Why we need to start treating Trump’s America like Russia

There’s been a rash of speculation surrounding the visit by CIA director John Ratcliffe to Moscow last week. Half-hearted attempts at secrecy by both the United States and Russia have fuelled some alarming theories about what exactly was being negotiated, and whether it might be bad news for Ukraine or Europe. That’s because in the context of the new relationship between the United States and Russia under Donald Trump, both Ukraine and Europe have every reason to be concerned.The defining feature of the second Trump presidency’s foreign policy has been accommodation for Russia – not only scaling back support Ukraine and preparing to do so for Europe, but also dismantling the obstacles the United States once presented to Russia expanding its power and reach around the world and in the United States itself.Trump 2.0 has seen the US drift closer to Russia, attempting to accommodate them back into global affairs (Reuters)But while the US may be determined to give Russia an easy ride in global affairs, there are also disturbing echoes of Russia sounding through clearly in how the US is managing its own affairs at home.That’s one of the most striking findings of my book American Overthrow, published this week. When I started to write the book, it was going to describe how America’s policy shifts were suddenly achieving Russian objectives that previously belonged in the Kremlin’s wildest fantasies, like engineering a serious rift between the United States and its Nato allies, or starting the long-anticipated drawdown of American forces from the defence of Europe.But as I conducted the research for the book, it became clear that an even more fundamental and disturbing process was at work: under the direction of Trump and those around him, the United States was in many respects coming to resemble Russia itself.That’s not just in foreign affairs, although Trump’s aspirations to expand American territory at the expense of its neighbours like Canada and the more distant Greenland directly mimic Putin’s ambitions for his own immediate neighbourhood. It’s also in the way power is exercised at home.2025: Putin’s expansionist desires are echoed in Trump’s own movements against his neighbours (AFP/Getty)The Trump administration has borrowed Vladimir Putin's playbook of consolidation of power, demonstrated 25 years ago when he became president in Russia. Sidelining democratic institutions, raising the presidency above the rule of law, weaponising justice, and above all setting conditions for dictating the outcome of upcoming elections are all symptoms of the Russification of America.As a result, analysts who have dedicated their careers to studying Russia are now among the most coherent and convincing explainers of what is happening in the United States – because it is all grimly familiar. The examples are as varied as they are depressing. The transformation of the Department of Justice from an independent, apolitical agency to one that does the president’s bidding has been astonishingly rapid. Use of the courts as a weapon against the president’s enemies directly echoes the Russian system. For now, the resistance of lower-echelon courts doing their best to uphold the rule of law means it is still relatively hard to convict somebody in the US if no crime was actually committed, but the use of legal process to immiserate and impoverish victims with or without a conviction also parallels Russian practice. Deportation as a tool of repression carries its own echoes of Russia’s darkest daysSo too does Trump’s practice of first identifying the individual to be prosecuted, and only then directing that a crime be found with which they can be charged. The Russian phrase for this process is telefonnoye pravo, or “telephone law”, for the preferred means of delivering instructions to judges. But Trump feels no need to conceal his instructions in this matter, and is content to broadcast them on social media. An ominous punctuation mark in America’s metamorphosis came in mid 2025, when mainstream US media stopped using the word “purges” ironically to describe the hounding out of government and the military of Trump critics and those who had previously investigated or prosecuted him, and started using the word in all seriousness.Deportation as a tool of repression carries its own echoes of Russia’s darkest days. While the ongoing deportation flights from the US to sometimes apparently random third countries might seem to have little in common with the mass removal and enslavement of populations under Stalin, ideologically driven roundups with daily arrest quotas that sweep up the innocent are now a feature of operations by ICE as well as the NKVD. The transformation extends to the US armed services as well as domestic paramilitary security forces. Previously, one thing that set America’s military apart from the armed forces of Russia was their adherence to international humanitarian law. Even if it was not with 100 per cent success, America’s service personnel worked hard to minimise the impact of operations on civilians – in direct contrast to Russia, which exploits the suffering of the innocent as a weapon of war. Under Trump and secretary of defence Pete Hegseth, that has changed rapidly, and the extrajudicial murder of people at sea in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific has been accompanied by direct calls by Trump to commit war crimes against Iran.Pete Hegseth and Trump have quickly turned the American armed forces into a shower of brutal – sometimes extrajudicial – force (Reuters)Even America’s war on Iran carries startling parallels with Russia’s war on Ukraine. Both are misguided military adventures launched under the impression that they would be victorious in a matter of days because the respective presidents believed their own propaganda – and both presidents refuse to call it a war for their own domestic reasons. In the US, domestic politics itself, and how policy is directed and enforced, is also undergoing rapid change. Russia’s ultra-wealthy are still sometimes referred to as “oligarchs” – but Trump's billionaire backers fit the term more closely, since unlike their Russian counterparts they can actually influence state policy in their own interests.Another process that mimics Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of power a quarter-century before is the takeover of major media outlets by individuals friendly to the administrationLooking at the United States and seeing Russia seems mad – “preposterous” as one reviewer of the book put it – until you look closer and see just how closely Washington is mimicking Moscow. The same reviewer went on to explain that the evidence is insurmountable, and consequently what is happening in the United States today “isn’t preposterous. It’s explosive.”That begs the question of why more people in the United States do not appear to see what is happening or are willing to take action against it. The reason may lie partly in the overall picture being difficult to discern from within the country. Another process that mimics Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of power a quarter-century before is the takeover of major media outlets by individuals friendly to the administration, creating an increasingly homogenous media landscape where many news consumers in the country will see only the version of reality that the authorities want them to see. (Hurst Publishers)Independent media reporting still exists, but tends to focus on individual incidents and confrontations. And people in the United States will experience specific aspects of the transformation in their own lives – like when Trump claims that gas costs less than $3 a gallon, but their personal experience is that it costs $6. But the overall impact can be harder to discern, in part because of the speed of change and the rapid normalisation of what previously might have been unthinkable.But writing American Overthrow meant summing up in one place what has changed over 18 months – and that revealed the staggering extent of transformation and how many previous assumptions about the United States have been upended. In addition to the chaotic impact of the Trump presidency globally, the results are deeply disturbing for Americans themselves. ‘American Overthrow: Moscow’s Endgame in Its Long War with Washington’ is available from 3 September, published by Hurst Publishers