Redburn Reads (Feb. 28, 2025)

It can't happen here -- or can it?

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the world is divided into three rival totalitarian super-states (Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia), each controlling their own territory. I’m reluctant to ascribe logic to anything Donald Trump does, but if there is a serious motive behind the madness, perhaps Trump, Elon Musk and JD Vance are aspiring to something similar.

Credit: The Economist/Getty Images

But what is their actual ambition? I’m going to run through a handful of different theories I’ve been reading (one from the editors of The Economist, two from the economist Noah Smith, and one from Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker). The excerpts are long, because they are all postulating some fairly complex ideas that I think are worthy of your attention.

In The Economist, the editors just released a new issue with a cover image that captures one idea: our gangster President aspires to be “Don” Trump.

You might recognise the inspiration behind this week’s cover design: “Reservoir Dogs”, a gangster film from 1992. Donald Trump has assumed the role of kingpin; behind him are some of the main players in a new, mafia-like struggle for global power. Call it The Don’s new world order, a might-is-right world in which big powers cut deals and bully small ones. In a week in which Germany’s probable next chancellor warned that NATO may soon be dead and America sided with Russia and North Korea against Ukraine and Europe at the United Nations, we decided to take a hard look at what this new gangster-style approach to geopolitics would lead to.

You may not be interested in the world order—but it is interested in you. . . . The administration is a swirl of ideas and egos but its people agree on one thing: under the post-1945 framework of rules and alliances, Americans have been suckered into unfair trade and paying for foreign wars. Mr Trump thinks he can pursue the national interest more effectively through hyperactive transactions. Everything is up for grabs: territory, technology, minerals and more.

“My whole life is deals,” he explained on February 24th, after talks on Ukraine with Emmanuel Macron, the French president. Trump confidants with business skills, such as Steve Witkoff, are jetting between capitals to explore deals that link up goals, from getting Saudi Arabia to recognise Israel to rehabilitating the Kremlin.

This new system has a new hierarchy. America is number one. Next are countries with resources to sell, threats to make and leaders unconstrained by democracy. Vladimir Putin wants to restore Russia as a great imperial power. Muhammad bin Salman wants to modernise the Middle East and fend off Iran. Xi Jinping is both a committed communist and a nationalist who wants a world fit for a strong China. In the third rank are America’s allies, their dependence and loyalty seen as weaknesses to exploit.

Territory is up for negotiation, detonating the post-1945 rules. Ukraine’s boundary may be set by a Trump-Putin handshake. The borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria have been blurred by 17 months of war. Some outside powers are indifferent to this. Yet Mr Trump has eyed up Gaza, as well as Greenland and in any Sino-American talks, Mr Xi could bid for territory, too, for example offering to limit exports in return for concessions on Taiwan, the South China Sea or the Himalayas.

Haggling over the economy goes far beyond tariffs to embrace a fusion of state power and business. That signals a retreat from the idea that commerce is best governed by neutral rules. Bilateral discussions between America and Russia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwanese executives and Ukraine include oil output, construction contracts, sanctions, Intel plants, the use of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service and a desert golf tournament.

The new dealmakers claim their approach will benefit the world. Mr Trump argues it is also in America’s interest. Are they correct? Both Mr Trump and leaders in the global south are right to say that the post-1945 order had decayed. When diplomacy stagnates, unconventional ideas can work—think of the Abraham accords between Israel and some Arab states.

Yet it is a leap from there to using dealmaking as an organising principle. The complexity is overwhelming: Saudi Arabia wants a defence deal to deter Iran, which America may grant if it recognises Israel. But that requires Israel and the Palestinians to endorse a two-state future, which Mr Trump rejected in his plan to bring peace to Gaza. Russia wants oil sanctions lifted, but that could cut Saudi Arabia’s income and increase India’s bills. And so on. Meanwhile, when borders are contestable wars will follow. Even giants like India may feel insecure. Because Mr Trump views power as personal rather than anchored by America’s institutions, he may find it hard to persuade his counterparts that agreements will endure—one reason he is no Henry Kissinger.

The world will therefore suffer. What Mr Trump does not realise is that America will suffer, too. Its global role has imposed a military burden and an openness to trade that has hurt some American industries. Yet the gains have been much greater. Trade benefits consumers and importing industries. Being the heart of the dollar financial system saves America over $100bn a year in interest bills and allows it to run a high fiscal deficit. The foreign business of American firms is worth $16trn. Those firms thrive abroad because of reasonably predictable and impartial global rules on commerce, rather than graft and transient special favours—an ethos that suits Chinese and Russian firms far better.

