Since Ronald Reagan's time in collective memory, the concept of "imperium of evil" attributed in 1983 to the russian Union has stuck. fewer people present remember that, in the same speech in which Reagan justified the arms program by having to defend “good against evil”, he declared talks with Moscow about “fair” peace.
This historical example shows that in the American diplomatic ethos, on the 1 hand, moral and axiological principles have always been emphasized, and on the another hand, a cynical calculation of interests has led to relativisation of these criteria and even denial of them. For these reasons, the opponent or even the enemy, who under the circumstances was identified as evil, could otherwise be considered a notable interlocutor.
The past of the 20th century...
provides many examples of specified dictators with whom the United States was not on the way, but in peculiar situations, for example in the face of an existential threat from an enemy coalition, as in the case of the Axis States, the leader of the communist empire has become a desirable partner and ally for Roosevelt. He made a akin reassessment Donald Trump during the first presidential term, erstwhile he felt it was worth gathering the dictator of North Korea Kim Jong Unem (12 June 2018) to prevent the escalation of the Korean conflict. Many observers wiped their eyes out of amazement, as these talks contradicted America's “idealized” diplomatic culture.
Throughout the years of the “cold war”, a peculiar canon has retained itself that it does not negociate with the “bad” due to the fact that its conduct is not rationalized. If you can't trust him about the existing situation, then you can't build rational visions about the future. specified an absolute conviction was the basis for dealing with global terrorism in George W. Bush's time, although, as is known, neither Afghanistan nor Iraq were straight liable for the September 11, 2001 terrorist acts and became tragic victims of American armed attacks.
The current US administration is returning to long traditions of seeking common interests, even with the most fierce ideological opponents. This was, after all, in the normalized return to communist China, as well as in the time of the relaxation of the 1970s erstwhile the dialog with the USSR resulted in acts of disarmament and the establishment of a European safety system. Additionally, there has been a US-friendly relation with various dictatorial regimes, despite the apparent violations of human rights. In relations with Iran, Pahlavi's chess, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and South American regimes, Realpolitik took the lead, where strength and business mattered, and values went to the background.
This time, after the start of Donald Trump's fresh presidential term, we can get the impression that we are dealing with a "strategic breakthrough" in US politics. Although analogies are not always accurate and educational, 1 can be tempted to say that it is not the impulsiveness and unpredictability of the American leader – as the unkind experts propose – but the concept of “new thinking” which is forgivable to transform the global order.
Policy disidentification
The analogy resembles Mikhail Gorbachev, which reversed – as Trump now does – the relation between ideology and national interests. alternatively of a crusade in the name of liberal values (then Communist values) of a universalist character, he calls for the defence of what is national and particular, or even egotistic. They accompany this explanation of isolationist, protectionist and mercantylistic tones. They have a degrading effect on the knowing of Western constancy as a unchangeable and compact geopolitical and civilizational bloc.
The disideology of the USSR's abroad policy meant deutopia of reasoning about global relations in terms of the triumph of a single strategy on a global scale. The same is actual now that de-identifying political reasoning not only ends definitely with the liberal utopia of "the end of history", but opens the US policy to the diversity of participants in the global system, without being divided into bad and good. Trump's squad is looking for new, non-ideological justifications for its actions internationally. He puts economical interests first.
The consequence of the rejection of ideological divisions into democracies and autocracies, to the planet of "free" and "slaved" is the request to redefine the global environment, which means the sensational revision of the various stereotypes and images of the enemy. The biggest shock comes from changing Trump's position on Russia and Putin. He felt that any negotiations with the Kremlin, even those unpronounceable fast success, were better than any another day of bloody war in Ukraine. Unlike her predecessor, Putin views Putin as a rational player in global relations who was provoked by the United States itself to scope for weapons against armed by the West Ukraine. Despite the lamentation of the Nattian allies, Trump is willing to legitimize Russia's rations and even to search a "unsymmetrical compromise" to lead to ceasefire and frost the conflict.
