In geopolitics, persistent patterns demand explanation, and what we observe in Trump’s foreign policy is no coincidence. A Venezuela under transitional American administration, a Syria managed by a pragmatic successor, Cuba under negotiation and an Iran under military pressure with no liberal alternative, all of this coexists with energy concessions to Russia, suffocating pressure on NATO and a notably indulgent presidential rhetoric towards Vladimir Putin.
Two hypotheses circulate in the current analysis. The first: Trump admires Putin and wants to bring him into his sphere of influence, in a bilateral understanding that would divide the world into “management zones” between great powers. The second, more serious: Trump acts as a proxy for Moscow, consciously or not, and American foreign policy reflects Russian interests internalized over years of financial and political relations.
The first hypothesis is plausible on a psychological level, but insufficient on a strategic level. The second faces an insoluble paradox: Trump’s pressure on NATO is forcing European rearmament which, in terms of conventional capabilities, would be the worst-case scenario for Moscow. A rational Putin agent would not produce this result.
A third hypothesis then emerges, more parsimonious and uncomfortable: Trump is not pro-Russian, nor does he act by proxy; it is systematically “anti-liberal”. The consistent pattern is not Putin’s favoritism, but the preference for identifiable interlocutors, strong men with whom to negotiate directly, to the detriment of unpredictable plural systems, with elections, Parliaments and civil societies that complicate agreements.
In Venezuela, Washington assumed direct management of oil assets; in Syria, successor Al-Sharaa reorients Damascus under indirect influence; in Cuba and Iran, the logic is the same. This transnational coherence is not unrelated to a framework that the leading press has documented: the overlap between State decisions and the economic interests of the presidential circle, particularly in the energy sector. This is not about imputing criminal intent, but about noting that the coincidence between foreign policy and private profit is systematic.
In this scenario, Russia is not the ultimate objective, but an instrument. Moscow serves as leverage to squeeze China, removing discounted “crude” suppliers from Beijing and forcing its energy dependence on Putin under unfavorable conditions. This Sino-Russian geometry explains tactical theater. But the real threat of this logic reveals itself closer: internal subversion.
By validating the “strong man” model, Trump offers ideological cover for forces already operating within Europe. From Orbán’s Hungary to Fico’s Slovakia, including the rise of the AfD in Germany, we have seen an overlapping of agendas: disdain for Brussels institutions and the preference for an axis of “transactional sovereignties”. The real danger is not a Russian invasion, given the trajectory of conventional disproportion that Europe is building in favor of itself, but the “Trumpization” of European politics. Rearmament will be a “paper tiger” if European capitals start to see in Washington and Moscow models of personal power rather than allies of values.
The most honest explanation for Trump’s behavior may be the most uncomfortable: he acts out of immediate transactional interest, without articulated doctrine. The pattern emerges from the logic of the business, not from a deliberate plan, but from the accumulation of transactions that, seen together, design a new geometry of power. Which makes it more dangerous, not less. Against a coherent strategy, it is possible to calibrate responses. Against the unpredictability that produces structural effects without a conscious plan, the only defense is strategic autonomy.
A Germany that spends 3.5% of GDP on Defense and a Poland building the largest European Army do not act out of ideological conviction, but out of Darwinian necessity. However, this autonomy will have to be, above all, political. Without an immunological defense against the subversion that mimics the transactional model, Europe runs the risk of arming itself only to discover that the adversary is already sitting at the European Council table. This could be the unintended, and most lasting, legacy of the Trump era.
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