Affirmative Action for Dictators

American Foreign Policy seen from Munich

As a television show, American foreign policy is about strength. In reality, it is about draining power from the United States and its allies, thereby creating atmospherics in which Donald Trump feels good and Elon Musk converts lost state capacity into personal profit. The weakness, in other words, is the point.

In the alliances that held through January 2025, the United States was an unrivaled power. By whatever measure one chose, no other country was of the same status. Without the alliances, however, the equation is different. It is not just that the United States loses the economic, military, and political strength of its allies. It is that the U.S. must now compete with them and try to subordinate them.

At the Munich Security Conference, which is just coming to an end, the American vice president instructed Europeans to open themselves as colonial vessels. They should remove any constraints on social media platforms, allowing Musk and other oligarchs to shape their elections. And those elections should then lead to the victory of far right parties that would remove any other barriers to Musk’s power. In this scenario, no conceivable American interest is served. Only Musk’s. It is unlikely to play out as JD Vance expects. What is certain, though, is the palpable alienation of the Europeans.

By taking the side of Ukraine in its war against Russia through January 2025, the United States had generated tremendous power against the aggressor Russia and its patron China. At insignificant financial cost, and with no risk to American troops, American policy helped the Ukrainian armed forces to deliver a broader security that the United States could not have achieved on its own. The Ukrainians fulfilled the entire NATO mission, absorbing a Russian invasion and destroying the greater part of the Russian army of 2022. They deterred a Chinese invasion of Taiwan by showing how difficult offensive operations are. And they upheld, as great sacrifice, the legal principle that borders are real and states are sovereign.

It is precisely that order that Musk-Trump dismantles.

It is difficult to be certain of U.S. policy to Ukraine, since the Americans contradict one another and themselves faster than any chyron or twitter feed can follow. But two underlying principles did emerge during the Munich Security Conference. The first was that Ukraine, like the rest of Europe, was to be seen not as an American ally but as an American colony. Humiliating discussions of the disposition of Ukraine’s resources made this clear. The second was that the war could be ended by direct discussions between Americans and the Russian aggressor. There was no sign of any serious substantive preparations, on the American side, for such negotiations.

I could perhaps be wrong, and we shall see, but I believe the purpose of the Putin-Trump phone call that took place and the coming Russian-American negotiations in Saudi Arabia over Ukraine is to get a bad deal, at least as seen in the conventional terms of Ukrainian lives, American power, and world peace. If a bad agreement does emerge, it will be hard to say whether it is incompetence, design, or incompetence by design. I think the last is most likely. The structure of the situation does not favor substance or deliberation. The Americans are in a hurry, as Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine kept saying; and the design of the negotiations is unfavorable.

With Ukrainians and Europeans not present at these talks (at least as I understand this at this moment), Putin will likely get his way on the essential issues. One American official or another has already conceded most of them in public (although, admittedly, they then often walked themselves back or were contradicted by others). Trump and Musk have been repeating Russian talking points for years. Putin will (it appears) be treated as a legitimate partner, he will go unpunished for his war crimes, he will make de facto territorial gains from his war of aggression, and he will get to dictate the terms Ukrainian domestic politics. He will celebrate a victory, and he will prepare the next war, in the total confidence that no resistance from the United States is possible.

Russia, in other words, will gain power from American diplomacy that it could not conceivably have gained on the battlefield.

One point of consensus among informed observers here in Munich is that the war is not going well for Russia. Sanctions are working, and the Russian economic crash that was predicted for 2026 and now seen as more likely this year. On the battlefield, Russia’s losses far exceed Ukraine’s, and the Ukrainians are getting better and better at inflicting losses without putting their own people at risk. The obvious way to bring the war to an end is to strengthen Ukraine and weaken Russia. The tools to do this are at hand. Instead, what the United States is doing is strengthening Russia and putting Ukraine under stress.

