The End of the American Order: Zelensky, Trump, and the Death of the Post-War World

The Authoritarian Movement has gotten what it wanted. What comes next is up to us

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On Friday, in front of the world, Donald Trump and JD Vance berated Vladimir Zelensky. After welcoming him to the White House to sign a shakedown for half of Ukraine’s resources, Trump and Vance bristled as Zelensky firmly pushed back on Russian-friendly talking points, continually asserting the truth that Vladimir Putin had invaded his country and refusing to accept any other framing. A smarmy Vance continually called Zelensky ungrateful while Trump attempted to intimidate him, telling Zelensky over and over he didn’t “have the cards” and that he was “gambling with World War 3.” It was a stunningly nauseating display. You can’t say otherwise. But, despite the earned shame it inspired, we should consider ourselves lucky it happened.

Trump’s rancid performance should serve as a much-needed wake-up call. His petulance, his disrespect, his abhorrent performance as America’s chief executive in treating an endangered ally in this manner made something clear that people have been trying to deny. For years, liberals, Neoconservatives, and institutionalists have been drowning in a fantasy that the United States of America, despite all signals otherwise, was still the world’s leader, a benevolent hegemon that could and should guide “the free world” in all its ways; that Trump and the MAGA, as well as the growing worldwide authoritarian movement and oligarchical confederation were either passing aberrations or paper tigers; that with some patience and dedication to continue selling the myth of “American exceptionalism,” eventually the fever would pass.

The American Empire they helped create through associations with convenient dictators and exploitation and intentional inequality was always rotten. It was just a matter of time before that rot took over completely. Every deal they made to use child labor, to steal the resources of “lesser” nations, every intelligence operation and economic act of terror they committed against those people and anyone they deemed as part of the “dangerous left” brought us here. Trump’s disgrace was a mirror reflecting who they are and who they have always been.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was always going to lead us here. There are reasons for that. When I started researching The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis, this moment is what I saw clearly. Is that because I was clairvoyant? Hardly. I just read what the architects of this crisis wrote. Listened to what they said. None of it was hidden and the people who should have been prepared for this chose not to.

Alexander Dugin, who is busy taking victory laps, laid it out clearly. He saw “the Neoliberal West” as destroying itself through the sins of globalism and he was right. The United States and its allies, which are all now fighting with the growing influence of the authoritarian Right, created the perfect environment for this to happen. They birthed a new class of oligarchs with no allegiances or desire for liberal democracy. The divide between their use of power and their rhetoric lionizing liberal values was a destructive contradiction that would help seed the ground for reactionary nationalism and antidemocratic energies. Eventually, using these things, Dugin believed, rightly, that Russia could press against the decaying structure and watch it collapse, making way for an authoritarian order to rise in its wake.

The Ukraine War was too easy to predict. They prepared for years and when it eventually happened “the West’s” reaction was predictable. While promising to “reduce the ruble to rubble,” economic sanctions were largely useless because Russia’s bloodmoney had so thoroughly infiltrated our systems that only a cultural sea-change would matter. The reliance on China for cheap labor and cheap goods created the perfect bypass for any actual damage, and in this America created its own challenger, all for baubles assembled by slave labor. Despite Joe Biden and institutionalists’ bluster, the writing was on the wall: there was no plan to win the war for Ukraine and eventually, as time rolled on, the meat-grinder would bring us to this point. Instead of taking radical action, which would have required an actual alternative to Neoliberal Globalism, they thought a wait-and-see approach would do. Meanwhile, Russia solidified its alliance with China and other authoritarian countries, the oligarchs gained more and more control, and the same Republican Party that was increasingly aligning with Putin and Right Wing authoritarianism continued to gain power by presenting itself as a faux-populist movement that would at least speak to the problems everyone could see and feel and knew to be real even as they only intended to make it worse and plunge us into the abyss.

And now? America is enduring an all-out coup. The President of the United States is an obscene puppet-king dangling from oligarchical strings and echoing the words of dictators, who remain his best and only friends. Europe is left to face the facts that the post-war American order is collapsing. They are dedicating themselves to rearming their militaries and potentially facing the U.S. as a belligerent in a potential World War, all while Right Wing authoritarian parties nip at their neoliberal heels. The strategy of attrition in Ukraine will do incredible damage. Russia’s army has improved over time and has gotten a close-up practice in fighting against NATO and the West’s weaponry and strategies. The will to oppose them, in America at least, has all but eroded. Soon, Europe will face a stunning choice that Zelensky was given: capitulate and fall in line or face potential destruction.

