TURN UP THE HEAT

How Trump is Turning U.S. History Upside Down—for the Worse

Everything you learned in high school about American strength is being made wrong.

Opinion

This column is being republished with permission from its original home on Substack. To read the piece in full, as well as to enjoy more geopolitical insight and analysis, subscribe to Need to Know by David Rothkopf.

It is starting to feel like all the history we learned was wrong.

We were taught we won the Cold War. But today, the president of the United States openly serves the interests of Russia. We have become, in fact, in crucial economic and security matters, a satellite of Moscow. The U.S. chief executive has publicly and repeatedly declared his loyalty to Russia’s head of state. For more than a decade he has openly and covertly been advancing Russian foreign policy, often at the expense of the national security of the United States, the laws of the United States, and the interests of the United States and our allies.

It is such a shocking turn of events, so inconceivable to anyone who lived through the Cold War or its aftermath, that many Americans have been in denial about it for years. But the evidence is not only incontrovertible, but in recent days, the U.S. president has made the situation more explicit.

Trump’s recent announcement that he had entered into an agreement with Russia to purchase diesel was a shock even to those who had long been in denial. Not only was Trump setting aside congressionally mandated U.S. sanctions policy, but he was offering a financial lifeline of billions of dollars to a cash-strapped Kremlin that could and almost certainly would use the extra liquidity to help fund its brutal, criminal aggression against Ukraine.

Never mind that the amount of fuel involved would make no impact on U.S. supplies, or that Trump could have gotten a better price purchasing the fuel elsewhere.

Never mind that the deal failed on its merits, economically and politically, as a form of relief for U.S. truckers and farmers squeezed by high prices.

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What was worse and undeniable was that the U.S. was now helping to underwrite Russian attacks that were daily killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure. Furthermore, we were offering to help Russia at precisely the moment when the futility of its four-year escalation of a conflict that began in 2014 was becoming clear. Russia was no longer gaining ground. Russia was paying a huge price militarily, with over 1.5 million dead and wounded troops. Russia’s economy could no longer afford the war. Ukraine had momentum.

Indeed, lost in much of the coverage of this development is the fact that Trump stepped in at a moment of special need for Russia. Perhaps he thought it could also be spun to help him politically, given the punishment Republicans are expected to take at the polls as a result of high inflation. Perhaps he thought he could also use the move to deflect attention from the real primary reason for high fuel prices—his own foolish and failing war against Iran.

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Frankly, there is almost certainly more to it than that. Surely there is a quid pro quo we do not know about—a request, following a long-established pattern, to seek Russian interference in the U.S. election to boost Trump’s party’s chances? And of course, we can’t ignore that Trump and those closest to him, including his lead negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and his sons, have long profited from their relationships with Russia and no doubt seek to profit in the future.

Whatever the reasons, we are undermining Ukraine’s ability to serve as a bulwark against authoritarian aggression and as the great defender of democracy and European security that the country has been, as it has valiantly fought off Russian invaders.

Perhaps even more nauseatingly (if such a thing is imaginable), the world knows that Russia is actively supporting Iran. Credible reports suggest that Russia has been supplying vital intelligence to the Iranians and helping to resupply their missile stockpiles. Which means that Donald Trump is directly sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to a country that will indirectly and yet inevitably serve to support potential attacks on our own military.

Trump is living up to his reputation as America’s greatest enemy by actually using U.S. dollars to pay not only for attacks on our allies and, by extension, on the Western Alliance, but also by making it possible for Iran to target and kill more Americans.

Our president is at war with us.

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What is more, his cabinet and members of his party have widely supported these actions, which can only be seen not only as a reversal of history and as a profoundly dangerous misjudgment, but also as the kind of betrayal that is, by any definition, traitorous.

Since he made the announcement, Trump has taken several steps to effectively ratify the move of the U.S. to being in service of a country that thirty-five years ago we boasted we had defeated. These have included a decision that, despite denials, must have been cleared by the White House and by Trump benefactor Elon Musk, to stop (at least temporarily) providing vital Starlink services to Ukraine’s military. There have also been reports that some intelligence sharing has stopped or been dialed back.

