4 A CHANGE OF ATTITUDE?
Putin, Russia and the Ukraine. A western synthesis, actually learning from Trump.
Well enough for the wrong reasons, Trump has possibly acted in part – as though – he would have subtracted the unacknowledged contributions of the West to ill conditions that led to increased tension and finally the outbreak of war in the Ukraine. He did not actually acknowledge it, but he acted in part similarly (not identically) to how we should have acted if we had acknowledged it.
That is so because he is willing talk to Putin about a peace solution that does not entail a full loss for Russia both strategically (a new border) and morally (the narrative of an aggressive, morally condemnable, Russian war is softened). Trump seems to have done that because he has a less value-based, more transactional mindset. He “trades” in advantages and disadvantages, without “discriminating” anyone based on traditionally Western, freedom-ideological moralization.
To be able to do so successfully, however, Trump must accumulate advantages (often wealth) self-interestedly in order never to run out of transactional potence / omnipotence. Thus, even if Trump subjectively (yet with ideological blind spots) would see his own way as being “pro freedom”, it is in effect overshadowing and putting pressures on the autonomy of others and – in effect – amounting to a drive towards domination.
Here, some may see a parallel between how he now acts as President and how he has acted as a business man throughout his life based on biographical information. His “winning though” seems expected to be accepted as him being right (both about what freedom and democracy is and other things). That is something that is harder to accept for the traditional friends of the USA the more his accumulation of advantages seems a self-interested expansion and over-shadowing of the autonomy of others with a type of “over-autonomy” through which he – of all thinkable individuals we know much about the history and personality of – seems to sense himself as a nature-given authority.
Trump’s seeming “easily planted ownership sensation” (a symptom of a sub-individuated psychological functioning), such as previously seen in matters both civil and political within the USA, is now also seen to envelope Canada and Greenland. This trait is even more worrying if European leaders crawl to Trump for security, out of fear of Russia – in effect sub-autonomously. Through such an ego-affirming embrace, Trump’s easily planted ownership sensation may expand to the entirety of what has now counted as “the West” for “the West”, all the way to Russia’s borders. It is not likely, but probably an exaggeration, yet you could picture him in one or in four years defending Pavlograd like his heartstone – as some kind of omnipotent saviour ego.
If Europe however, in a demonstration of differing from this mentality, actually subtracts its contributions to the ill dynamics that has built tensions with Russia over decades, that will be because they are still value-based in their reasoning, not because they, like Trump, have a predominantly transational mentality.
In a sense, Trump – might – have displayed the right attitude at the right time to defuse an even greater risk (only time can really tell if that statement holds), but even so, we might perceive a need to “better him” in order that chances for sustainable peace and stability of national security in Europe is optimalized.
Generally speaking, countries that are not democracies and have not internalized the ideals of democracy through their own cultures, may turn more dictatorial to defend themselves from inautonomy as a result of being treated as unequal for not adapting to foreign demands of democracy, understood as a meddling in internal affairs.
Russia may sense that military alliances are “unfair”. Russia may sense NATO as an arbitrary “ganging up” and an unwarranted echo of the long dead cold war. If you remove any factors that have to do with claimed morals (for instance the Western freedom ideology), that is in fact how it then looks. In order not to be disadvantaged by Western double standards (freedom-ideological on one hand, self-interested expansion and overshadowing of others’ autonomy on the other), our claims that democracy and freedom-ideology says something about “morals” are thus pro-actively disavowed by the Russians – so to speak – as a prophylactic measure against domestic instability.
Trump’s lack of “value ranking” between our countries and Russia, his more purely transactional style of relating is seen by many Russians as more fair; more square; less unfairly partial / biased. This is probably one reason talking to Putin about a possible peace has been easier for Trump.
With the “20th century Western attitude” of critizicing non-Western nations for not being more like us and allying militarily behind a superpower sometimes being perceived as a “bear”, undemocratic countries may want to try and undermine our democracies, because democracy, such as made by us to “say something” about morals and “what’s right”, appears to them as a reason they are treated unequally as nations, that potentially even being a threat to their self-determination; their autonomy.
