Saturday, March 01, 2025

TRUMP THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IS "ME ME ME" (ALSO: ANDREW TATE HEARTS PUTIN)

When I began reading David Sanger's analysis of yesterday's horrifying events in the Oval Office, I thought it gave the bullying simpleton who led the assault on Volodymyr Zelenskyy too much credit for sophisticated thought. But now I think Sanger is on to something:
After five weeks in which President Trump made clear his determination to scrap America’s traditional sources of power — its alliances among like-minded democracies — and return the country to an era of raw great-power negotiations, he left one question hanging: How far would he go in sacrificing Ukraine to his vision?

The remarkable showdown that played out in front of the cameras early Friday afternoon from the Oval Office provided the answer....

Mr. Trump makes no secret of his view that the post-World War II system, created by Washington, ate away at American power.

Above all else, that system prized relationships with allies committed to democratic capitalism, even maintaining those alliances that came with a cost to American consumers. It was a system that sought to avoid power grabs by making the observance of international law, and respect for established international boundaries, a goal unto itself.

To Mr. Trump, such a system gave smaller and less powerful countries leverage over the United States, leaving Americans to pick up far too much of the tab for defending allies and promoting their prosperity.

While his predecessors — both Democrats and Republicans — insisted that alliances in Europe and Asia were America’s greatest force multiplier, keeping the peace and allowing trade to flourish, Mr. Trump viewed them as a bleeding wound. In the 2016 presidential campaign, he repeatedly asked why America should defend countries running trade surpluses with the United States.
Trump doesn't really have a theory of international relations. He's read nothing and knows nothing. He's driven by his experience in New York real estate, and by his own ego and grandiosity.

Trump doesn't want to pursue "raw great-power negotiations," bypassing alliances with less powerful allies, because he believes, after much study and reflection, that that's the best way to run the world. He wants to do that because he wants to be one of the biggest of the big boys, the equal of the powerful people he admires. Trump has schoolboy crushes on powerful people. That's why he hasn't cut Elon Musk loose, and that's the core reason he loves Putin.

To Trump, America's European allies are like the workers and contractors he hired to get buildings built -- they're Untermenschen, lesser people, and he's certain they're always ripping him off (a belief that's pure projection -- Trump regularly stiffed contractors and workers).

Sanger writes:
It took decades to assemble the post-World War II rules of global engagement, and for all its faults, the system succeeded at its primary objectives: avoiding great power war and encouraging economic interdependence.

Mr. Trump has never articulated at any length what he would replace those rules with, other than that he would use America’s military and economic power to strike deals....

There is little precedent to suggest that approach alone works, especially in dealing with authoritarian leaders like Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China, who take a long view in dealing with democracies that they view as lacking the sustained will necessary to achieve difficult objectives.

But judging by Friday’s display in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump seems convinced that as long as he is at the helm, the world will order itself as he commands.
I don't think Trump cares if it "works," at least as we understand the term, any more than he and Musk care whether the U.S. government "works" after they finish taking a meat ax to the government. These men are grandiose narcissists. They think the world is running well if they're happy -- who cares what happens to all the inferior people? They'd rather rule over a smoldering ruin than be somewhat less powerful in a world that works well. They genuinely don't believe that making a ruin of America (Musk) and the world (Trump) will ever harm them. The leopards won't eat their faces. And maybe they seek destruction for its own sake, because it weakens the Untermenschen -- American citizens (Musk) and global allies (Trump) -- which makes them, the Übermenschen, more powerful.

I don't know how to describe their approach. Are they fascist leaders? Are they cult leaders? Are they like mafiosi or leaders of a drug cartel who enrich themselves by preying on poor people? Choose whichever analogy you like. Just remember that they're not doing this because they believe it will create a glorious world for the rest of us. They're doing it for themselves, and, in Trump's case, for one fellow Übermensch in particular.

*****

I saw this at Bluesky:



For the record, Andrew Tate is an admirer of Vladimir Putin who see an alliance between Russia and America as key to a battle with ... well, let him speak for himself:



Tate also posted this a couple of years ago:



(The video is distasteful but suitable for work.)

The Daily Mail reported on the video at the time:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been portrayed as Santa in an anti-Western propaganda video released on the country's social media.

The film - made by a production company called Signal - depicts 'Santa Putin' swapping a photograph of a child's same-sex parents for one of a mother and father, and gifting the boy being raised as a girl a football, toy cars and a drum kit.

The video feeds into Russian prejudices about Europe and the United States which have been fuelled by pro-Kremlin propagandists during the war in Ukraine to frame the conflict as a clash of values between Russia and Ukraine's western allies.
Tate's worldview, needless to say, is also Übermenschen vs. Untermenschen. In his view, the inferior people are women and anyone else who's not a toxic heterosexual male. Elon Musk has his own taxonomy of the worthy and unworthy, which overlaps with Tate's in some ways and not in others:



Trump's Übermenschen are dictators, billionaires, and roid-rage lunkheads like Pete Hegseth and Dan Bongino, although he also likes non-macho lawyers and operatives (Roy Cohn, Stephen Miller) who can help him get what he wants.

I'm not saying that there's a connection between Andrew Tate and Trump's foreign policy. I'm saying that Trump, Musk, and Tate all believe that only some people are worthy of a good life, and it's fine (or actually delightful) when the rest suffer. We should never imagine that Trump and Musk have even a misguided plan to make our lives better. They're in it for themselves and the people they believe are in their superior caste.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:15 AM 28 Comments
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