What Happened to Trump? Disillusionment, Ukraine, and the Return of the Deep State

I remember a time when President Trump seemed to embody a long-awaited political corrective—a repudiation of America’s imperial overreach, a purge of the entrenched bureaucracy of the deep state, and the promise to restore sanity in national security and foreign affairs. But that promise is rapidly fading.

His recent decision to bomb Iranian nuclear sites—just three days before the expiration of a negotiation window—already raised alarms. But the current decision to resume arms deliveries to Ukraine reeks of strategic confusion. Quite obviously, the warmongering neocons and deep-state operatives tied to the military-industrial complex have outmaneuvered the president, confirming a suspicion long in the making: the deep state is not only alive but thriving. The very machinery President Trump once vowed to dismantle appears to have prevailed over him.

Let me be clear once again and say this to political advisors on both sides of the Atlantic: the political elites of international affairs and security in the US and the EU have placed themselves, from the very beginning of the Ukraine conflict, on the wrong side of history. The war could have easily been prevented.

I have meticulously detailed the origins of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict—most notably in this very blog, in entries since before the outbreak of the war in 2022. From the outset, I argued that the root cause was not Russian imperialism, but the West’s refusal to recognize Russia’s legitimate security concerns. NATO’s relentless eastward expansion, the betrayal of promises once made to the contrary, and the refusal to grant Ukraine neutral status were all ingredients in a recipe for war. Ukraine could have served as a bridge between East and West. Instead, it was converted into a proxy for a delusional confrontation—one orchestrated by American neoconservatives and executed by an ideologically compromised, corruption-prone Ukrainian leadership.

Mr. Trump seemed to know all of this. His initial rhetoric rightly identified NATO as obsolete, the EU as bureaucratically overreaching, and Ukraine’s role in the conflict as problematic. His claim that, had he been president in 2022, the war would not have happened bears truth. In his first term, he signaled clearly that he intended to cooperate with Russia and respect its national security concerns.

But what are we to make of his latest decision—resuming weapons deliveries to Kyiv, implicitly blaming Putin while giving Zelenskyy a free pass, and backtracking on what was once a principled rejection of globalist interventionism?

One can only hope that this does not mark the collapse of Mr. Trump’s America First doctrine. His policy shift bears the signs of a betrayal of his own strategic project—which was never about isolationism but about prioritizing national interest and strategic restraint. Yet by supporting the extension of a war that, by his own account, would never have occurred under his presidency, he now legitimizes the very structures he once challenged.

President Trump—once an opponent of ideological dogmatism—now joins the chorus of moralizers in the European Union, most notably in Germany, France, and Great Britain, who refuse to face geopolitical reality.

Even now, in the fourth year of this tragic conflict, the West’s political elites have failed to learn their lessons. Instead of critical reflection, they double down on failed policies and reject the application of long-established theoretical frameworks in international relations. They ignore the philosophical underpinnings required to understand global affairs. They dismiss, for instance, the insights of thinkers like Francis Fukuyama, whose central warning—the need for recognition in global relations—remains as relevant as ever. It is precisely the failure to recognize Russia’s demand for dignity, its civilizational space, and its strategic red lines that led to war.

For now, the neoconservatives and other war hawks have won. They have reasserted their control over foreign policy by outlasting Mr. Trump’s initially meaningful stance. They are exploiting a moment of crisis—the Russians have intensified their military advance, and the war is clearly lost for Ukraine—to reinstall their failed doctrines. It is quite disheartening that Mr. Trump would fall prey to their pressure and allow himself to be talked into such an intellectually dishonest and historically tragic course. He is not aware—and nobody in his administration seems to explain to him—that the planned resumption of weapons delivery will only prolong an already lost war, increase the casualty rate, and cost further meaningless loss of human lives, territory, and treasure. 

The president demonstrated throughout his first term that he understood the conceptual tragedy of America’s post–Cold War strategic design. He took promising steps to reverse it, returning to a more principled and philosophically grounded posture—one that drew inspiration from the restraint of the Monroe Doctrine.

As I’ve written repeatedly on www.edwinseditorial.com and elsewhere, including in my political-philosophical study 44 & 45. The Tenures of US Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the proper orientation of international relations demands a return to foundational insights of political theory: sovereignty, recognition, the minimum standards of international law, an ethics of foreign policy, and respect for civilizational diversity. These would be the prerequisites for peace.

Trump once seemed to intuitively grasp all this. That he has now forgotten—or forsaken—it is cause for serious concern.

Comprehending Putin: The Unconsidered Resolution for the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

The statesmanlike strategist has always distinguished himself from ordinary ideologues and low-ranking politicians by his ability to assess an opponent’s politico-military capabilities and, more crucially, their political thinking, strategic goals, and disposition toward the use of force.

At the heart of understanding what has been termed a country’s “Strategic Culture” is the evaluation of its legitimate and genuine security interests. These arise from a variety of factors, including its geopolitical position, demographics, economic and military potential, its neighbors, and other pertinent aspects of statecraft.