So isn’t Trump’s transactional style in the highest position of power a good thing, then? The problem with it: It is not differensiating between states where civil rights through historical development have become well extended and secured, and states where they still haven’t. That may be interpreted as a threat to European democracy in a situation where we are already sensing a potential geo-strategical challenge from the east.
Perception of new threats to Europe may eventually cause even us in Europe to reason “backwards” that freedom and democracy cannot be ultimately important, not if it no longer seems to preserve our most crucial interests such as national sovereignty the best. If the individual freedoms and civil rights we mean to protect by democracy are no longer treated as a sufficient reason for uncompromising defence of it, however, our democracies could fall “from the inside” (like Marxism did in the east block). If that would come to pass, that would as of now probably be viewed as a triumphal revenge by some individuals in Russia. Paradoxically, they could sense it like this without wanting Marxism back. It would be so because of what they perceive as Western “triumphalism” since 1991. The Kremlin might, if interpreted uncharitably enough, foresee this potential dynamic and release a geo-political pressure to see what changes that can effect, as a dangerous experiment.
The degree of potential submission of our countries will be less severe if we ally as submissive to “the right bear”; the one that seems to “grant us” relatively more freedom. However, that same bear might still be willing to sacrifice us for the sake of peace if we do not “coalesque” – or – if the risk to itself in defending us turns too great. Even apart from those considerations, we should have more pride than wanting to secure peace through submission to any bear.
What has been problematic, is in part a 20th (and early 21th) century boundary-overflowing, self-emulsificating Western attitude, not our democracy per se, not freedom and civil rights in line with the ideals of the enlightenment per se. There may be possible a more ripe “attitude-expressions” for our freedom and democracy (taken as an invariable, where our attitude is a variable) than what is here called the “20th century Western attitude”.
The fact, is that as long as our democracies have stood, there has been no inhumanely insane and/or war mongeringly expansive state leaders in Europe. There was one in Germany (Hitler) when a young and inexperienced democracy fell there, and there was one in France (Napoleon) when the initial process towards democratization there was thwarted.
Therefore, between the “20th century Western attitude” and the attitude of Trump, there might be a need for what a bit pompously could be called an “elevated third position”; a synthesis of “the 20th century Western attitude” as thesis and Trump’s purely transactional attitude as its antithesis. Unlike both the thesis and the antithesis, it must be intersubjective and willing to self-criticism and to receive criticism from others.
The attitude expressable through this synthesis must look at historical justice supplementary to looking at where or where not not democracy as we understand it is currently present. It must have a nuancing, well informed and self-critical view on the effect of the sum of action from one’s own country and/or one’s own block-alliance of countries from decades backward. It must be brave/tough enough to “dare” attempting intersubjectivity despite of wildly contrasting moral and value systems (the opposite cowardize will lead us to want to moralize others with unilateral subjectivity, rejecting anyone who does not accept our moral as universal truth).
If – the opposite is likely to cause either further dictatorship crystalization and untrue “enemy narratives” about ourselves abroad, we must even treat the heads of other states as those nations’ sovereign CEOs. At this latter point, many in the West will ask why? Let us “chew” on these statements: “Trump‘s relationship to Putin is good, hence the relationship between Russia and the USA is good” and then “our people’s relationship to Russia’s people is good, hence the relationship between our prime minister and Putin is bad”. There seems to exist a “cut-off point” where the latter simply stops being true, granted that Putin’s government influences Russian consencus. At that point, the sentence turns into a stupidity.
Relating to all heads of state as CEO’s and seeing the relationship between nations as synonymous with the relationships between heads of state is not in line with our wish to be able to treat other democracies with direct criticism (symmetrical to our own receptiveness for the same from them) for the mutual optimation of democracy. It might still be the right thing to do as an exception to the main rule, however. Not acknowledging that there are exceptions to rules, is a bit rigid or radical.
What one may wish for the USA, namely a refound sense of national unity between mainstream, center-leaning Republicans and mainstream, center-leaning Democrats despite of Trump as an expression of an either mutated or couped Republican agenda, is what we must try to achieve in an even more difficult place, namely between Russians and western Europeans.
But, wouldn’t we then have to add “despite of Putin” in just the same way as we say “despite of Trump”? Well, we are optionless. Ignoring Putin is not a viable option. The way the Russian society now functions both structurally and culturally, antagonizing Putin means antagonizing possibly a majority of the Russian public for antagonizing their President. Thus, we cannot allow ourselves to exclude attempts that go through Putin’s regime.
