Putin's America

By Blendi Kajsiu

Today it is difficult to imagine what Putin would have done differently if he had been elected US president instead of Trump. The humiliation of Zelensky in the White House and the statement that the war was started by dictator Zelensky's Ukraine (and not by "democrat" Putin's Russia) are even more extreme than Russian propaganda. 

Meanwhile, the recognition of the territories that Russia has occupied in Ukraine, the a priori denial of Ukraine's membership in NATO, and the rejection of any concrete security guarantees for Ukraine by the US, especially in the face of a militarily strengthened Russia, is the very definition of Russian foreign policy in Ukraine today.

If we add to this the continued weakening of NATO, the trade war that Trump has started with Canada and Mexico, along with his attacks on the European Union as an anti-American institution, then we can conclude that American foreign policy today is completely in sync with Putin's foreign policy.  

The same harmony also reigns in American domestic politics, which is increasingly taking on the features of Putinism. The massive purge of American public administration from every professional at every level to fill it with the most blind loyalists of Trumpism is building in the US a public administration identical to Putin's public administration in Russia, where obedience to the boss overrides law and professionalism. 

Just as Trump's open alliance with the leading plutocrats of the American economy, like Elon Musk, is reminiscent of Putin's alliance with Russia's oligarchs. They openly support Putin in exchange for public policies designed to enrich themselves. 

One of Trump's first policies was to increase tariffs on Chinese imports, including electric cars. The main beneficiary of this policy was Elon Musk, the leading US electric car manufacturer and a major donor to the Trump campaign.

Immediately after Trump's victory was announced, the value of shares in Elon Musk's company, Tesla, increased by 27% on the US stock market, which means an increase of $1 trillion in monetary value. 

Simply put, Elon Musk spent $280 million on Trump's campaign and in return earned $1 trillion through policies that directly favor his company. 

And yet governing in the service of the oligarchs who support him is not even the main aspect of American Putinism today. Even more shocking is the fact that Trump has publicly stated that he will never accept the election result if he is not the winner. He has still not accepted losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. 

The probability that he, or his successor, will accept electoral defeat and peacefully leave power in the next elections is close to zero. Especially today, when Trumpism is increasingly taking control not only of the judiciary, the prosecution, the national security agencies (FBI, NSA, and CIA), the military, and the entire public administration. 

Chronology/ How Trump is bringing the US closer to Russia

The coup that Trump failed to pull off on January 6, 2021, he is pulling off today. It is a coup that aims to perpetuate Trumpism in power by turning American democracy into an authoritarian farce.  

This is actually the essence of Putinism. It builds a farcical democracy where elections have no meaning, where the opposition is eliminated in broad daylight, and where Putin is the law itself because he controls the oligarchs, the public administration, the media, and the judiciary. 

This is the political system that Trump dreams of and is building in America today. Of course, it remains to be seen whether it will succeed, because America is not Russia. American traditions, culture, media, and democratic institutions are more solid and democratic than Russian ones.

And yet we should not ignore the success of Trumpism in completely subjugating the US Republican Party, one of the oldest and most democratic in the world, in capturing the US Supreme Court, one of the most prestigious in the democratic world, or in organizing a coup in the middle of Washington and then being re-elected president. 

These are all actions that make you think that we have a Putin in the US presidency today. Not because Putin caught Trump on some compromising video with some prostitutes in a Moscow hotel, as conspiracy theories claim. 

Trump's followers are clear that he goes with all sorts of prostitutes and porn stars. Just as they have no doubt that he has cheated left and right, in family and in business. So such blackmail does not hold water in the case of Trump. Trumpists know very well that Trump is a piece of crap, but they support him because he is their crap. 

He is the political mouthpiece of a far-right ideology that combines xenophobic, homophobic and racist nationalism, Christian fanaticism and anti-liberalism. He gives voice to the many grievances with the neoliberal cosmopolitan order by bringing together white supremacists, Christian fanatics, the billionaires who have benefited from the neoliberal order, and the American working and middle class who have been the main victims of this order. 

It is this ideology that connects Trump and Putin, as well as all the far-right forces in Europe. The common denominator of Trumpism in the US, Orbanism in Europe and Putinism in Russia is the denunciation of liberalism, religious, sexual and gender pluralism, secularism and racial or ethnic mixing which, according to them, has led to the weakening and degeneration of the nation, to the degradation of national culture and human and family values.

In the face of this degradation, they offer a return to a white, Christian, heterosexual, manly and masculine race led by a strong man who represents these values, like Putin, Orbán or Trump. It is these men who preserve the honor and identity of the nation in the face of the liberal danger that makes children gay or trans, destroys the identity of the nation by mixing our race, religion and culture with inferior colors.