However, in today’s corrupt political power centers of the US and Europe, this approach has been fundamentally reversed. Rather than evaluating a potential adversary, so-called national security specialists now resort to disdain, dismissing any legitimate security concerns the enemy may have. By doing so, they underestimate the opponent, inflate their own power, and ignore the will of the people, all driven by delusions of global dominance.

Similarly, anyone seeking to understand the adversary’s strategic concepts—whether to avoid war or, if unavoidable, wage it effectively—is now labeled a traitor, a puppet of Putin, or a turncoat who jeopardizes his own country.

The criteria for successful warfare—achieving politico-military objectives in the shortest time possible while minimizing loss of life and damage to both friend and foe—have been replaced by a strategy of prolonged conflict aimed at dubious strategic and economic goals, with little regard for lives lost or entire nations and regions devastated.

Peace cannot be achieved, and unjust wars will persist, if the enemy is not understood. One must take into account their strategic objectives, national security interests, and conduct international relations based on accepted principles of international law and underlying ethical considerations.

The security elites in the US and Europe must acknowledge their mistakes in the current Russia-Ukraine war. These include alienating Russia by disregarding its legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine, supporting the questionable Zelensky regime, and pursuing a damaging course of action toward the Russian Federation.

To end the war, the Zelensky regime—described by some as fascist—must be ousted. Ukraine should be divided, with the conquered territories temporarily under Russian control, and a new government should be established in Kiev. This government must be able to cooperate with both East and West and should commit to refraining from joining NATO or engaging in any form of military cooperation with the US and its allies.

Failure to address Russia’s national security interests and the continued disregard for the existential significance of Ukraine’s strategic orientation to Russia will only lead to further escalation, potentially culminating in World War III.

How to Resolve the North Korea Crisis!

When back in the days of President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. gave North Korea technology for nuclear reactors and a few billion bucks on top of it, only gullible liberals believed that the regime would use atomic capability only for peaceful purposes.

Every serious scholar and student of international relations, then as well as today, knows that nuclear armament – even when it’s only a few warheads – is the big equalizer in terms of national security. It balances out any inferiority in terms of conventional armed forces, size of the country, demographics, and economic capacity. During the roughly forty years of the Cold War, it was the paradox of nuclear deterrence and the so aptly abbreviated (MAD) Mutually Assured Destruction that prevented any severe conventional wars from breaking out. The likelihood of any conflict escalating to the level of nuclear warfare reduced the chances for a conventional war on a larger scale.

Given the historically burdened ideological antagonism toward the West, it was to expect that North Korea would strive to become a nuclear power at all cost – even at the expense of lying to treaty partners and the international community and making pledges it never intended to keep. After all the leniency and unsuccessful attempts at appeasement under Carter in the 1970ies, Clinton in the 1990ies, and the do-nothing strategy of so-called strategic patience under Obama, it is now too late to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power, albeit it a minor one.

It appears that we have somehow returned to the conditions that dominated a particular dimension of international relations during the Cold War, which means the hysteria on the part of the Strategic Community in the U.S. is unwarranted – and so is President Trump’s martial rhetoric.

Against the backdrop of the U.S.’ unmatched military means in terms of global power projection and nuclear capabilities, I propose a two-tier solution to resolve the conflict with North Korea. These measures would allow avoiding further escalation and avert unnecessary distress for international relations and potentially affected populations:

1. The stratagem of ‘Deterrence by Denial’ has to be applied by implementing all capabilities for missile defense and interception on the Korean peninsula and all other potential target areas for North Korean ballistic missiles, be it the west coast of the U.S., Guam, or other regions and locales. These aggressive military steps have to join hands with civil defense measures for the protection of populations and vital military and civilian infrastructure that help minimize any damage in the unlikely event of being impacted by the use of weapons of mass destruction.

2. The promise of ‘Annihilation upon 1st Strike’ has to be plausibly and assuredly threatened to the regime in North Korea. The U.S. must unmistakably convey through diplomatic channels and public discourse that it does not intend to use nuclear weapons against North Korea first. However, it will annihilate North Korea if North Korea uses nuclear weapons against the U.S. or any of its allies. Despite its seemingly irrational rhetoric, the regime of Kim Jong Un will not invite destruction upon themselves and their country.

There is no need for preemptive strikes to take out North Korean weaponry or delivery systems. The cost in human lives would be too high, total success uncertain, and retaliation most probable. If it comes to this, the U.S. and the rest of the world would be able to live with the fact that North Korea and its autocratic regime avail over some nuclear armament and feel powerful and on level par with other nuclear-armed nations around the world. However, like all the others, it will be condemned never to use them unless they want to bring Armageddon over their people.

While implementing this strategy and defusing the danger of thermonuclear, all diplomatic and other means of conflict resolution and appeasement can and should be used to keep the radical North Korean regime in check and further neutralize the threat.

Dealing with North Korea in the proposed way should usher the United States into a long-overdue new era of measured foreign affairs and national security policy that relinquishes the overly self-centered geostrategic arrogance and hubris of the past two decades.