The same is true to a more limited extent concerning Trump. As a European to go hard against Trump despite of him being the rightfully elected President in 2024 may in fact turn some Americans against Europe – realistically assessed. Americans should be aware, then, that mr. Musk, has made far more serious attempts at meddling in German national politics recently, in ways that would cause more than just outcries if it had occurred in the other direction, that being one of the multiple reasons Europe now senses the USA as a “bear”, for the first time ever.
All Western state leaders have long told any other state leaders (including the head of China) “any words of subjective truth” about their domestic affairs straight to their faces (like also Vance to European leaders at the 2025 security conference in Munich). However, never has any major government affiliate (whether financially powerful or not) actively supported the political opposition of another Western democracy. That – is meddling in affairs internal to another nation’s government for and by the people and resembles what American parts did in Russia shortly after the iron curtain fell. That is what mr. Musk did in Germany before its early 2025 election.
Would it then still express national autonomy, had the Germans been so spineless (counterfactually) for that reason to elect a far right wing government for the first time since Hitler? No, that would only have proven a status for it as subordinate to the USA (its new administration). In stead, Tesla sales plunged throughout Europe. The USA would never tolerate the same thing in the other direction. They could warn a party receiving such support with “suspension” for serving foreign interests.
It is important that European governments / state leaders relate seriously to Trump as the duly and hence fairly elected President of the USA, but unlike what is the case for the USA, even civilian Europeans could be more strategic (wise, if you want) if they chose not to use their freedom of speech to unwittingly create an impression of anti-Russian attitudes by fruitlessly antagonizing Putin.
European countries must fight for their rights without interfering with domestic issues of the USA or of Russia. Democracy means that the nation’s people decides, not the people of all the world. Even less, foreign serial-unipartisan executive governments or their government affiliates. Differences between Russia and the USA make it right still for civilian Europeans to use their democratic freedom of speech at least to speak out about Trump. The USA itself has a strong democratic tradition with freedom of speech and we are used to being friends. We both belong to an old “democratic fold” where telling each other words of subjective truth to each other’s faces has been seen as the right way to “keep up democracy”.
We mean to see through actions by Trump that makes the USA function a little bit (little steps) more like what we perceive as the functioning of today’s Russia, successively. What, however, is purportedly Trump‘s reason for an undeclared state of emergency? We cannot see any, but if there is one, we are very interested in understanding it better. Otherwise, since we view ourselves as friends and allies of the USA, we hope that Americans may still chose to take our voiced concerns (without any undue pressuring) as potentially valuable contributions to their domestic debate.
This is not something we can expect of the Russian public, given their wastly different historical background. That is merely unrealism at present – at least. Maybe that is something Trump has realized (a truthful insight he has had) understandable as a reason for his “better way” with dictators, but then you’d expect him to act differently towards friends; like Canada and Denmark. We Europeans, however, do have the chance to change our form of relating to the Russian government due to such an insight, without thereby also changing how we relate to our friends and allies.
If – many Russians would identify through moral subsumpsion with a nation wide “alpha-based we” defined by Putin (something which is not a fact – we shouldn’t dumbly project Trumps characteristics onto Putin), then antagonizing Putin would create antagonism to that whole share (possibly a majority) of the Russian people. It may be absorbed in Russia as a respectless and animous insult to all Russians loyal to their President, sementing it as a force of coherence protecting everything valuable about Russia internally, but as an antagonistic force externally.
We may profit from changing our approach and gain a consciousness of talking to and negotiating with “Russia through Putin” as its representative deserving all the respect that the Russian nation deserves. The Russian people will look at us to see if we have normal respect for them by watching if we have a normal respect for their state leader. Putin will look at us in terms of whether we try to relate to the nation wide “Russian we” without or around him in a way that can be interpreted as a sly attempt at meddling in internal, Russian affairs.
We may not be able to antagonize Putin without antagonizing the Russian people, and it might likewise be that we cannot relate to “the people” outside of and around Putin’s government without being seen as sly and attemptedly undermining of Russian autonomy by today’s Kremlin. In stead, we should gradually and successively, work intelligently and universally humanistic to improve our relations to that “Russian we” by ensuring of our full respect for its sovereignty, starting now – under Putin.