Then, on Friday, during the late-day hours reserved for the release of the kind of bad stories government officials want to bury, Trump announced that he was waiving any sanctions against Russia that may have been called for by the recent Graham Act in order to serve what Trump incredibly and laughably called U.S. “national interests.”

Also, over the weekend, Trump released a post on Truth Social that appeared intended to provide a rationale for his actions. The statement was so fraught with lies and twisted logic that it was almost incoherent. Among these was the assertion that Trump was “negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine.” He has, since the outset of his second term, been negotiating to advance Russian interests at the expense of those of Ukraine, Europe and the U.S. Great progress is clearly not being made. Any “hostage” negotiations being undertaken are not known to Western experts.

(And look, let’s be honest about where Trump comes out on this. His son Don Jr.’s wedding was underwritten in part by a Putin pal who has allegedly been involved in the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.)

Trump asserts that Russia is doing little to help Iran—although there is plenty of reporting to the contrary. He reveals the weakness of his argument by then acknowledging they are helping to some degree by asserting it was less than what they could be doing, and seeming to threaten that if people don’t go along with him, Russia will do more to help Iran. Which, of course, means helping Iran target and attack U.S. troops, ships, and bases.

He repeats his claims that Zelensky is responsible for the fuel crisis because of his attacks on Russian refineries, neglecting to note the fact that it was Russia that started such energy infrastructure attacks (and indeed, it was Russia that had started the entire conflict) or that Ukraine expressed willingness to suspend such attacks when Russia did not.

His assertion that Zelensky is prolonging the war because of the money he has been getting from Europe and that he got from the Biden administration is offensive. Zelensky is a hero as are the Ukrainian people, victims of Russian atrocities who are only acting in self-defense. To suggest Zelensky did not want to end the war is also offensive; he just does not wish to do so on terms that reward Russian aggression, sacrifice Ukrainian sovereignty, and, not inconsequentially, put the entire security of Europe at risk going forward.

Zelensky, for his part, has worked to try to maintain some working relationship with the U.S. and to supplement the loss of U.S. support with more from Europe. But he has also been candid about what has happened over the past few days. He has asserted that the U.S. betrayed Ukraine and that recent decisions “will strengthen Putin in his will to occupy us.” On weekend television, he said he hoped Trump would change his position.

It is unlikely he will. Indeed, further moves to support Russia economically are widely expected.

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The current situation has led others to be clear that what is happening now is newsworthy but not necessarily new. In the words of Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, “The U.S. no longer finances this war since January of last year. In other words, for more than a year and a half. The U.S. has not contributed a single cent to the defense of Ukraine. We are doing it. Europe.”

Of course, Trump’s ties to Russia are long-standing and, as we have often reiterated here, anything but a hoax. Trump’s campaign outreach to Russians and his bending the knee to Putin are a matter of record, as is the fact that the first time he was impeached it was for illegally withholding funds intended for Ukraine. He has also done Putin’s bidding in actively working to weaken NATO (just as he is currently contemplating removing or reassigning U.S. troops currently serving in Europe and in other areas of defense against Russia and its allies). He has welcomed Putin and celebrated the relationship, recently also announcing his desire to invite Putin to the G20 meeting later this year in Florida.

This is not the post-Cold War “end of history” world we were led to believe would be forthcoming back in the 90s or in the years since. Russia has the upper hand when it comes to the current U.S. government. America’s standing is in rapid decline, and the country is riven with division in many of the ways that might have been dictated by a Russian intelligence operation. Our institutions are under attack from within. Our military readiness is compromised by bad leadership and decisions to fire those who were competent. The values we stood for and by which we distinguished ourselves from the Soviet world—democracy, freedom, the rule of law—are disavowed by Trump and those who work with him and undermined by them in practice.

There is no mistaking who is in the driver’s seat in this relationship: Putin. There is no mistaking who is taking orders from the Kremlin. There is no mistaking which country benefits and which pays the price.

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David RothkopfChief Global Affairs Columnist

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