Trump’s Transactionality Is Both Threat and Opportunity

We are in a surreal world where the US is no longer protecting the global order. US policymakers don’t seem to be interested in the geopolitical status quo anymore. It’s vital to understand that chaos is the new normal. Appealing to prominent figures in the current US administration to keep the international order from breaking apart is unlikely to cause significant shifts in their policies.

Donald Trump loves chaos

Why? Donald Trump thrives in chaos. He is one of the fervent supporters of changing the world order. Just look at what he’s doing. His tariffs imposed on Canada, China and Mexico could be just the opening salvo. Veiled military threats against Canada, Panama and Greenland show that Donald Trump has imperial ambitions, the extent of which is uncertain.

The concept of American exceptionalism is deeply rooted in the American psyche. America is supposed to be the shining city on a hill. Many in the US believe their country has a Promethean task to enlighten the world. The special status of the US means it doesn’t need to adhere to the same rules as the rest of the world does.

American exceptionalism, Trump-style

Trump is merely twisting the idea of American exceptionalism to serve his imperial interests. It would appear that, in Trump’s mind, fear and respect go hand-in-hand. That’s the kind of thinking Vladimir Putin understands well. Trump is actively seeking a change in the global geopolitical order to reshape the world in his image. Trump likely believes that we need global disorder first for the new global order to emerge.

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It’s an unsettling train of thought but it seems the President of the United States wants the big three (China, Russia and the US) to essentially rule the world. Each power with its own sphere of influence. How does this translate into the situation in Ukraine, Europe, and the world remains to be seen.

New world disorder

We enjoyed eight decades of relative peace from 1945 to 2022. That stability isn’t coming back in the foreseeable future. From the halls of power and grand geopolitical chessboards to regular people walking down the street, we’re all feeling the global chaos in our own ways. Financial crises, terrorism, wars, pandemics. We can sense the unease in the air.

Using Trump’s transactionality to our advantage

We need to find a way to use Trump’s transactionality to our advantage. Focusing on Trump’s flaws doesn’t help us. We all know what they are. Using his deal-making mindset to our advantage is the only way to secure a semblance of stability in a worryingly unstable world. Helping Ukraine secure its statehood is an important part of bringing about global stability.

Keith Kellogg’s peace plan

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, said on Feb. 5 that he plans to attend the Munich Security Conference scheduled for Feb. 14-16 to unveil the plan for ending the war in Ukraine.

Whatever plan he is going to present in Munich is unlikely to make Russia squirm. Bear in mind that he is the same man who has said presidential and parliamentary elections need to be held in Ukraine, especially in the event of a ceasefire. The US fixation on Ukraine holding elections rather than saving Ukrainian lives first is profoundly perplexing. There seems to be an unsettling undercurrent in both the Biden and Trump administrations of trying to please, or appease, Russia at the cost of Ukrainian lives.

The rare earth minerals deal

Donald Trump also happens to have a new idea for a deal between Ukraine and the US, namely continued US military support in exchange for privileged US access to Ukraine’s rare earth metals. Privileged is the key word here. Exclusive access to Ukrainian rare minerals right on Russia’s doorstep would humiliate Moscovia bigtime.

But what are the guarantees that the Trump administration will keep its end of the bargain and the deal won’t devolve into another Budapest Memorandum? Once the US gets its hands on the rare minerals, it can just ignore Ukrainian demands for weapons and Ukrainians won’t be able to do much about it. Is there a surefire way to avoid such a scenario?

It might be prudent to have two parallel approaches: negotiating with Trump and unofficially preparing for the potential worst-case scenario of US aid to Ukraine stopping completely and America becoming an openly hostile force toward Ukraine.

The only way to secure Ukraine’s statehood in that even is Ukraine getting back or developing its own nuclear weapons, as President Zelensky said. The issue is, as we know, that Ukraine becoming a nuclear nation again is utterly unacceptable to the so-called big three.

Pesky Peskov

Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, has recently said that Zelensky’s veiled request to give Ukraine nuclear weapons is madness. To call Peskov’s statement absurd would be diplomatic, considering the number of nuclear threats made by top Russian propagandists against Ukraine, Europe and, indeed, the whole world. Nothing is said on Russian state TV without the tacit approval of the Kremlin. Peskov appears to have been tasked with wearing the mask of sanity. He always sounds calm and collected.

But it’s the same pesky Peskov who was assuring the world a week before the full-scale invasion that Russia never attacks anyone. No one with an even modicum of intelligence can take Russian statements seriously. Russian officials aren’t even lying anymore, it’s worse than that. It’s like they are either insane or just don’t care because they know millions of useful idiots and prominent paid puppets are going to promote their narrative all across social media regardless of how absurd that narrative happens to be.

Make America great again – meaning what?

The demons of imperial thinking are back. It’s surreal but here we are, in 2025. Trump has mesmerized around 80 million Americans by promising them to make America great again. What so few people are asking is: “What exactly does he mean by making America great again?” Stalin supposedly asked about the number of Pope’s divisions. True or not, Stalin’s question mirrors Trump’s thinking. “We have the most powerful army in the world, why don’t we just use it to get what we want? Screw international law.”

Most of Trump’s base loves it. Putin loves it. It is hardly the isolationist stance that the US President proffers. Just like with Obama’s hope and change, each person projects their own idea of what making America great again means to him or her. That projection doesn’t need to align with President Trump’s vision of his presidency.

89 seconds to midnight

If Ukraine survives, we have a chance to restore some sort of a global order. If Ukraine ceases to exist, the global geopolitical order will collapse completely. The situation will then keep devolving globally until all of us end up living in a dystopian global panopticon ruled by authoritarian maniacs.

Or worse – a nuclear winter. This isn’t “Ukrainian propaganda” or panicking. To quote the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: from Jan. 28, 2025: “Closer than ever: it is now 89 seconds to midnight. Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”