A few years ago, it would have looked like mission impossible for even the most capable Russian spy. Divide the United States from its allies? Check. Discredit its normative power (human rights, the rule of law, democracy, altruism)? Check. Weaken U.S. institutions to make further manipulation easier? Check.
One could go on. But it’s simpler to try testing the opposite hypothesis. Name one thing that U.S. President Donald Trump has done since taking office that the Kremlin did not like. Crickets.
A few years ago, it would have looked like mission impossible for even the most capable Russian spy. Divide the United States from its allies? Check. Discredit its normative power (human rights, the rule of law, democracy, altruism)? Check. Weaken U.S. institutions to make further manipulation easier? Check.
One could go on. But it’s simpler to try testing the opposite hypothesis. Name one thing that U.S. President Donald Trump has done since taking office that the Kremlin did not like. Crickets.
True, he’s issued a rhetorical warning about potential sanctions against Russia. He’s kept ostentatiously friendly relations with two core allies, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. But listen to the dismay in London and Paris, and it’s clear that these are mere gestures: symbolic, not practical.
Does what critics see as Trump’s helter-skelter adoption of Kremlin talking points and to-do lists make the U.S. president a Russian asset—what one might call a Muscovian candidate? I’ve spent four decades dealing with Soviet and then Russian intelligence services, their stunts, and their provocations. I have been interrogated by the KGB (incompetently). I’ve written a book on East-West espionage. I agree that Trump’s past conduct is highly questionable—circumstantial evidence of Russian mischief abounds. He would certainly fail even the most basic check for a security clearance.
The case for motivation and opportunity are easily made. Two retired Russian spies allege that Trump was compromised on his trip to the Soviet Union in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.” Trump could well have succumbed to the KGB’s trademark cocktail of flattery and blackmail on that trip. Many other Westerners did. I can also believe that Russia funneled money to Trump in the 1990s to keep his near-bankrupt business empire afloat. I agree that he’s surrounded himself with grifters and oddballs who give spy catchers hives.
But actually running him as an agent? Can you really imagine Trump turning up on time for a clandestine meeting? Remembering where the dead drop is? Filing reports? Using a code book properly? Keeping secrets? Obeying orders? His chaotic, petulant mindset would be a case officer’s nightmare.
The more likely and simpler explanation is that Trump is just what he seems: a Vladimir Putin fanboy—and wildly greedy to boot. He may be an asset to Russia but is not in the formal sense a Russian asset. He admires the Russian president-for-life’s strongman style and the way his regime allows insiders (and Putin himself) to turn power into wealth.
In any case, the result is the same. Putin’s hubristic war in Ukraine could have ended in his downfall. But dithering by the Biden administration and other NATO governments turned it into a stalemate. Now Trump has tipped the balance by cutting off aid and intelligence support to Ukraine. That spells not only humiliation for Ukraine but also huge costs and risks for European countries. After a cease-fire, Ukraine could become a giant Bosnia: unstable, resentful, and vulnerable. Attempts to provide defense and deterrence there may prove a bonfire of European credibility.
More broadly, Trump’s contempt for soft power has turned off the geopolitical equivalent of magnetic north. Since the Atlantic Charter of 1941, American allies have been able to tell themselves that their security policy was not just a bargain born out of self-interest, but part of a righteous cause: resisting and defeating communism, promoting prosperity and freedom. Naive? Perhaps. Flawed? Certainly. But that belief sustained decades of alignment, which in turn fostered tight economic ties, close personal friendships, and amplified American power.
Not anymore. In the space of eight weeks, Trump has undone eight decades of work in building American power in the world. Gutting foreign aid, for example, does more than practical damage to humanitarian causes. It removes a central prop of U.S. influence. Team Trump actively disparages the people and political parties running the United States’ closest allies. Instead, they promote their rivals and opponents, from the far-right Alternative for Germany to Nigel Farage’s populist Reform party in the United Kingdom. The result is that lifelong Atlanticists in Europe now talk like Gaullists—the French politicians who have always feared and resisted U.S. influence.
The supposed rationale for inflicting all this damage is realism. In Trump’s “might is right” worldview, bludgeoning Ukraine is just a tactical ploy to get it to the negotiating table. Weakening Europe makes sense, too—it will be easier for the United States to bully. If the real threat is China, why not try splitting Moscow and Beijing? Allies may whimper, but American voters are fed up with subsidies to foreigners and want problems at home fixed first.
But in practice, the policies are surreal. Those far-right leaders in Europe are, guess what, notorious for their anti-Americanism. They have close ties with China, too. Wooing the Kremlin never works. Just ask former U.S. presidents—Bill Clinton, the Bushes, and Barack Obama. Russian leaders pocket concessions and do not deliver. One wonders if the purported author of the Art of the Deal has actually read the book published under his name.
Rather than speculate fruitlessly about the motivation for Trump’s behavior, the better approach is to measure it accurately and react to it appropriately. Allies tend to forget past storms. Is this era worse than the isolationism of the 1920s and 1930s? Or what followed? The British remember U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s ruthless treatment of their beleaguered country before the United States finally entered the war against Adolf Hitler—and the scalding financial humiliations the British suffered during and after it. Is the abandonment of Ukraine really worse than President Dwight Eisenhower’s punishment of the U.K. and France for the Suez expedition in 1956? Is Trump’s cynical bombast over Gaza more revolting than the wars in Indochina? Or President George W. Bush’s disastrous global war on terror?
Nor is Trumpism, with its doom-laden, resentful rhetoric, a wholly new phenomenon. The reactionary national-populist strand of American political life dates back decades. Remember the John Birch Society, the Moral Majority, Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, Sarah Palin? The real story is that the guardrails are down this time, and nobody dares to stand up to Trump’s hucksterism and bullying. In short, Trump’s reign is certainly different and probably worse, but critics should check their history books before declaring U.S.-led alliances dead and buried.
After doing that, they should stop complaining and act. Spurred by the security crisis, European leaders have already done more in a month than they normally manage in a decade. It is still too little, too vague, and fearfully late, but the outlines of a new, hard-edged European approach to defense are visible. It brings the U.K. back into Europe, sheds complexes about militarism, busts budget rules to pay for more defense spending, and displays a new and welcome decisiveness.
I suggest that Europeans mark this important shift by showing their gratitude. Put up a big golden statue of Trump in the heart of Brussels, hailing him the founder of a truly united Europe. And put the inscription in Russian—that will annoy him, too.
