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Not so fast, bub - we ain't licked yet.
So, as it Turns Out, America Lost the Cold WarTrump 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.
Trump is America’s Most Anti-Historical President...It’s Why He’s the Most Dangerous and Destructive
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 US and our allies.
Need to Know by David Rothkopf is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber today.
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.
Donald Trump has, in effect, come out of the closet with regard to his loyalties and his serial betrayals of his oath of office and the country he is supposed to serve.
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 diesel 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 to US truckers and farmers squeezed by high diesel prices.
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 that the futility of their 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, costing them 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 were 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—Trump’s foolish and failing war against Iran.
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 Trump’s sons, have long profited from their relationships with Russia and no doubt seek to profit in the future.
Whatever the reasons, not only are they bad, they have produced consequences that are even worse. The U.S. is now more openly than ever in bed with Putin and underwriting his war crimes. Not just in terms of body language or in terms of what we were not doing for Ukraine, but overtly and with major official acts of support for Russia.
In so doing, 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 the Russian invaders. We are helping Russia attack and kill Ukrainians.
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. And of course, Iran is engaged in a war with the United States. Which means that Donald Trump is directly U.S. tax-payer 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.
What is more, his cabinet and members of his party have widely supported these actions that 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 subordinate and 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 service 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 recent actions.
The statement was so fraught with lies and twisted logic as to be 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 and he almost certainly seems to be lying. 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 assertion 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 all 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.
Trump ends up blaming Zelensky for the damage his country has suffered at the hands of the Russians, which is, let’s be honest, obscene.
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 in the U.S. he said he hoped Trump would change his position.
It is unlikely he will. Indeed, further moves to support Russia economically are widely expected.
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 US no longer finances this war since January of last year. In other words, for more than a year and a half. The US 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 of against Russia and its allies (such as the Republic of Korea). 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 since. Russia has the upper hand when it comes to the current government of the U.S. 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.
For those of us who grew up during the Cold War and who were in the government in the wake of its end, this is an almost incomprehensible set of developments. For those of us who worked in the national security community in part because there was a bipartisan consensus about the core values for which we stood (knowing full well that we often fell short of fulfilling our own national myths of who we were), it is stunning to see that one entire U.S. political party has given in to this.
That astonishment and the disgust and trepidation it engenders are compounded, however, by another fact. The outcome of the Cold War is not the only major historical development of modern American history that has been undone by Trump and his supporters.
Our fathers and grandfathers went to war to defeat fascism, and yet fascists and fascist tactics are embraced and embodied and advanced by Trump and MAGA, and even the idea of opposing fascism (“ANTIFA”) is framed as something un-American (despite the opposite being true)
America fought the bloodiest war in its history to maintain the Union and defeat the Confederacy, and yet, Trump and MAGA regularly celebrate the traitors who led that rebellion as heroes. Indeed, just this week, reports of administration efforts to refurbish a monument to the Confederacy within the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery have been circulating. (Consistent with efforts to rewrite the history of the country and play up “the good side” of slavery in our museums.)
The international order we forged after World War II? Being attacked and dismantled by Trump. The alliances that were a key part of maintaining the Pax Americana (such as it was) that followed that war? Also, as noted above, under attack.
The social revolution elevating the role of women and people of color in our society, welcoming immigrants as a vital part of our national fabric, all essential drivers of what we have known as American “greatness” Also actively under attack.
Donald Trump is not just the most corrupt president in our history, although he is certainly that. He is not just the most incompetent to ever serve as chief executive, although no one can contest his status in that regard either.
He is something worse and especially disturbing. He is anti-historical.
He is seeking to reverse history. Given that he has few of the ideological underpinnings in this regard that some of those who have assisted him in his efforts (members of the right who seek to undo civil rights, women’s rights, much of the social progress we have made in this country during the past 150 years), we need to understand why.
In part it is no doubt driven by a desire to appeal to those on the right who could give him power. In part, it is likely driven by ignorance (his embrace of 19th-century tariff policies is clearly fueled by a complete inability to understand even basic economics). In part, it is driven by the fact that those few who would embrace him earlier in his career when most legitimate business people rejected him as a con man and a serial failure included many Russians (from Brighton Beach mobsters to KGB operatives to sleazoid oligarchs on the rise who reportedly used his real estate holdings as money laundering engines) shared a world view that rejected much of the historical progress made, especially, since World War II.
But there is something, I feel, that is darker and more ominous beneath this all. I feel that Trump, desperate to assert his power, deeply angry at a world that has rejected him no matter what level of business success he feels he may have achieved, has a darkly destructive streak. It smacks of the nihilism of a narcissist who wants nothing good for a world that rejects him or soon will be done with him.
He is working to erase history to reject that which those who rejected him valued. It is the thinking of a sociopath. I will destroy all that you loved as a way to get at you.
I’m no psychologist. But I am a sometime historian and student of the U.S. presidency, U.S. politics, and Trump (give a look at my books “Traitor” and “American Resistance,” which predicted these outcomes precisely…not just from my conclusions but from the viewpoints of many who worked with Trump).
And I will be honest with you: I fear that following a defeat at the polls in November (if we have free and fair elections) and in his last years in office, all this makes Trump more dangerous. I expect him to embrace his anti-historical, anti-American views more tightly and translate them into actions that harm our country and aid and abet our enemies.
It is yet another reason that regaining control of one or both houses of Congress is so important…and why fighting to stop, defund, and undo the damage he has done is so essential. We are going to have to rise up and fight many of the fights that were undertaken by our fathers and mothers and ancestors to re-win the victories they thought they had achieved.
