It is impossible to know at present whether a Trump presidency would bring with it worsening relations with the despotries of Eurasia-- those of Putin, Erdogan, Modi, and the Chinese single-party regime in particular, and most importantly with the first of these, since this is the one that still has its entire nuclear arsenal from the Cold War and that is currently threatening neighbouring NATO members with its revanchist ambitions. A Trump regime could just as well bring improved relations with these leaders, in view of his fundamental likeness to them. It could also bring nuclear war. Either way, though, it will be a capitulation to them. This, I think, is more than anything the message that needs urgently to be conveyed to nativists in the United States who are rallying behind Trump: he is not an American phenomenon, but only one head --still in bud-- of the great global Hydra of post-democratic authoritarianism.
This movement's founding fathers are principally concerned with strategies for regional hegemony in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is thus a strategic mistake and a sign of severe degeneracy for Americans to rally behind a leader who is shaped in this movement's mould. And yet at present Trump is taking advice from Paul Manafort, former advisor to the disgraced Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych, who slinked back to Putin's Russia, where he belonged, after the Ukrainian uprising of 2014. And when we see street art riffing on the famous 'socialist fraternal kiss' between Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, with the two embracing parties now transformed into Putin and Trump, we immediately understand what it means: Trump is taking his ideological lead from the principal regional hegemon of Eurasia. He, like Erdogan or Viktor Orbán, is a lesser, derivative Putin. If the Eurasianist movement continues to grow, if the United States falls to it in electing Trump, this will most certainly bring about the end of the Atlantic order on which American global power was built over the course of the 20th century.
I am not saying anything about whether I think this power is good or not-- not here. I am only saying that a Trump presidency would spell the end of it, again, either through total war or ignominious peace.
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