Paradoxically, the strong anti-Russianity of the Democratic organization has been favoured by the Trump administration's position towards Russia over the last fewer years. In time, the instigation of hatred of the Kremlian ruler led to the perception of complex ties of American-Russian interests in terms of “fighting against evil”. America's global hegemony has forgotten about solving common problems associated with planetary crises. Trump may be in his naivety and incompetence. However, it has a determination to reconstruct any normality in its relations with another powers and wants to convince a large part of American society that talks with “bad” Russia do not mean “packaging with the devil”.
The media conducive to the Trump administration restores this fundamental fact in their messages that despite America's primacy, it is impossible to remove another powers from the global system, especially China and Russia, but besides various centres of force outside them, specified as the European Union or India. Only restoring a certain balance between them will replace the anomaly that 1 power has tried to control the full planet in fresh decades. Conflicting with conflict of interests would sooner or later lead to a suicide short circuit.
The withdrawal of the United States from many external obligations is primarily linked to the change of interior priorities. In the case of large empires, as indicated in their analyses specified historians as Jean-Baptiste Duroselle or Paul Kennedy, the most common is overexertion due to the excessive commitment to others. Trump embodies this part of America, which realises that the deficiency of investment in the country's infrastructure, its modernisation and mediocre resource management force a change of priorities. It is time to reduce the burden of military-political confrontation in global relations, and to shift the resources taken to arms to address the accumulated socio-economic problems.
This can besides be explained by the return to diplomatic and legal instruments in relations with external opponents, as safety can be ensured not only by means of weapons and costly reinforcements, but besides through negotiated agreements. In this regard, Trump’s “new thinking” clearly resembles Gorbachev’s courage, which could radically break off pro-war doctrine and rivalry, declaring wars in the modern planet unnecessary and unprofitable. However, while the USSR, in its final phase of existence, explicitly focused on cooperation strategies and unilateral concessions towards the West, Trump diplomacy is aggressive, based on force and blackmail. The strength of things is confrontational.
Gorbachev lost control of the situation, resulting in the implosion of the empire, although this disastrous consequence – looking from today's position – was not foregone. Many interior and external factors influenced the dissolution of the USSR.
Trump case
Trump's situation is clearly different. It clearly takes into account the reconstruction and restructuring of the global order involving the United States as a superpower capable of stopping the military power of China and Russia, while sharing influence and work between fresh powers and technological conglomerates. Trump's administration aims to specify itself in the fresh multipolarity, but faces strong interior and external resistance. Time will show whether the policy of extremist change will prove constructive, or whether it will end in any unpredictable catastrophe at the moment.
If the analogues to Gorbachev are not very accurate, it may be worth mentioning an example Deng Xiaopinga, which so directed Communist China in the 1980s to not only change course and save the political system, but besides make the basis for the dynamic growth of the state to the rank of global power. Both effective Deng reforms and Gorbachev's defeat were mainly caused by interior crises of China and the USSR. Donald Trump's current efforts to reconstruct the size of America are besides a reaction to the giant's interior problems. possibly this is proof of any social desperation and belief that only people with exuberant ego and narcissistic self-confidence can reverse the negative course of events and offer any optimistic perspective.
Trump's first word exposed the contradictions and increasing social antagonisms both in the context of the division of social wealth and the conflict of the political elite. Regardless of the effects of the "systemic transformation" on the United States, neither the Gorbachev improvement failure nor the construction of a systemic alternate that would reverse all negative trends. Optimists can see in extremist moves the announcement of American sanitization, while pessimists observe the eccentric ideas which implementation will make even more chaos and give average to dramatic social opposition, resembling the "revolution" of the 1960s.
The advantage of the begun debate on the active participation of the United States in the multipolar strategy is to stimulate various circles of political establishment to critical overestimate the existing strategy and to establish a certain balance between omnipotence and selectivity, between force and law, between existential priorities and those resulting from the imperative of coexistence in the polarized global system.