We are entering what may be the most dangerous phase in the life of the most dangerous political leader America has ever known.
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 US and our allies.
Need to Know by David Rothkopf is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber today.
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.
Donald Trump has, in effect, come out of the closet with regard to his loyalties and his serial betrayals of his oath of office and the country he is supposed to serve.
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 diesel 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 to US truckers and farmers squeezed by high diesel prices.
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 that the futility of their 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, costing them 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 were 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—Trump’s foolish and failing war against Iran.
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 Trump’s sons, have long profited from their relationships with Russia and no doubt seek to profit in the future.
Whatever the reasons, not only are they bad, they have produced consequences that are even worse. The U.S. is now more openly than ever in bed with Putin and underwriting his war crimes. Not just in terms of body language or in terms of what we were not doing for Ukraine, but overtly and with major official acts of support for Russia.
In so doing, 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 the Russian invaders. We are helping Russia attack and kill Ukrainians.
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. And of course, Iran is engaged in a war with the United States. Which means that Donald Trump is directly U.S. tax-payer 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.
What is more, his cabinet and members of his party have widely supported these actions that 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 subordinate and 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 service 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 recent actions.
The statement was so fraught with lies and twisted logic as to be 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 and he almost certainly seems to be lying. 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 assertion 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 all 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.
Trump ends up blaming Zelensky for the damage his country has suffered at the hands of the Russians, which is, let’s be honest, obscene.
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 in the U.S. he said he hoped Trump would change his position.
It is unlikely he will. Indeed, further moves to support Russia economically are widely expected.
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 US no longer finances this war since January of last year. In other words, for more than a year and a half. The US 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 of against Russia and its allies (such as the Republic of Korea). 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 since. Russia has the upper hand when it comes to the current government of the U.S. 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.
For those of us who grew up during the Cold War and who were in the government in the wake of its end, this is an almost incomprehensible set of developments. For those of us who worked in the national security community in part because there was a bipartisan consensus about the core values for which we stood (knowing full well that we often fell short of fulfilling our own national myths of who we were), it is stunning to see that one entire U.S. political party has given in to this.
That astonishment and the disgust and trepidation it engenders are compounded, however, by another fact. The outcome of the Cold War is not the only major historical development of modern American history that has been undone by Trump and his supporters.
Our fathers and grandfathers went to war to defeat fascism, and yet fascists and fascist tactics are embraced and embodied and advanced by Trump and MAGA, and even the idea of opposing fascism (“ANTIFA”) is framed as something un-American (despite the opposite being true)
America fought the bloodiest war in its history to maintain the Union and defeat the Confederacy, and yet, Trump and MAGA regularly celebrate the traitors who led that rebellion as heroes. Indeed, just this week, reports of administration efforts to refurbish a monument to the Confederacy within the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery have been circulating. (Consistent with efforts to rewrite the history of the country and play up “the good side” of slavery in our museums.)
The international order we forged after World War II? Being attacked and dismantled by Trump. The alliances that were a key part of maintaining the Pax Americana (such as it was) that followed that war? Also, as noted above, under attack.
The social revolution elevating the role of women and people of color in our society, welcoming immigrants as a vital part of our national fabric, all essential drivers of what we have known as American “greatness” Also actively under attack.
Donald Trump is not just the most corrupt president in our history, although he is certainly that. He is not just the most incompetent to ever serve as chief executive, although no one can contest his status in that regard either.
He is something worse and especially disturbing. He is anti-historical.
He is seeking to reverse history. Given that he has few of the ideological underpinnings in this regard that some of those who have assisted him in his efforts (members of the right who seek to undo civil rights, women’s rights, much of the social progress we have made in this country during the past 150 years), we need to understand why.
In part it is no doubt driven by a desire to appeal to those on the right who could give him power. In part, it is likely driven by ignorance (his embrace of 19th-century tariff policies is clearly fueled by a complete inability to understand even basic economics). In part, it is driven by the fact that those few who would embrace him earlier in his career when most legitimate business people rejected him as a con man and a serial failure included many Russians (from Brighton Beach mobsters to KGB operatives to sleazoid oligarchs on the rise who reportedly used his real estate holdings as money laundering engines) shared a world view that rejected much of the historical progress made, especially, since World War II.
But there is something, I feel, that is darker and more ominous beneath this all. I feel that Trump, desperate to assert his power, deeply angry at a world that has rejected him no matter what level of business success he feels he may have achieved, has a darkly destructive streak. It smacks of the nihilism of a narcissist who wants nothing good for a world that rejects him or soon will be done with him.
He is working to erase history to reject that which those who rejected him valued. It is the thinking of a sociopath. I will destroy all that you loved as a way to get at you.
I’m no psychologist. But I am a sometime historian and student of the U.S. presidency, U.S. politics, and Trump (give a look at my books “Traitor” and “American Resistance,” which predicted these outcomes precisely…not just from my conclusions but from the viewpoints of many who worked with Trump).
And I will be honest with you: I fear that following a defeat at the polls in November (if we have free and fair elections) and in his last years in office, all this makes Trump more dangerous. I expect him to embrace his anti-historical, anti-American views more tightly and translate them into actions that harm our country and aid and abet our enemies.
It is yet another reason that regaining control of one or both houses of Congress is so important…and why fighting to stop, defund, and undo the damage he has done is so essential. We are going to have to rise up and fight many of the fights that were undertaken by our fathers and mothers and ancestors to re-win the victories they thought they had achieved.
We are entering what may be the most dangerous phase in the life of the most dangerous political leader America has ever known.
