Liberal democracies view Putin’s Russia as a bully – and Trump’s US as an angry drunk with a bazooka. The response is pure venom, say Henry Farrell and Sergey Radchenko of Johns Hopkins

There are people who argue that Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is not motivated by fears or imperial ambitions, but by other countries’ disrespect. Russia once commanded authority as one of the world’s two superpowers, but it has since forfeited that status. It knows it has lost the respect of other countries (Barack Obama famously dismissed Russia as just a “regional power”), and the Ukraine war is its way of winning it back.

What is perhaps surprising is that Donald Trump’s turn against Europe has similar motivations. Putin knows his aggressive revanchism won’t win Russia any love among countries whose respect he craves. But if he can’t be loved, he hopes at least to be feared. If you are in a social order that regards you as inferior, you have every incentive to turn spoiler.

So, too, Trump wants to disrupt a social order that regards him and his worldview with contempt. The US president and his officials get respect from dictators and kings (although perhaps not from the ones whose respect they most want – Putin and Xi Jinping), but they know that the leaders of many other democratic countries look down their noses at them.

Now it is America that wants to act as spoiler, smashing the existing hierarchy of respect to replace it with a world where Trump will get unqualified obeisance. Europe, with its emphasis on the rule of law and multilateralism, is the strongest remaining example of an entire system of prestige and values that the Trump administration wants to destroy.

  • Paragone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    19 hours ago

    This is totally-blind to the motivation to butcher the “woke” from their world, because the values of the root-guru of the Christians, benJoseph, emotionally/spiritually burn their-kind…

    This also is totally-blind to the Negative-Sum-Game motivation of making absolutely-certain that nobody is “important” or “significant” after one has finished one’s mass-shooting/dictatorial-equivalent.

    It isn’t mere-narcissism: multiple of the dimensions of human-evil are in-play…

    • narcissism
    • machiavellianism ( does need to be intentional )
    • sociopathy( induced )/psychopathy( brain-intrinsic )
    • sadism/cruelty ( whomever pretends that this isn’t a motivation of them, is gaslighting us )
    • nihilism ( the dishonest “glory” of mass-shooters )
    • systemic-dishonesty, possibly including gaslighting ( doesn’t need to be intentional )
    • displacing objectivity ( an instinct-level NEED, for ideologues )
    • displacing correct-reasoning from lives ( huge with cults, ideologues, & conspiracists, & many “religions”, too )
    • displacing uprighting/evolution from lives, jamming them in ignorance/dysfunction, which is instinct in bullies

    I may have forgotten or missed 1 or more dimensions, but those I’m certain of, now.

    The “Dark Triad” obviously is only 1/3rd of those…, & some psychologists accept sadism’s being a dimension of human evil, so they have the “Dark Tetrad”…

    but understanding all of the motivations in an enemy-of-our-lives is wiser than just having a convenient oversimplification.

    _ /\ _

  • Asafum@feddit.nlEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    This is one of the reasons I dislike the blanket statement, sent to no one in particular, “the world is better with you in it.”

    …no… The world is in no way shape or form better for Trump or Putin being in it. It is drastically worse.

    Santa, all I want for Christmas is to be able to read 2 very specific obituaries.

    • Gsus4@mander.xyzEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      That thing that bought twitter also has a name I’d like to never see again until it is in an obituary.