Such progress could come in the course of transactional negotiations for a grand bargain with Putin, again without European participation.
On the economic front, Trump’s tariff threats, which the Chinese noted violate WTO rules, are more than temper tantrums. The goal is to replace seventy year-old Bretton Woods and more recent WTO systems with a new hierarchical and protectionist disorder. Former Trump Trade Representative Robert Lighthiser terms it a “new American trade system.”
Lighthizer, who ignited the economic warfare with China during Trump’s first term recently wrote that “Countries with democratic governments [as if the U.S. is still a democracy!] and mostly free economies should come together to create a new trade regime. This system could enforce balance by having two tiers of tariffs.” Punitive tariffs would target “nondemocratic countries as well as those that insist on beggar-thy-neighbor aggressive industrial policies to run large surpluses.” Those within his new regime “would pay lower tariffs and they could be adjusted over time to ensure balance.”
The grandiose imperial naivety of the Trump/MAGA ambitions and actions recall the deadly calamity of the Bush-Cheney “shock and awe” Iraqi invasion fiasco.
By definition, the narcissism of Trump’s sovereigntist agenda, ignores the needs and agencies of others and will inevitably result in the alienation of essential partners and U.S. isolation. If no man is an island, neither is a nation. As Trump transforms the U.S. into a pariah nation, he accelerates the nation’s decline, generating increasingly dangerous domestic and international turmoil and insecurity.
Proverbs tells us that a people without a vision will perish. So, creating and working for alternatives to Trump/MAGA sovereigntist imperialism is an urgent necessity. The Cold War ended on the basis on common security diplomacy, the understanding that real security cannot be achieved with spiraling military competition against a nation’s rival. Only mutually beneficial diplomacy can deliver enduring security. This is a moment when those being abused in Europe, the Global South, and the United States must act in solidarity and unity, rejecting all great power imperialisms, and demanding a Common Security future. Our survival depends on it.