Mr Trump believes that America can partially or fully abandon Europe and perhaps its Asian allies, too. He says it has a “beautiful ocean as a separation”. However, wars now involve space and cyberspace, so physical distance offers even less protection than it did in 1941, when Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor ended America’s isolationism. What is more, when America wants to project hard power or defend the homeland, it depends on allied help, from the Ramstein airbase in Germany and Pine Gap signals station in Australia to missile-tracking in Canada’s Arctic. In Mr Trump’s world, America may no longer have free access to them.

Advocates of dealmaking assume that America can get what it wants by bargaining. Yet as Mr Trump exploits decades-old dependencies, America’s leverage will rapidly fall away. Sensing betrayal, allies in Europe and beyond will turn to each other for security. If chaos spreads, America will have to deal with new threats even as it has fewer tools: think of an Asian nuclear-arms race in a system with weak American alliances and weaker, or broken, arms control. At a dangerous time, friends, credibility and rules are worth more than a quick buck. Congress, financial markets or voters could yet persuade Mr Trump to walk back. But the world has already started planning for a lawless era.

Writing his own Noahopinion Substack post, Noah Smith also tries to make sense of what Trump is doing in his current dealings with Russia – and what he may well do next with China. Smith, like The Economist, argues that Trump is not making the United States stronger, but weaker. But Trump is not acting mighty at all; he is surrendering in advance.

Imagine, for a moment, that the U.S. lost a major war against a coalition of China and Russia. What would the victorious coalition force our country to do, as the terms of our surrender? I’m not sure, but based on the settlement of World War 1, America’s list of concessions might look something like this:

1. Withdrawal: The U.S. would unilaterally withdraw support for countries trying to resist Chinese/Russian hegemony. Furthermore, the U.S. would stop trying to wield influence in Eurasia, instead limiting its sphere of influence to the Western Hemisphere (or simply to North America).

2. Disarmament: The U.S. would reduce the size and capability of its military by a significant amount.

3. Deindustrialization: The U.S. would cancel industrial policies designed to compete with Chinese manufacturing, and instead economically focus on delivering raw materials and agricultural goods to China.

This list is roughly similar to the settlement that Germany was forced to accept at the Treaty of Versailles after losing World War 1 — it’s only missing the large reparations payments that Germany was forced to make to the victorious powers.

Anyway, now realize that under its new President Donald Trump, America is very rapidly making moves in all three of the directions listed above. . ..

[Dismissing the conspiracy theories that Trump and Musk are acting in the interests of Russia and China rather than the United States, I think there are two plausible theories of what’s going on. The first is that Trump, Musk, and Vance have decided to reorient America’s role in the world, to match their own ideological goals and their assessments of U.S. capabilities. I call this the “Metternich-Lindbergh Theory” because it combines Klemens von Metternich’s dream of a concert of conservative powers dedicated to cracking down on internal dissent with Charles Lindbergh’s vision of an America focused exclusively on the Western Hemisphere.. . .

Trump, Musk, & co. may have looked at that lopsided manufacturing equation and decided that there’s just no way that America, even in concert with its allies and potential partners like India, can match Chinese power over the next few decades. The daunting prospect of retooling American society to keep up with the Chinese may have caused the MAGA people to balk, and to start looking around for ways to come to an accommodation with the new reality of overwhelming Chinese power.

Lindbergh-ism — a voluntary retreat to the Western hemisphere — might seem like a way of appeasing the Chinese, at the same time that it allows America’s new rightist leaders to focus all of their energies on Metternichian internal struggles. Part of that idea is to divide the world into three spheres of influence, controlled by three authoritarian conservative powers — China as the ruler of Asia, Russia as the ruler of Europe, and America as the ruler of the Western Hemisphere. That certainly fits with Trump’s suddenly bellicose statements toward Canada and other nearby countries.

That’s what I call the Metternich-Lindbergh theory of Trump’s sudden rush to accommodate America’s foreign rivals. It’s basically an early surrender in Cold War 2, but Trump, Musk, & co. may see it as their only option for preserving their vision of Western civilization.

The Metternich-Lindbergh Theory

First, let’s talk about Klemens von Metternich, and the history of the early 19th century. Metternich was an Austrian diplomat, and later chancellor of the Austrian empire. In the early 1800s, Europe was still reeling from the French revolution and the massive wars it had given rise to. European regimes were terrified that French-style revolutionism would erupt again, overthrowing their royal families and reordering society.

Metternich was among Europe’s most conservative leaders. He had the idea that instead of constantly fighting each other as they had in the 18th century, European countries should be at peace and cooperate to suppress internal revolutionist dissent. Thus was the “Concert of Europe” born. For half a century after Napoleon’s defeat, a system of overlapping diplomatic institutions — many of them facilitated by Metternich — successfully prevented wars in Europe, while Metternich and the conservative Tsar Alexander I of Russia worked hard to suppress revolutionary and liberal sentiment throughout Europe. Metternich’s system had its ups and downs, but it was successful at preventing a wave of attempted revolutions in 1848 from causing major regime change in Europe.

