Trump’s America is beginning to look like Brezhnev’s Soviet Union
A heroic narrative confers moral legitimacy, buttressed by resistance to external threats. Then self-interest kicks in, followed by bungling, outrage and collapse. That is the story of the Soviet empire, from the triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945 to the humiliation of 1991. Nato’s story is three decades longer. But it is beginning to look alarmingly similar, as memories of its heyday fade, and resentment at the United States’ bullying and erratic leadership grows.
The parallels are not exact. Nobody joined the Warsaw Pact voluntarily. Nobody was forced to join Nato. American behaviour in western Europe during the cold war was muscular and unscrupulous (and worse than that in Africa, Latin America and Asia); but it never came close to the Kremlin’s treatment of the captive nations. For all its faults, the United States and the alliance it led stood for freedom; the Soviet empire was mired in lies and mass murder.
But under the Trump administration, the United States’ Nato allies are checking out, intellectually and geopolitically, in a way that recalls the Warsaw Pact’s collapse. One reason is leadership. A hegemon can be brutal, but not inept. Even in his dotage, Leonid Brezhnev was not as publicly foul-mouthed as Donald Trump. The Soviet leader’s disastrous invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 looks like a strategic master-stroke compared to the US war against Iran. The stunning achievements of the US military there contrast sharply with the shambling strategic incoherence of their mission. As Afghan tribesmen humbled the Soviet Union’s armed forces, the empire’s demise suddenly looked more likely. Rebellion no longer seemed futile, while loyalty looked like a bad bet. Why take risks for a loser?
Corruption turns believers into cynics: true of the grotesque venality of the Brezhnev era, and the shameless grifting of the Trump clan now. Mental compasses are spinning. By early 1989, it was quite unclear what brand of communism (Gorbachevian glasnost? Czechoslovak stagnation? Foot-dragging Polish pragmatism?) the Warsaw Pact was defending. Nor is it clear what Nato is championing now. Is it the cautious liberalism of most European countries, or the bombastic nationalism of “Make America Great Again”, with its cheerleaders in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Robert Fico’s Slovakia and on the political fringes elsewhere?
Geopolitics is a muddle too. Is the alliance there to support Ukraine, or to stand on the sidelines? Is it a defensive alliance against Russia (in which case the US is now absent), or is it, as the Administration appears to think, a global expeditionary arm of American foreign policy (in which case the allies are missing). Memories of the glory days (remember “Europe whole free and at peace”?) are as faded as the holiday snaps from a failed marriage.
As the past glories recede, trust shrivels. A belated attempt by the US administration to revive the counter-propaganda efforts that it blithely abolished on coming into office has aroused suspicion not praise. Diplomats have been told to work alongside the Pentagon’s psychological operations unit, and to push back against not hostile states’ information operations, but domestic political forces in allied countries that promote anti-Americanism, or harm US economic interests (read: Big Tech and its cavalier attitudes to our privacy, copyright and child-protection laws). The Soviet Union enforced ideological discipline through the Comintern. Now a Magintern is looming. Vice-President JD Vance and others are trying to help Orbán win this week’s election in Hungary. American officials in Europe are now subject to the same mistrustful scrutiny as Alden Pyle, the naïve-but-duplicitous CIA officer in “The Quiet American”, Graham Greene’s novel of Vietnam in the early 1950s. That one ended badly too.
Edward Lucas is a British writer, journalist and security specialist