Trump and Putin share a craving for status. That’s why they both want to destroy Europe | Henry Farrell and Sergey Radchenko

There are people who argue that Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is not motivated by fears or imperial ambitions, but by other countries’ disrespect. Russia once commanded authority as one of the world’s two superpowers, but it has since forfeited that status. It knows it has lost the respect of other countries (Barack Obama famously dismissed Russia as just a “ regional power ”), and the Ukraine war is its way of winning it back. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, 15 August 2025.Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters What is perhaps surprising is that Donald Trump’s turn against Europe has similar motivations. Putin knows his aggressive revanchism won’t win Russia any love among countries whose respect he craves. But if he can’t be loved, he hopes at least to be feared. If you are in a social order that regards you as inferior, you have every incentive to turn spoiler. So, too, Trump wants to disrupt a social order that regards him and his worldview with contempt. The US president and his officials get respect from dictators and kings (although perhaps not from the ones whose respect they most want - Putin and Xi Jinping ), but they know that the leaders of many other democratic countries look down their noses at them. Now it is America that wants to act as spoiler, smashing the existing hierarchy of respect to replace it with a world where Trump will get unqualified obeisance. Europe, with its emphasis on the rule of law and multilateralism, is the strongest remaining example of an entire system of prestige and values that the Trump administration wants to destroy. The irony is it was the US that built the world Trump is setting out to demolish. After the second world war, Washington developed a new global ambition. Republicans and Democrats shared a faith that a world built on American values would be better for America. It proclaimed that democracy and the rule of law were the ideals by which countries should be evaluated. Despite the obvious hypocrisy (the US itself regularly acted in illiberal, undemocratic ways and preferred to judge than to be judged), this was the cornerstone of American “soft power”; its ability to influence the world indirectly through culture and values. Other countries looked up to the US as a model to be emulated. Modern Europe was the greatest creation of the old order. After the second world war, the US helped rebuild the economies of western Europe, fostering the success of liberal parties and often quietly undermining those it thought too far to the left or right. The European Union has historical roots in an arrangement created to coordinate US aid disbursed through the Marshall plan . As it grew, it built a new regime for Europe, based around cooperation between nations, the importance of law and liberal democracy. After Soviet domination of eastern Europe collapsed, the EU expanded to bring in countries to its south and east, on the condition that they internalised...

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