Agreeing with the fresh multipolarity of the Trump global administration strategy will face the request to recognise the strategical autonomy of its key partners and rivals. This will mean that even those centres of power that share the common values of the West (European Union or India) will sometimes prosecute interests contrary to the interests of the US. Moreover, the balancing mechanics will work in all directions. Not only will America, through its power, be able to counter another powers or their coalitions, but they besides individually or collectively may want to halt and inhibit American power.
This second aspect of knowing the current causative function of a leader in global relations requires peculiar consideration and restraint. American political elites, including their peculiar forces, have become accustomed to the unlimited penetration of the global scene, without any opposition or opposition. Meanwhile, agreeing with the function of primes inter pares will mean reckoning with the interests of another powers, without the anticipation of questioning their rightfulness.
Trump's transactive leadership opens up fresh opportunities to make "task" coalition powers, geared towards collective global solutions, ranging from reducing the arms race, especially atomic proliferation, through climate change and preventing natural disasters, pandemics, transnational crime, to terrorism and drugs. In specified activity there is besides a place for moral leadership, allowing to keep a sense of uniqueness with the request to respect pluralism and diversity in the multipolar system.
War Psychosis in Europe
Political realists have long argued that value conflicts limit the flexibility of balancing mechanisms in global relations. Therefore, focusing on the vital interests of each power gives an chance to make pragmatic concepts of cooperation, cooperation and coexistence, depending on circumstantial conditions and preferences. The promotion of values by example, not by mission and proselytism, is an alternate to the erstwhile ideological crusades, humanitarian interventions and exports of "colour revolutions".
War hysteria among NATO and European Union alliance states has become the biggest obstacle to coming out of the “curious circle” of arrogant liberalism. Since the value of the Atlantic commitments is clearly losing its importance, the militaristic offensive of the EU's majority gives emergence to more negative emotions, the little chances of building an autonomous "Eurozone" power. There are more and more observers who, in the fresh doctrine of European atomic deterrence of Russia without US participation, see the absurdity of this undertaking.
However, the EU-British Europeans request to fuel their fear of Russia and Putin, as it serves to distract societies from real problems. The war spectrum sends out crises against migration, identity, terrorism, pauperization, social safety and others. Mobilisation in turn requires collective solidarity, even erstwhile governments lead their citizens astray.
The pro-integration forces, linked to the global agenda, want to usage the Russian-Ukrainian War to make specified mechanisms of common defence so that the "European superstate" can yet legitimise its position with a powerful military possible in the inter-power game. The constant threat of war, even though the US's activity is clearly reducing its perspective, is simply a driving force for EU-British geopolitics. It besides exposes Franco-German hypocrisy, which has frequently been able to put states in east Europe in chariots of its selfish interests against Russia. In the case of Poland, the uncritical acceptance of the ideas of the EU leaders, while at the same time cutting off from the Trump administration, is evidence of confusion in the fog, a manifestation of a frivolous fanfaronade for which will come to pay a advanced price.
Regardless of today's complicated situation, there is simply a chance to rebuild the autonomy of the European continent. If it was possible to reverse anti-Russian vectors in the United States, why would specified a phenomenon be impossible in European relations? Since Charles de Gaulle After all, there is an awareness of the community, based on the geopolitical and civilizational unity of Europe “from the Atlantic to the Ural”, which will let us to escape the American curate. The chances of specified a turn of events are rather considerable, as Trump himself makes it clear to everyone that the West is far from homogenous and loses its "block" identity, shaped by the US leadership and NATO control after planet War II. erstwhile the benefits of the exploitation of the "global majority" are no longer available, The West will be decomposed and will start looking for fresh solutions for itself, for which today’s “axle” covering Britain, Scandinavia, Poland and Ukraine is not ready.
It takes any time for European elites, contaminated by the triumphism of the West of fresh decades, to come to their senses and soften their missionary zeal to impose their views and values on another countries. Without the United States, liberal proselytism will lose its momentum, and the gradual exchange of political elites in EU countries will reconstruct more and more realism and reason in Paris, Berlin, Rome and Brussels.
Prof. Stanisław Bielen
Think Poland, No. 13-14 (30.03-6.04.2025)
