At the end of World War II in 1945, international relations quickly coalesced around two superpowers (the USA and the USSR), giving rise to a bipolar world. Since then, the quest for a balance of power, fueled by the space race and the expansion of spheres of influence, has fostered a logic of escalation and a mutual perception of threat that continues to divide relations between Washington and Moscow today.

 

Trump is fighting neither for peace, nor for Ukraine, much less for Russia, but for the survival of the United States

Mohamed Lamine KABA

 Created in a time of relative peace in 1949, NATO has thus established itself as the military instrument of American foreign policy (since the Cold War of 1947-1991 and is part of a historical continuity of war waged by allies or by proxy), at the heart of which lies the containment of Russia, then China, as well as the emerging and middle powers of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.The Ukrainian conflict, which Donald Trump calls a “Biden war,” has its roots in the 2014 Maidan coup, the starting point of a proxy war against Russia—an episode the Obama administration witnessed firsthand. In reality, Trump’s first presidency merely continued this pattern: preparing, under the guise of rhetoric, what is now known as the “Biden war.”Trump’s posturing (trips and other diplomatic gestures) is therefore consistent with the historical trajectory of American foreign policy: containing Russia to better control Eurasia.

It is therefore not surprising that the evolution of the Ukrainian conflict is now at the heart of a systemic reconfiguration of global power relations. Since 2022, this conflict has transcended its purely territorial dimension to reveal the structural fractures in the international order established after 1945, the unbridled bipolarity.

It crystallizes the exhaustion of the American unipolar model in the face of the rise of a multipolarity structured around Russia, China, and the Global South, operating within the BRICS Alliance and many other alliances of a similar nature, founded on economic polycentrism and emerging multipolarity. Through its economic, energy, and security ramifications, the Ukrainian issue acts as a major geopolitical catalyst, redefining alliances, reassessing sovereignties, and disrupting the geostrategic architecture of the contemporary world system.

Trump’s false messianism: peace as an alibi for imperial decline

From Ukraine to Gaza, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Venezuela, from Sudan to Cuba, and from Iran to Afghanistan, Donald Trump is not a peacemaker. He is the symptom of an empire watching itself wither away in the world’s mirror and can no longer bear its own reflection. When Trump proclaims that he will “end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours,” he is not preaching peace; he is preaching the survival of a fractured, disjointed America, caught in the vertigo of its own decline. Behind the simplistic rhetoric of the “dealmaker” lies the panic of a nation that senses the center of the world inexorably shifting away from Washington toward Moscow, Beijing, and the expanded BRICS.

Behind the apparent differences between Trump and Biden, the same imperial logic persists, a logic of self-preservation 

What Trump is staging is the desperate attempt of an empire to save its skin by changing its mask. Under his rule, as under Biden’s, American foreign policy has always been based on the fear of losing its monopoly on power. Ukraine is merely a puppet show where two historical temporalities clash, not two worldviews: that of a weary West clinging to its hegemony by proxy and that of a resurgent Eurasia, led by Russia, which is restoring the world’s capacity for choice.

Trump, by claiming to want to end the war, has no other objective than to redefine the terms of American leadership, no longer through the ideology of human rights, but through the transactional arrogance of profit. But peace, in his language, is merely a tool: he doesn’t want the end of the war; he wants the economic victory of the United States in a world where its military dominance is no longer an illusion. Behind the apparent differences between Trump and Biden, the same imperial logic persists, a logic of self-preservation.

But the world is no longer the world of 1991. Western sanctions failed to break Russia; they transformed it. Moscow has become the driving force behind global resistance, a magnet for nations weary of American unilateralism. Putin’s Russia, ostracized by the West, has paradoxically found its legitimacy in this marginalization: it embodies the triumph of reality over propaganda. While Washington grapples with its internal contradictions, the Kremlin is redrawing the paths of power toward the Global South.

Russia, a mirror of American disorder: when multipolarity buries the imperial illusion

What American elites fear most is not a Russian victory in Ukraine; it is Russia’s normalization within the global system without Washington’s approval. For if Moscow can resist, trade, innovate, and assert itself despite the Western embargo, then America loses its primary tool of domination: fear. Since 2022, every missile fired at the Donbas front has sounded like a death knell for the illusion of American omnipotence.

Trump, in reality, is merely a secondary player in this major shift. His electoral and post-electoral posturing is simply a theater of crisis where he attempts to transform America’s strategic defeat into an opportunity for domestic reconquest. By denouncing military spending in Ukraine, he is not seeking peace; he is seeking to deflect the anger of an American people who no longer believe in the Empire. He wants to save the United States from internal collapse, not through morality, but through withdrawal—a strategic isolation that would signal the end of American globalism.

But this retreat, paradoxically, is accelerating the multipolarization of the world, especially since economic polycentrism is asserting itself at the same time as emerging multipolarity. Every time Washington retreats, Moscow advances; every time NATO stirs, the rest of the world emancipates itself. The BRICS+, by expanding to include Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Ethiopia, are drawing the map of the 21st century: that of a world without a single center, where America becomes one actor among many. And in this new concert of nations, Russia no longer appears as the “devil” of the West, but as the architect of an alternative order, founded on sovereignty and the rejection of Western tutelage.

The most ironic thing is that Trump, despite himself and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) agenda, is contributing to this demise of the American order, as if the theories (Brzeziński, Kissinger, Fukuyama, and Huntington) on the strategic direction of Washington’s foreign policy now serve only to lead America to the precipice. By undermining the credibility of alliances, mocking NATO, and fracturing the Western consensus to materialize his MAGA, he is, in one way or another, unintentionally paving the way for the deconstruction of the imperial myth. Behind his excesses, he is unwittingly accomplishing what Russia desires: the disintegration of the Western front, undermined by cynicism and moral exhaustion. This is eloquent proof that the crisis of intelligence and leadership is taking hold of the American government apparatus, the deep state is at work, and Nigeria is in the crosshairs of Trumpism.

It is therefore obvious that the man who claims to want to save the United States is working to expose its fragility. Empire never dies from a lost battle, but from a shattered illusion. And today, the great American illusion is the continued belief that the world needs its salvation. Trump is fighting neither for peace, nor for Ukraine, nor for Russia; he is fighting to delay the end of an already outdated hegemony. But he has already lost that battle: the world has ceased to believe in the United States, and that is perhaps the greatest victory of contemporary Russia.

https://journal-neo.su/2025/11/12/trump-is-fighting-neither-for-peace-nor-for-ukraine-much-less-for-russia-but-for-the-survival-of-the-united-states/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.