As the world braces for Trump 2.0, this time with broad immunity and a tight inner circle of true believers and China hawks, the effect of Trump’s victory on Russia is coming into view. From ideological to geopolitical shifts, here’s how a second Trump term might impact the Kremlin’s calculations.
Following the post-Cold War era of liberal triumphalism celebrated most iconically in Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” pronouncement, the 2008 financial crisis cast serious doubt on the shibboleths of globalization. Skepticism grew across the globe about the capacity of the liberal economic, political, and social order to continue delivering either prosperity or peace. Now, “postliberalism” or illiberalism is on the march throughout the developed world, a trend that Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed years ago. Pointing to the refugee crisis in Germany in the wake of the Syrian civil war, the Russian president told the Financial Times in 2019 that the liberal system “has become obsolete.” The popular will, according to Putin, longs for nationalist states protected by impregnable borders.
America reelecting Trump, whose right-wing populist platform embraces isolationism, protectionism, and nationalism while excoriating immigrants, open trade, and independent institutions, is the most conclusive natural experiment Moscow could have wished for. In his ideological battle against the West, Putin has long predicted the “decline” of the U.S.-led liberal world order. In this narrative, Trump’s resurgence confirms Putin’s suspicion that liberal democracy is an unworkable failure, destroyed by the very democratic processes that made it possible in the first place. Instead, Trump’s win legitimizes the illiberal politics of countries like Hungary and (formerly) Poland, led by strongmen who represent populist nationalism triumphing over liberal pluralism.
Disruption and Provocation
Despite the ideological boost of Trump’s victory, the Kremlin is not entirely eager for the former president to return to the White House. Better equipped to haggle over hunks of real estate than master the subtle strategy of international bargaining, Trump approaches foreign policymaking as “naked transactionalism.” His first-term National Security Council advisors worked in an atmosphere of constant chaos as the former president lurched from one foreign policy bungle to another, harming everyone from U.S. allies to American consumers.
Bitterest of all, Trump never delivered on his 2016 promise to lift sanctions on Russia, instead adding on new, broader sanctions. For the ever-suspicious Putin, who prefers order and predictability, Trump’s erratic mode of governing makes him an unreliable and untrustworthy partner.
On the other hand, Russia pursues what historian Mark Galeotti identifies as a “strategy of inconveniences,” involving cyberattacks, sabotage, and other forms of political warfare that result in minor but irritating disruptions to everyday life in European countries. From delayed train lines to slow Internet speeds, the goal is simple: weaken and destabilize Western societies. A second Trump term, with its promise of mass deportations, new import tariffs, a greater risk of inflation, brinksmanship with North Korea, and a panicked EU, is precisely the sort of Western “inconvenience” that Moscow delights to see.
Ceasefire in Ukraine
As the Russian army continues making slow battlefield gains, adding more pressure on Ukraine with thousands of North Korean combat troops, European leaders brace for the impact of a Trump presidency on EU security. Trump pledged, after meeting with Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, to end the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours.” For his part, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance has expressed his desire to pursue “some sort of negotiation” with Ukraine, Russia, and Europe. The proposed negotiated settlement would likely concede a fifth of Ukrainian territory to Russia, freezing the current battle lines, and force Ukraine into a position of perpetual neutrality, barred from joining NATO.
Although this would be music to Putin’s ears, Trump’s new administration has yet to reckon with a timeworn international relations concept: the dreaded commitment problem.
The problem goes like this: when negotiating, say, the terms of a peace treaty, states have a difficult time making credible promises not to use force in the future because the state whose power is ascendant will have a powerful incentive to renege on the treaty and grab more land later on. Consider the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine agreed to give up the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and the UK. A weak post-Soviet Russia, swept up in the friendly mood of the 1990s, gave security assurances to Ukraine.
Two decades later, a resurgent Russia annexed the strategically valuable Crimean peninsula. Eight years later, it launched a full-scale attack on a country whose sovereignty and territorial integrity it had once promised to respect.
The lesson for Ukraine is bitterly clear: Russian security guarantees cannot be trusted. This time around, it is not clear who would guarantee Kyiv’s security following a possible peace deal, especially if Moscow continues to find NATO troops on Ukrainian soil to be unacceptable.
A Stronger Europe
Trump is convinced that NATO, instead of being a military alliance that protects American strategic interests in Europe while deterring the world’s biggest nuclear power, is little more than a protection racket in which humble small fry gratefully pay the big boss. He has thus threatened to withdraw financial support from NATO.
However, Trump’s critics tend to overlook that this position is not exclusive to Trump who, after all, maintained American military support for Europe throughout his first term. There is widespread bipartisan, public support for fairer burdensharing among NATO members, with Mark Rutte remarking immediately after the election that “[Trump] is right” about the need for European countries to spend more on their defense.
Moreover, as Washington and Beijing are increasingly locked into what political scientist Graham Allison terms the “Thucydides Trap”, the U.S. defense community prepares budgets and resources to meet the growing threat of military confrontation with China. This makes the redirection of Pentagon dollars away from Europe inevitable regardless of who occupies the role of commander-in-chief.
What a revitalized Europe will mean for Russia is not yet entirely clear, but a couple of observations can be made. First, Russian designs on Europe tend to be overblown, with most analysts arguing that the NATO deterrent is strong and that Russia is unlikely to be contemplating using force against an alliance member. While Putin has imperial ambitions in Ukraine, which I wrote about last year, they are unlikely to extend to other European countries.
Second, Russia is paying dearly for its war of attrition, suffering enormous losses of experienced officers and soldiers as well as military equipment. Even as the country rearms and rebuilds its forces, the Kremlin’s postwar efforts at recruitment, industrialization, and modernization will be slow and expensive. This process does not promise to create a more efficient military—and certainly not one capable of taking on the substantially superior NATO forces.