Stated here oversimplistic and overgeneralizing: If an ancient, primordinal thesis was that there are no universal human rights and we don’t need to value human life outside of our tribe, then a modern, Western antithesis may have been that we should value human beings in other countries – by claiming what we deem their universal rights for them in the face of their heads of state.
An emerging synthesis could be that we don’t claim other peoples’ universal human rights for them in the face of their heads of state – if – that is likely be counterproductive to our very motive (the valuing of the people of a foreign nation; here Russia). In other words, that we don’t do it if the most likely outcome is that it has either no or even an adverse effect.
“Higher than love of thy neighbor stands love of the farthest ones. It is the farthest ones who pay the price for your love of your neighbors.” (Nietzsche 1883, in Thus Spoka Zarathustra, Part 1, about love of thy neighbor)
In our communication with Russia, we should not mix up “different/unrelated cards” (cultural sensation or morals/values and geo-strategic safety – are two different things). Mixing them up will probably make good intentions in each of the two domains more difficult and less realistic.
Our arguments used in the relation to Russia must be attempts at clinical objectivity and devoid of our sense of morality (which is subjective) and our feelings (which is never an argument). The opposite will likely be taken by Russia as either (a) an impotent appeal on an erroneous premise or (b) an attempt at a “domination technique” (depending on the amount of physical force standing behind us) to let our subjectivity retain definatory power ulinlaterally. It is not intersubjective. In other words, a potential threat to Russia’s national autonomy as long as we are seen as part and parcels of a powerful, super-natiopnal, geopolitical gravity field.
Russia‘s great historical importance for Europe
Russia is a nation that historically in many instances have been decicively important for the freedom of central Europe.
Protestant reformer Martin Luther from Germany called for a united defence against expansive Osman empirialism, which in 1529 had come so far as to besiege the south-easternmost German city; Vienna, also being the German capital at the time. Over time, Russia took 2/3 of the job alone, mostly in the Black Sea region, to the assurance of the continued, nationally autonomous development of at least most of Europe’s nations (nations in the southeast of the continent exempt). As a side note, the term nationally autonomous does here not have anything to do with democracy since European countries were not democracies back then, yet national autonomy is nevertheless something deemed a “value in its own right” in Europe, a sentiment Russia seems to share with us. Moreover, for actually understandable historical reasons here mentioned, Russia may see it as a big national security liability not to have control over substantial Black Sea coast lines.
Russia gave France’s crazy “alpha dog” Napoleon such a hard setback on Russian soil when he senselessly tried to invade Russia to topple the Zar, that the rest of Europe could thus serve him the blow of his final deafeat afterwards, but even so with Russia still as an actively participating military ally.
Russia stood behind half the job of defeating Germany’s crazy “alpha dog” Hitler. In term of human loss, they took more than half of the costs for it. An often overlooked fact, however, is that the Sovjet Union was given material support in their fight against the nazis from the USA and Britain. Churchill called it a pact with the devil (Marxism), but the pact was made.
In even older, historical times, Russia involuntarily functioned as a buffer for the rest of Europe against the mongols.
Russia has never senselessly attacked Europe, but it has been senselessly attacked from Europe twice within the last 250 years. The “thanks” for their historical contribution to European freedom, such as perceived in Russia: To be excluded and “ganged up” against to the point that they would now eventually rather disawow being a part of Europe at all.
It then becomes easier for Russia to identify us as a “disturbing, Western” culture from which Napoleon and Hitler could arise, whereas western Europeans seeing that the nationalists Napoleon and Hitler sprang from two different countries where democracy had been fragile, fear that a similar thing might now risks happening in Russia’s constitutionally young democracy.
In western Europe, you used to hear more Russian language in the streets of the bigger cities; Russians traveling, after the iron curtain fell. The great majority of them pleasent, normal people, like the majority among people generally. Exceptionally on a personal note, I received a Russian couple in the B&B apartment of our house as late as around 2020. Really warm hearted, fun people. They drove up without having booked in advance, speaking into a google translate, and giving my wife hugs and nearly crying when they left the next day, because she had learned 4 or 5 Russian words overnight. Few Americans seem that moved that most of us speak English nearly fluently as a second language.
