Upgrade your Lucid subscription to receive invitations to weekly live Q&As, subscriber-only posts, access to the full Lucid archive, and commenting privileges. https://lucid.substack.com/subscribe The Geopolitical Context of Trump's War on America: Video and Essay Autocratic "Multipolarity" and the Destruction of the US as a Superpower Ruth Ben-Ghiat Oct 8 Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. Our next Q&A will take place on Friday, October 10, 1-2pmET. Paying subscribers will receive a link at 10amET on Friday to register for the Zoom gathering. If you can’t attend, a video will be available at lucid.substack.com, videos tab. Our guest will be the filmmaker, powwow dancer, and writer Julian Brave NoiseCat, who is a member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq̓éscen̓ and descendant of the Líl̓wat Nation of Mount Currie. His new book, We Survived the Night, sets his personal and family history into a broader narrative about attempts to suppress indigenous traditions in North America, and the historic gains made by indigenous peoples in recent years (the appointment of the first Native American cabinet secretary in the United States and the first Indigenous sovereign of Canada). NoiseCat received the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, and his first documentary, Sugarcane, directed with Emily Kassie, won the Directing Award in U.S. Documentary at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. _____________ A few weeks ago I made this video during my lunch break on a long writing day. It addresses the geopolitical context for Trump’s war on America. They are the initial thoughts that the present essay develops. ___________ “A unifying theme of the actions taken by the new Donald Trump administration and its Project 2025 and other allies is wrecking the United States as a democratic power, to the benefit of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and other autocratic adversaries,” I wrote in an essay published four days after Trump’s inauguration. Q1 2025 Forecast Ruth Ben-Ghiat · Jan 25 Read full story I alerted readers to a new American “participation in anti-democratic internationalism,” that would frame domestic assaults on our freedoms, and warned that a broader view would be necessary to understand and anticipate events that would likely unfold at home. Here I will give two examples of how the geopolitical context is important to evaluate what the Trump administration is doing at home: the recasting of the U.S. military to have a regional and domestic focus, and the partnership with China and Russia to discredit international law and democratic internationalism. In my January essay, I cited a likely “rerouting part of the U.S. military to domestic concerns and reducing its presence as a democratic guardian abroad,” to create a power void that could “encourage Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and other leaders to act on their imperialist plans.” For autocrats wanting to expand their hegemony in the world and commit crimes with impunity, the United States of America and its powerful military have long been a BIG problem. Enter Trump, who seeks to do their work for them in certain realms and also seeks to consolidate absolute power at home to be like them. To give Putin and Russian clients a freer hand in Eurasia and Europe, and Xi more leeway in Asia and the Pacific, a U.S. military focused more on domestic policing and repression, as laid out by Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on September 30 in Quantico, fits the bill. A Holistic Plan for an Authoritarian Military Ruth Ben-Ghiat · Oct 1 Read full story Like all autocrats, Trump is an opportunistic person, and will not want to walk away from the power and enrichment potential offered by political and commercial involvements in the Middle East (Gaza being an example) and elsewhere. The Iran strike on behalf of Israeli autocrat Benjamin Netanyahu is an instance of how the United States could help allies and “keep a hand in things” through shows of hard power. Yet one can see a move to reorient the United States to have a kind of regional focus, with a military focused on the Southern border, drug busts, stopping cartels, helping to remove left-wing Venezuelan dictator Nicholás Maduro, and pursuing foreign and economic policies favorable to current and former authoritarians in Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador. Discrediting Rule of Law Internationally The second area where we need to keep the geopolitical context in focus gets less attention. Paralleling his ceaseless efforts to delegitimate the rule of law at home, Trump is also trying to discredit international law. America is now a partner with China, Russia, and other countries in the autocratic enterprise of destroying the entire culture of democratic internationalism: law, diplomacy, trade practices, and what constitutes a crime. Recent books on autocracy by Anne Applebaum and Alexander Dukalskis note that China and Russia seek to “rewrite the rules of the international system” (Applebaum) to discredit threatening ideas of human rights, political rights, and accountability. “Multipolarity” is the name for this alternate, authoritarian view of statecraft which asserts “the right to development,” “sovereignty,” and “self-determination” but is shorthand for taking down America from its position of global power and influence and paying no penalty for imperialist aggression. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, March 19, 2023. Sergei Karpukhin/Sputnik. This 2022 Lucid essay tracked the evolution of “multipolarity” and the quest to have these lawless regimes labelled as paragons of true democracy. The "New Era" of Russia and China: Unrestrained Imperialism For Both Parties is the Premise Ruth Ben-Ghiat · August 20, 2022 Read full story In November 2021, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors penned an unprecedented joint essay that dripped with scorn for American democracy and demanded that the U.S. “respect people’s democratic rights” and stop creating global conflict. Then came a February 2022 joint statement of Russia and China about the “new era” of international relations produced by multipolarity and globalization. The premise of the new era - unrestrained imperialism for Russia and China - was all too clear. Just three weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine. This frame is key to understanding how deeply rooted Trump and his administration are in the worldview of our authoritarian adversaries. When Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and other MAGA personalities blame NATO, or President Joe Biden, for Putin having been forced to invade Ukraine to preserve its rights, they are echoing not only Russian but Chinese ways of seeing the world. For Trump, Democracies, not Autocracies, are the Problem Ruth Ben-Ghiat · Jan 31 Read full story Now Trump is trying to discredit the International Criminal Court, including by inviting two leaders with ICC arrest warrants for war crimes onto American soil (Putin and Netanyahu). Modellng scorn for international law by clapping for a war criminal was a major reason for the Make Russia Great Again summit held in Alaska. “This is not a pretty picture, but it’s important that we are prepared and understand what we are up against as defenders of democracy at home and abroad,” I wrote in January. That includes keeping present the principle that autocrats often value relations with other autocrats far more than relations with those they govern, and act accordingly in their formulations of domestic policy.