Now consider the events of the late 2010s and 2020. Every American knows about the Black Lives Matter protests that started in 2014 and reached a crescendo in the Floyd protests in the summer of 2020 — the biggest American protest movement in at least a century, if not ever. But what many Americans forget is that the late 2010s, especially 2019, were a time of extreme popular unrest all over the world. . . .

In the U.S., these social changes manifested as what we now call “wokeness”. . . The Trump resurgence — and especially Elon Musk’s DOGE — can be seen as a reaction to those concessions and to that unrest. American conservatives saw a mortal threat from the institutionalization of anti-white discrimination, and have bent all of their energies toward crushing anything that smacks of the sentiment of 2020.

Russia and China, meanwhile, each responded to the unrest in their own way. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while certainly a bid for glory and imperial restoration, can also be seen as a reaction to 2019 — a redirection of the country’s energies and violent young men toward an external enemy. And China’s zero-Covid policy can be seen partly as a reestablishment of the draconian, pervasive social control of the Mao era — notably, Hong Kong was finally crushed using anti-Covid controls as an excuse.¹

America’s new rulers may therefore see their interests as more aligned with Russia and China than did the Biden regime they replaced. So ideologically, the MAGA movement is inclined to seek something like the Concert of Europe — a triple alliance with Russia and China to tamp down on dissent, reverse immigration flows, and so on. Of course this wouldn’t look like the formal institutions Metternich devised, but an informal partnership. The key would be to avoid any great-power conflicts and to focus on internal ideological battles.

The Reverse Kissinger theory

That’s one theory, but it’s not the only one. Another theory — which is probably still the one most people believe — is that Trump’s actions represent a sincere effort at a geopolitical realignment. This is sometimes called the “Reverse Kissinger” theory. Kissinger exploited the Sino-Soviet Split to make a de facto alliance with China against the USSR in the second half of the Cold War; the idea here is that Trump wants to peel off Russia from China in order to refocus all of America’s efforts on its more powerful rival in the Pacific.

It’s not actually a terrible idea, if you don’t care about ideology or the rules-based international order, and you only care about the pure balance of power. Of course Russia isn’t going to be America’s ally anytime soon, and will continue to depend on China economically. But Russia is weak enough that they might relish the chance to stay neutral in a U.S.-China conflict, and rebuild their depleted strength. And China’s hesitancy to support Russia in the Ukraine war shows that their partnership is more of a loose axis than a true, solid alliance. Meanwhile, becoming neutral with respect to Russia would make it easier for the U.S. to cement its alliance with India, which has good relations with Russia and which will be absolutely crucial in any long-term balancing coalition against China in Asia. . .

Over the next few months, we’ll get a clearer picture of which theory is right. If the Metternich-Lindbergh theory holds true, then the next people to get rug-pulled by Trump and Musk will be figures in the defense-contracting world and the defense establishment who want to stand up to China. This includes folks like Palmer Luckey and the folks at Palantir, who clearly see the imperialist threat posed by China. It also includes much of the defense and foreign policy establishment, including many of Trump’s own appointees.

Watch for cancellation of export controls on China, removal of troops from U.S. bases in the Pacific, claims that Japan and South Korea are sponging off the U.S. and failing to pay for their own defense, administration reversals on language about Taiwan, and so on. If you see this stuff happening, that should strengthen your belief that Trump and Musk want America to withdraw from Asia and focus entirely on internal conflicts and regional influence.

I think this is the likeliest way that things will shake out, though still far from certain. But if I’m right, and Trump and Musk think they’ll be able to realize the geopolitical visions of Lindbergh and Metternich, I think they’re in for some rude surprises.

Trump is still on his “honeymoon”, and people probably haven’t been following the DOGE stuff or the executive orders very closely. But eventually enough praising of dictators and denouncing of democracies will make the American people notice. America has changed since I was young, but it hasn’t changed that much — right-wing X-and-TikTok junkies still represent only a small slice of the population.

Most Americans don’t like it when their leaders sell them out to their enemies.

At the same time, the new alliance between Silicon Valley and the Trump administration suggests that our tech oligarchs have decided that their interests now lie with the top MAGAniks, who will let them get on with making money and building their imagined AI utopia. Writing for The New York, Chayka suggests that techn-fascism is coming to America.