Even though not on purpose, Russia has through its historical acts – in effect – invested in Europe’s freedom. If that could be acknowledged by them, then by taking a 10 to 1000 year perspective, they could also think that bettered relations to Europe may pay off, the way investments should.
NATO’s lackluster executive coherence
“A sandwich more or less in the stomach of the jockey sometimes decides a horse race, decides over happiness and unhappiness of thousands, that is. As long as the fate of the people still relies on the diplomats, their stomachs are object of political unease.” (Nietzsche, 1880, in Human All Too Human, Part 3, #291)
Disturbingly, it may be – suspected – that sometimes, not NATO understood as an organization decides the course of NATO, but single members of NATO. The USA, not NATO as an organization, allowed the Ukraine to send donated American weapons against targets on post 1991 Russian territory (cf. on undisputedly Russian state territory) during the course of the Ukraine war. If that decision had caused Russian retalliation against NATO territories, NATO could potentially oblige every one of its member to war against Russia through actuation of its “Article 5”.
This makes the geo-strategic situation more risky and may lower the threshold for the eruption of a world war. California cannot act as a loose canon and drag all of the USA into a war. Californa well enough does not have an own army, but even if it did, it would then first be diciplined internally in the USA (you cannot act unilaterally as a loose canon when you are part of the USA). If NATO is to go “all in”, then NATO centrally should decide each smallest detail.
Small neighbors of Russia could – merely hypothetically – do similar things; spark a huge war in which they count on NATO’s full strength, maybe because of subjective and self-oriented motives. NATO’s executive coherence (or rather the lack of it) is – in effect – anti-Russian, since each member singularly (and merely hypothetically) could “bully” Russia based on calculated self-interest narrowly as a single nation rather than with a global perspective in mind, yet still seemingly even then with full support of the alliance. This shows a difference between NATO as a military alliance and a federal union with monopoly of military power, such as the USA and – merely possibly – a future EU, to the moral advantage of the latter.
Opposite, sometimes NATO-organizational decisions do not involve its member states in a democratic manner. When the Ukraine invaded a small piece of undisputedly Russian “1991 state territory” in august of 2024, NATO as an organization condoned of it as a strategic move of their defensive struggle, even thugh it is likely the Ukraine wouldn’t have been able to take that piece of land without weapons donated by NATO-members – singularly. If this had sparked a Russian attack on the European NATO and subsequently an actuation of its article 5, wouldn’t we then rather wish that NATO as an organization could’t condone of the Ukraine’s action unless each member state singularly did so? Democracy, here seems too indirect. If democracy is too indirect, that means it is less democratic; too much top down without the chance of bottom up co-influence. This too, would not have to be an inavoidable problem for a more federalized union. For the federal union to truly deserve being branded a democracy, the decision making mechanisms would have to be constructed so that they are sufficiently anchored in bottom up processes.
For both of the above reasons, it has been legitimate for Russia not to interpret a NATO expanding to their borders as safe enough for them; it adds weight to the arguments given presviously where the self-narrative of Russia pertaining to the Ukraine war was interpreted charitably. For both of the above reasons, the threshold that Russians perceive the Ukraine war as a proxy war beyond their last remainders of doubt is challenged. Do we risk acting like duds, like Germany‘s then undemocratic, autocratic leadership which fatally released WWI.
“‘State‘ is what the coldest of all monsters are called. Coldly it lies too – and this lie crawls out its mouth: I, the state, am the people!” (Nietzsche, 1883, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 1, Zarathustras speaches, about new idols)
The word tragic is not covering of it, if entire peoples should be exterminated because of the animosity and low systemic/operative intelligence of human state constructs or those state constructs’ too halfways “state-like” cooperation within the framework of a pact alliance. In older history, human beings in Europe saw themselves as rulers of the earth by God’s will and mercy. If we end up exterminating ourselves in a nuclear war, the word anthropology as someting differentiated from zoology will just seem like a cognitively advanced species self-service.
“The human being is a bridge spanned between animal and superhuman, a line spanned over an abyss. A dangerous way across, a dangerous underways.” (Nietzsche 1883, in Thus spoke Zarathustra, Part 1, #4)