More than a year and a half after the election of Donald Trump, would American democracy be walking in the footsteps of Putin’s autocracy? The traits of a political style long associated with the Russian regime are increasingly visible in the United States, warns Dimitri Minic, scientific director of the Observatory Russia, Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia at Ifri, in a recent note entitled “The Toxic Mirror of Russia: How a Political Style that Weakened Moscow is Eroding American Power”. According to this specialist in Russian strategic thinking, the assessment is clear: “The specifics of the Russian political style are now found in the United States, not through the export of the Russian regime as such, but through the emergence of similar power dynamics, against a backdrop of internal vulnerabilities.”
In an interview with L’Express, Dimitri Minic explains that what is observed today is not an equivalence of regimes, but a convergence of political styles. This is particularly reflected in the personalization of power, contempt for the rule of law, and the erosion of truth that is developing in the United States. These elements are typical of dynamics specific to authoritarian trajectories. He points out that the United States remains a rule of law where real checks and balances still exist, but they are on the path to “Putinization”, led by Trump and the Maga movement.
According to Minic, the fundamental mechanism underlying this “Russian-style” political anchoring in the United States is the “myth of betrayal.” Similar to Russia, the political elites of the Maga sphere are convinced that their national decline, real or perceived, is the result of betrayal. In the case of the United States, Minic identifies two key moments in the Maga’s mental universe: the Iraq war in 2003, and the allegedly stolen elections of 2020. From these respective founding elements, Trumpist political elites, like Russian ones, draw similar conclusions: the need to purge their country of perceived political enemies and traitors, and the imperative to reaffirm their country’s power on the global stage.
This narrative impacts their allies, who are also seen as potential victims of betrayal. Just as Russia has long claimed to have bled itself dry for its former empire while being betrayed by those countries, the Maga sphere holds a similar view towards Europeans. They are regarded as “leeches” and “free-riders” who do not pay their NATO bill and only benefit from American power. This leads to a strong sense of ingratitude, where traditional allies become potential victims in need of correction.
[Read the full article on the L’Express website.]
Dimitri Minic is a researcher and scientific director at the Observatory Russia, Eastern Europe, South Caucasus, and Central Asia at the Russia-Eurasia Center at Ifri. He is the author of “Russian Strategic Thinking and Culture: From Bypassing Armed Struggle to War in Ukraine”, a work stemming from his thesis and awarded the Albert Thibaudet Prize in 2023.