When a phalanx of the top Silicon Valley executives—Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Google’s Sundar Pichai—aligned behind President Trump during the Inauguration in January, many observers saw an allegiance based on corporate interests. The ultra-wealthy C.E.O.s were turning out to support a fellow-magnate, hoping perhaps for an era of deregulation, tax breaks, and anti-“woke” cultural shifts.

The historian Janis Mimura saw something more ominous: a new, proactive union of industry and governmental power, wherein the state would drive aggressive industrial policy at the expense of liberal norms. In the second Trump Administration, a class of Silicon Valley leaders was insinuating itself into politics in a way that recalled one of Mimura’s primary subjects of study: the élite bureaucrats who seized political power and drove Japan into the Second World War.

“These are experts with a technological mind-set and background, often engineers, who now have a special role in the government,” Mimura told me. The result is what, in her book “Planning for Empire” (2011), she labelled “techno-fascism”: authoritarianism driven by technocrats. Technology “is considered the driving force” of such a regime, Mimura said. “There’s a sort of technicization of all aspects of government and society.” . .

American techno-fascism is no longer a philosophical abstraction for Silicon Valley to tinker with, in the vein of intermittent fasting or therapeutic ketamine doses. It is a policy program whose constitutional limits are being tested right now as DOGE, staffed with inexperienced engineers linked to Musk’s own companies, rampages through the federal government. . .

The techno-fascist opportunism goes beyond Musk; one can sense other tech entrepreneurs and investors slavering to exploit the alliance between Trumpism and Silicon Valley capitalism, building infrastructure on a national scale. Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, has arranged his own deals with Trump’s government, including Stargate, a heavily hyped data-center project worth a potential five hundred billion dollars. Apple recently announced its own five-hundred-billion-dollar investment campaign in the U.S. over the next four years, including a plan to begin building A.I. servers in Texas. However nebulous, these extravagant plans signal a spirit of collaboration. On Truth Social, Trump posted approvingly that Apple’s plans demonstrated “FAITH IN WHAT WE ARE DOING.”

Such visions of a technologized society represent a break from the Make America Great Again populism that drove the first Trump Administration. MAGA reactionaries such as Steve Bannon tend to be skeptical of technological progress; as the journalist James Pogue has explained, their goal is to reclaim an American culture “thought to be lost after decades of what they see as globalist technocracy.” Bannon has denounced Silicon Valley’s ideology as “technofeudalism” and declared war on Musk. He sees it as antihuman, with U.S. citizens turned into “digital serfs” whose freedom is delimited by tech companies. . .

Techno-fascism’s cold-blooded pursuit of efficiency quickly results in a state of alienation that may not be appealing to either side of the political spectrum. If Japan is any example, the collaboration between technocrats and right-wing politicians is unlikely to last forever. In 1940, the Japanese Prime Minister announced the New Order movement, which sought to overhaul the government’s structure to create a single-party state with absolute power. Mimura, the historian, said, “It reminds you a little bit of now: everything needs to be fixed, all at once. It is a little eerie to draw that historical comparison: this is the New Order in America.”

To wrap things up, let me leave you with Jeff Bezos, and his new ambitions for the Washington Post. Here’s how Benjamin Mullin described Bezos' stunning decision this week in the New York Times.

Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, announced a major shift to the newspaper’s opinion section on Wednesday, saying it would now advocate “personal liberties and free markets” and not publish opposing viewpoints on those topics.

Mr. Bezos said the section’s editor, David Shipley, was leaving the paper in response to the change.

“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Mr. Bezos said. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity.”

Mr. Bezos’ decision to curtail the scope of views on The Post’s opinion pages is a major departure from the newspaper’s decades-long approach to commentary and criticism. Under Mr. Shipley and his predecessor, Fred Hiatt, The Post has published a wide variety of views from the left and the right, including liberal stalwarts like David Ignatius and Ruth Marcus and conservative voices like George Will and Charles Krauthammer.

The new direction envisioned for The Post’s opinion section appears to be a rightward shift for the paper. Mr. Bezos’ new focus echoes what has long been the informal tagline of The Wall Street Journal’s conservative opinion pages: “Free markets, free people.” . . .

Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said in a memo to employees that the changes would affect the opinion section only and not change the newsroom’s mission “to pursue engaging, impactful journalism without fear or favor.” . . .

The discontent at The Post became clear during an emotional meeting held by Mr. Shipley with the opinion staff Wednesday morning. Over the course of an hour, Mr. Shipley fielded questions from his employees, who were shocked and stunned at the sudden turn of events, according to two people with knowledge of the talks.

During the meeting, Mr. Shipley said he couldn’t tell employees what the future of The Post’s opinion section would be for sure, adding that he was grateful to Mr. Bezos for “being forthright.”

At least we now know where we stand.