Hillary Clinton recently published an op-ed in The New York Times titled “Hillary Clinton: How Much Dumber Will This Get?” — a piece filled with seemingly reasonable questions. But the problem isn’t in the questions she’s asking — it’s the outdated framework she’s using to answer them. Clinton is trying to understand a future crisis using the language of a bygone era — the era of “smart power,” diplomacy, alliances, and the assumption that institutions can hold the line. But Trump doesn’t play by that rulebook. He’s rewritten the game entirely.
“Is there any strategy behind Trump’s policies?” she wonders. And concedes, with concern, that she doesn’t see one. But that’s exactly the problem: in Trump’s world, destruction is the strategy. The normal logic of democratic politics — where power is limited by institutions and policy follows reasoned steps — no longer applies. Clinton is looking for structure where there’s only wreckage. Blow after blow, Trump attacks the state, society, the international order — not as a series of blunders, but as part of a plan. The goal is chaos. Controlled chaos. And power within it.
Maybe Trump would like to return to the 19th-century world of empires and spheres of influence — at least that would be predictable. But today’s version of Trumpism isn’t really about foreign conquest. It’s about domestic dominance. If he genuinely wanted to revive some old imperial logic, he wouldn’t be handing Ukraine and Europe to Putin without a fight. His focus isn’t global — it’s internal.
In this model, destruction isn’t a side effect — it’s the whole point. A weakened military? A gutted diplomatic corps? An unstable economy and broken norms? All costs acceptable. Trump doesn’t want to govern — he wants to rule. Like any strongman, he understands that power isn’t won through competence, but through fear, spectacle, and attrition. Everything else — institutions, public trust, even national security — is expendable.
His endgame is simple: seize power and never let go. And to do that, he must not only defeat Democrats as a party — he must destroy faith in democracy itself. If elections can no longer be trusted, if courts are compromised, if dissent is labeled treason, then there’s no mechanism left to remove him. This isn’t just about beating the “elites” — it’s about erasing them.
As someone from Russia, I recognize this playbook all too well. At first glance, Putin’s actions seemed irrational: annexing Crimea, expelling talent, crashing the economy, handing industries to cronies, starting unwinnable wars. But in hindsight, it all makes sense. The goal was never progress or prosperity. It was power. Power over people. Power over the map.
Trump is following a similar blueprint. Instead of invading neighbors, he’s assaulting the courts. Instead of exiling intellectuals, he’s purging agencies. Instead of a hybrid war abroad, he’s dismantling the system from the inside.
American democracy is proud of its history — and it should be. But maybe it’s grown too confident in its own resilience. Europe built its resistance to tyranny over centuries of war and revolution. That immunity isn’t perfect — as both Hitler and Orbán showed — but it’s there. The United States is now facing, for the first time, a homegrown authoritarian threat with real momentum. And the sad reality is that the Democratic establishment seems unprepared for it — retreating into familiar rituals and rhetoric while the ground shifts beneath their feet.
And yet, there’s one big difference between America and Russia — one that could change everything: guns. Private firearms are deeply embedded in American life. Unlike in Russia, where the state monopolizes violence through its security forces, millions of Americans not only own weapons but believe they have a constitutional duty to resist tyranny. If Trump crosses a certain line, the response may not be limited to protests or lawsuits. And on both sides — citizens, police, federal agents — people will be armed. That could spiral into disaster. But it could also stop him in his tracks.
Putin has always feared that kind of uprising. That’s why he flooded the country with police and private militias, and why he never allowed widespread gun ownership. The continuation of the war in Ukraine is part of that fear too — it sends soldiers away and ensures they don’t come home battle-hardened and angry. If they do come back, better in coffins. That’s how his regime maintains control. And it’s a model Trump may be learning from — quickly and willingly.
Another major warning sign in American politics today is the absence of strong voices. Trump is tearing through democratic norms like a wrecking ball — so where are the Obamas, the Harrises, the Bidens? Where is the bold, public resistance? Clinton’s article shows us that Democratic leaders are still stuck in the old cycle of primaries, soundbites, and polite debates — while the very system they rely on is being hollowed out. The nation doesn’t need more politicians. It needs leaders.
If the Democrats don’t recognize the scale of what’s happening, they risk becoming irrelevant — like Russia’s liberals, who kept repeating the slogans of the 1990s while Putin reshaped the country beneath their feet. One by one, they were pushed out — still talking, still campaigning, still not understanding that the field had already changed. America can still avoid that fate. But the window is closing.
Time is Trump’s greatest constraint — and democracy last advantage. Putin had two decades to build his power structure. Trump has, at most, two to four years. He knows that. That’s why he’s rushing — why every move is faster, bolder, more reckless. He’s trying to break the system before it has time to fight back. And he won’t do it alone. Help is likely on the way — from the shadows of Moscow. Former KGB and FSB officers have decades of experience in crushing dissent, manufacturing consent, and hollowing out democracies from the inside. In exchange for geopolitical concessions, they’d gladly lend him their playbook.
Many Americans believe such a takeover is impossible — that the Constitution, the courts, or the Second Amendment will stop it. They point to the Declaration of Independence, to the sacred promise of resistance: “…when a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…”
But the American system has never faced anything quite like this — an authoritarian project armed with modern media, institutional decay, and foreign know-how. The KGB wasn’t just about bullets — it was about fear. Fear and loyalty. Intimidation and incentives. That’s how repression works: not just through violence, but through silence. Through people too afraid to speak and too tired to fight. That’s how it worked in the gulags. That’s how it works in modern Russia. And Trump is learning fast.
Which brings us to the most pressing question of all: When — not if — Trump turns to open violence, will enough brave people still be free to resist? Or will fear and calculation already have paralyzed them? Our only hope may lie in Trump’s lack of time. But he does have a successor: J.D. Vance. Young, ambitious, and even more radical. If Democrats don’t wake up now — no one may be left to wake up tomorrow.
How this will affect Indigenous Peoples remains to be seen. But the outlines are already there. Indigenous lands are once again becoming bargaining chips in the geopolitical chessboard of global powers.
J.D. Vance has already floated the idea of Inuit self-determination in Greenland — which means breaking from Denmark and possibly joining the U.S.
Meanwhile, Putin is making his own moves. A recent high-profile meeting in Salekhard brought together Sergei Kiriyenko (Putin’s domestic policy chief), Igor Barinov (head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs), and Alexander Zhoga (presidential envoy for the Urals). For those who understand Russia, this is no ordinary meeting. Kiriyenko doesn’t meet with Indigenous communities unless it serves a broader purpose.
This is the signal: The Arctic is heating up again — politically. And once again, Indigenous Peoples are not the players. They’re the pieces.
UPD (March 30, 2025): By the way, many are asking — what’s behind Trump’s repeated attacks on Mexico, Canada, Denmark over Greenland, and the European Union as a whole? Why the constant lashing out and trade wars? To me, the answer is clear: Trump is looking for a casus belli — a pretext for war. Not a war with a powerful adversary who could retaliate with nuclear missiles. He wants a small, “winnable,” regional conflict. And from there, the script is familiar: the homeland is in danger, the nation must rally around the leader, “you don’t switch horses midstream” — and so on, straight from the authoritarian playbook. We’ve seen it before. History repeats itself.
Dmitry Berezhkov. March 29, 2025