In first month, Trump upends century-old approach to the world

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/23/trump-world-putin-ukraine/

He appears to be turning back the clock to a time in world history when countries with the biggest militaries constructed empires, demanded tribute from weaker nations and expanded their territories through coercion, analysts say.

“This is classic geopolitics, actually: influence on the areas that are closest to you geographically,” said Rosa Balfour, the director of the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank. “If you pair that up with this conversation with Putin, then you see the potential emergence of a worldview where the world is carved up by different powers. This fits in very well with a Russian view of things.”

“We are in a new era where, by and large, international relations aren’t going to be determined by rules and multilateral institutions. They’re going to be determined by strongmen and deals,” Alex Younger, the former chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, told the BBC’s “Newsnight” last week. “That’s Donald Trump’s mindset, certainly Putin’s mindset. It’s [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s mindset … I don’t think we’re going back to the one we had before.”

“This is basically a classic reversal of the role of perpetrator and victim,” Merz told a German radio station. “This is the Russian narrative, and this is how Putin has been portraying it for years. And I am honestly somewhat shocked that Donald Trump has now apparently made it his own.”