A bad deal on Ukraine would seem to serve only Russia. But it also serves an American policy of deliberate weakness, meant to create a world that is gentler on Musk and Trump’s emotions even if it is more pitiless with the lives of everyone else.

It was humiliating, at Munich, to keep hearing Americans holding microphones tell Ukrainians that war is bad. Every Ukrainian listening has lost someone. Some of the Ukrainians listening were combatants who had lost limbs. They know that war is bad. Ukrainians want more than any one else for the war to end. But just talking with Russia, or just signing a piece of paper with Russia, will not lead to that conclusion, and Ukrainians know it. The Russian aim seems to be to get the Americans to praise themselves for having arranged a ceasefire, to get the Europeans to withdraw in confusion, to get the Ukrainian army demobilized, and then to attack again. There is no sign whatsoever that the American side has given any thought as to how this would be prevented.

It could be prevented, or course. But that would require thought, planning, concern for US interests, a serious discussion with Ukrainians, and the presence of Ukrainians and other Europeans at any negotiations. It would require an American policy to weaken Russia and strengthen Ukraine. That is not in evidence.

If the American negotiators agree with Russia, as seems likely, on a deal that is unacceptable for Ukraine, then the Americans can turn to a fully colonial policy towards their former Ukrainian allies. Give us your minerals, they can say, or we will not help you defend the parts of your territory that we have not just conceded to Russia. This will not likely work, as the United States does not have that kind of leverage, especially since Ukrainians have very good reason to doubt that American support is forthcoming in any scenario. But such a spiral of weakness creates the imperial terms of engagement that Trump finds personally comfortable and Musk hopes to make personally profitable.

Munich, 15 February 2025, TS

American policy, under Musk-Trump, amounts to a kind of affirmative action for dictators. The power that they cannot achieve on their own is to be granted by American intervention. This is true not only with respect to Russia, but also to China.

A Ukraine that is abandoned by the United States and threatened by Russia could well turn to Beijing as a protector. A Musk-Trump America that has done nothing but badger Ukraine to accept a partition will have little leverage then. And China will know what to do with Ukraine’s resources and ports. Likewise, a Europe that has been advised by the United States that it is regarded as a colony rather than an ally will have every reason to turn to China, not so much for protection as for balance. Tariffs directed against Europe will have the same effect. But if I am right, this is not an undesired side effect but rather the point of U.S. foreign policy. For somewhat different reasons, Musk and Trump prefer a world in which might makes right. That in such a world that United States is less mighty is of no concern.

And, of course, right was always a kind of might. I have phrased this essay entirely in terms of American power in a simple, realist sense. But the abandonment of a regime of predictability and law also diminishes the United States. Musk-Trump can help Beijing and Russia to create a world of empire, because they can destroy an order that others created over generations.

They will be powerless to create something else in its place, at least in the traditional sense of an order that serves Americans and their freedom and prosperity. Musk can profit from the the decline and fall of the United States, and Trump can enjoy his turn on Nero’s fiddle (or lute, for you historians out there). But there is no conceivable chemistry whereby the endorphin levels of the two men will metamorphose into American interests.

As in domestic policy, so in foreign policy: a performance of strength covers real weakness.

The variable here is Europe. The rise of China and Russia is a predictable function and perhaps even deliberate goal of American foreign policy. Unhitched now from the United States, what will the Europeans do? At Munich, it could be quite sad to speak to Europeans who for decades have been connected to the United States by friendships, education, language, or an affinity based on a notion that we have been, in the words of one, a “benign hegemon.” They are legitimately puzzled by the new American politics of weakness.

Now that American policy is to be the malign anti-hegemon, Europeans have a choice to make. Musk-Trump weakness assumes that Europeans will choose a weakness of their own. European habit would dictate watching Musk-Trump and hoping that something better will somehow emerge. That way lies catastrophe. If the European Union is to survive, and if Ukraine is to survive, 2025 will have to be the year that Europeans take charge of their own interests. On the year that must be Europe’s: more to come.

Munich, 16 February, 11:30 am