In contrast to the Enlightenment definition of the West as democracy, individual freedom, equality before the law, human rights, and the limitation of power, the far right offers an ethnic, racial, and religious definition of the West that is reduced to Old Testament Christianity and the white race. This is the West of the Crusades of the Middle Ages, where there is no room for religious, sexual, or racial tolerance or for the limitation of power. It is the West from which the sun does not rise, but the leader. 

Of course, the West that we have idealized as democracy, freedom, equality before the law, reason, and human rights has existed more as an ideal than as a reality. The colonization of the world, racism, and wars have often been direct products of the West or its hypocrisy. 

And yet, at least since World War II, the West, under the leadership of the United States, has tried to implement in the world order, at least theoretically, the ideals of democracy, freedom, sovereignty, the rule of law and human rights. An order that aimed to protect minorities and where the law is not simply made by force but also by principles. An entire institutional architecture from the UN, the EU to NATO has been built in function of this ideal.

This order is being rapidly dismantled by Trump today, both inside and outside the US. The principles of democracy, freedom, pluralism, and tolerance within the US are being replaced by xenophobic-racist nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious fanaticism. Meanwhile, the liberal order outside the US is being replaced by an imperialist order where the law of force encounters no principled, moral, or institutional constraints. 

American democracy, according to Trumpism, is not threatened by corruption, nor by the capture of politics by oligarchs, nor by authoritarianism. It is threatened by anti-Christian cosmopolitan liberalism, by the loss of national identity (read the reduction of the white Christian race), by the loss of gender and family identity, and especially by immigrants of color and the transgender community. 

From the Trumpist perspective, the liberal international order has severely damaged America's interests and national identity, leading it into meaningless wars and alliances in the name of empty ideals of democracy or human rights. Therefore, a new order must be built in which the United States can pursue any interest without the institutional, principled, or legal constraints of the liberal international order.  

This is a deeply imperialist new order where force knows no bounds. If the US needs Greenland it can simply buy it or occupy it. If it needs the Panama Canal it can take it not only because it built it yesterday, but also because Panama cannot defend it today.  

If the US wants to annex Canada as the 51st country because it is rich and full of white Christians, then they have the right to impose heavy tariffs on it, in violation of every treaty signed between the two countries. This will collapse the Canadian economy because it is almost entirely dependent on the American economy. The only way for Canada to do so is to become part of the US to eliminate the tariffs. 

The same logic Trumpism uses in the case of Russia. If Russia has the interest and the strength to take a bite out of Ukraine and Eastern Europe, where the US has no interest, then why not? It is the logic of the strongest. All the better when this strongman not only does not violate my economic interests but also shares the same anti-liberal, religious, sexist and racist ideology with me.   

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In this new world order, the most endangered nations and states are the small ones, like Albania and Kosovo. Democratic principles, values, and institutions serve to protect the weak from the strong, and not the other way around. Although they do not always perform this task successfully.  

In the new order of force stripped of any principle where the West is reduced to the white Christianity of the Old Testament and imagined in bloody war with Islam, the Albanian nation and our two states are twice orphans. 

First, because a West that is reduced to a single religion, or to the clash of civilizations, has no room for a multi-religious nation like ours. Second, because a West without democracy, without equality before the law, with extremist nationalism, and with a leader who is the law itself and the truth is the past that our nation, and our two states, have been struggling to leave behind for decades. 

The logic of the clash of Christianity and Islam, which inspires Trumpism today, is deadly for beautiful nations like ours where civilizations and religions do not clash but embrace. It is not an embrace that is achieved easily and naturally, and should never be taken for granted. 

Much blood, sweat and effort has been shed by many generations of Albanians so that the civilizations and religions that meet within the borders of our beautiful nation do not clash but embrace each other. It is an embrace that is easily nourished by the ideals of freedom, democracy and tolerance of the West from where the sun rises. But this embrace can easily turn into a clash if it is nourished by the ideology of the clash of civilizations of the Trumpist West from where the darkness of dictatorship arises.

Our nation knows this very well and much more intimately than the American people, who fortunately have not yet lived under dictatorship. Although today dictatorship and authoritarianism are knocking on the door of the United States like never before. 

We are well aware of ideologies that are based on the worship of an infallible leader who stands above the law and the truth. We are well aware of leaders who become one with the nation, whose critics are the enemies of the people. 

We know firsthand the leaders who use power to enrich themselves, who turn the party into a pedestal for their ego, who attack the media and the judiciary when it investigates their corruption, who fill the public administration with the most fanatical loyalists, or who accept elections only when they win them.  

For all these reasons, Trumpism and the America it is building constitute an existential threat to the essence of the Albanian nation and to the Western and democratic future of our two states. Of course, this does not mean at all that Albania and Kosovo should not strive to cooperate and maintain good relations with the USA and Donald Trump. This is an unavoidable obligation for both of our states.

But the embrace of the Trumpist ideology, or of Trumpism as a political movement, by any Albanian political force, on both sides of our nation, is an attack not only on our Western and democratic dream but also on our national essence.  (A2 Televizion)