It did not have to be like this. There could have been a reckoning with the inherent problems of American Empire and Neoliberal exploitation. We could have rejected the influence of dictators and oligarchs, created something more fair and more human and moved beyond this awful system. The ambition of political, cultural, and economic control could have been curbed and god knows how many lives could have been spared, whether it was the ravages of the War on Terror or simply brutal, exploitative austerity. It could have been different.

But it isn’t.

What we saw Friday was something that had been festering under the surface for decades now erupt into full view, and having seen it we have no choice to but to reckon with it. There is still time to do something different. It requires, however, wrestling with an obvious truth. What the institutionalists in our political and media classes have failed to admit is that there was a problem in the first place. They denied it, they bargained with it, and they ultimately brought us to this point.

You cannot blame Trump for being Trump. It’s who he is.

You cannot blame the oligarchs and authoritarians. It’s who they are.

Given the keys to power and influence, this is predictably what they would do. After all, they told us. They were very open about who they were and what direction they would take the world.

Talking about geopolitics is a hard thing. It’s not that there are so many moving pieces, though there are, but it’s humbling as an individual to look at the scale of it. The design is, and has always been, intentional in its scope and intimidation. It’s meant to make us feel small and powerless. History is largely the story of sweeping currents across the globe that leave out the people being killed, being maimed, being pressured and exploited. But between those stories are individuals and movements that can and have changed things. Watching this new authoritarian order emerge and solidify is immobilizing and can, at the worst moments, feel inevitable. But it is anything but. There is energy brewing here. There is a growing backlash. People who are scared and angry and finally seeing things for what they are.

Once more, collective action is the only way out. Organizing coalitions that put economic and political pressure on the system, as well as what should be the opposition party, is the only means we have. Take Friday’s embarrassment for what it is: clarity. What Trump represents is an increasing momentum toward an oligarch-controlled country and an authoritarian world order that betrays everything we have been taught reality should be. The world they are trying to bring into being is hellish. And momentum is on their side. But that’s only because the status quo, including grassroots immobilization, is still holding onto a past that never really existed.

The walls are closing in. I’m sorry to have to say it so plainly. There is still time to stop this, but the moment to do it is now.

Resources

• What the Hell is Going On: Here is an explainer regarding our present circumstances for anyone who has had a feeling that the traditional Democrat / Republican / Red / Blue narrative was hiding something. Here, we go through the problems in the United States and how the wealth class has effectively put itself in a position to totally takeover our government.

• The Oligarchical Order: A primer on how to give up conventional and failed political understandings in favor of seeing how capitalism directs the course of events and where it is leading and what to expect.

• Authoritarianism and the Crisis of Meaning: Here we get into how consumerism represents an addictive drug that has hollowed out our sense of purpose, leaving us to take this as a moment of self-reflection, recognize that we have effectively been made to hate and doubt ourselves, thereby keeping us from realizing we deserve better.

• A Thoroughly Confused Country: Americans have little in the way of class consciousness, which was an intentional state desired by the wealth class. This primer gets into the class makeup of the United States, including contradictions and motivations, that will be crucial in understanding as we do our work.

• Authoritarianism as Clarity: As authoritarians take power, the world becomes a lot clearer. We can see who we can trust and who we shouldn’t. This episode gets into the history of Vichy France and the lessons we can learn on how to operate as individuals within an authoritarian environment.

• Fostering Hope in Hard Times: Some thoughts on how to maintain hope as authoritarianism sweeps in.

• Understanding the Enemy: A guide through the evolution of capitalism from free markets to its current evolving form - oligarchical authoritarianism, as well as insights into how our politics has made this change happen and moments in which the evolution has been curbed.

• Get Ready: Preparing for the incoming ICE / federal immigration raids with resources for immigrants and allies.

• They're Trying to Crush You: I discuss the emotional toll of the beginning onslaught of the Trump Administration and how it is a strategy for demoralizing us before we can begin resisting.

• A Coup in Plain Sight: An explainer detailing what is happening with Musk, DOGE, and the takeover of the government.

• The Birth of a Monster: A history of how the oligarchical class came to be and what their ideology reveals about what a future under their control would entail.