"Diplomacy"as Cover for Shakedowns & Self-Dealing; How the US is Enabling Multipolarity
And the Putin-normalizing Berlusconi precedent
The Friday gatherings are where I preview new directions in my thinking, or float ideas that are not fully developed. On September 26, I mentioned that the Trump administration could reduce the U.S. to being a kind of regional power, focused on Latin America, in order to leave China and Russia free hands in Asia and Europe and Eurasia, respectively. I expanded on these thoughts in an October 8 essay.
Today the New York Times published an analysis that goes in this same direction, detailing the Trump administration’s assertion of power over the Western hemisphere. In the article, Mauricio Claver-Carone, Trump’s former special envoy to Latin America, explains the shift: “[Y]ou can’t be the pre-eminent global power if you’re not the pre-eminent regional power.”
What Claver-Carone does not say is that the actual plan seems to be to remove America from its position as pre-eminent global power so that the “multipolar world” desired by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping can come into being, each autocracy having its own hegemonic sphere. The vanquishing of American democracy is key to this idea because America is supposed to relinquish any role in defending democracy in Europe and in Asia. Multipolarity foresees only autocracies in charge.
As it happens, I finished a long essay for you late last night about how personalist rule affects the practice of foreign policy and diplomacy and how Putin used Silvio Berlusconi and now uses Trump to legitimate his imperialism. The Berlusconi example is helpful to seeing the larger playbook: even the language adopted by the Putin tool must be similar.
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Authoritarianism may be defined as the expansion of executive power, and the personal power of the head of state, to the detriment of the independence of the judiciary and other branches of government. In a variant of authoritarianism known as personalist rule, the leader’s party, and government institutions, can become his personal tools, and loyalty to him is prized over competency and experience. Time and resources are devoted to solving his legal problems, going after his enemies, and helping him turn public office into a means of personal enrichment.
In personalist states, international relations are often “privatized,” meaning the personal relationships and deals among autocrats matter more than the foreign policy establishment, traditional practices of diplomacy or established alliances. Trump’s preference for bilateral meetings over summits goes in this direction. Why waste time involving people who don’t matter?
Authoritarians have their own understandings of the purpose and practice of diplomacy and foreign relations, starting from their rejection of international law. Autocrats believe that they have the right to occupy, annex, and plunder territories that “should” be theirs due to their valuable resources, a common heritage (the “reunification” scam used by Hitler, Putin, Xi, etc), or geopolitical importance. Their understanding of “peace” also reflects this arrogance. Those who do not submit to the autocrat, or have the temerity to defend themselves, become the obstructors of the peace” he is trying to bring to the world.
We have seen this with the rhetoric and diplomatic conduct around Ukraine, which Russia sees as its rightful possession. Putin has long used his Western collaborators to spread this way of thinking. When Trump suggests that former President Joe Biden’s support of Ukraine’s bid to join NATO provoked Russia’s invasion –“he had to go in,” Trump said of Putin— he depicts Ukraine and its allies as the aggressors for blocking Russia’s right to expand.
We have also seen examples of the bullying and shakedowns that are central to the autocratic practice of “diplomacy.” During Trump’s first term, Sean Lawler, his Chief of Protocol, carried a horsewhip around the office to set the proper tone, one that Trump revived when he was berating Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office (submit to Putin’s demands or we take half of your rare earth minerals).
The Chinese are also expert practitioners of this thuggish brand of “diplomacy.” A recent revelation by Czech intelligence that Chinese diplomats planned to stage a car crash to injure Taiwan’s Vice President Hsiao Bi-Khim during her 2024 visit to Prague is an example of how the foreign policy establishment is used to “send a message” to the target even if, as in this case, the operation was never activated.
Those who work as diplomats or cabinet officials for personalist rulers learn quickly that the quality of relations with foreign countries depends on the willingness of those countries to strike deals that benefit the leader, his businesses, and his cronies. They also see that other autocracies, with their own traditions of corruption and personalized power, make ideal partners, as we see with the behavior of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates towards Trump.
The term “diplomacy” fails to describe the activities of autocrats and their proxies. All too often, diplomacy is a cover for espionage, transnational repression schemes, corrupt deals and sinister agreements, some of which require face-to-face contact unhindered by traditional diplomatic protocols.
Take Trump “special envoy” Steve Witikoff’s many one-on-one meetings with Putin, supposedly to help negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Putin has no actual interest in peace other than a total surrender of Ukraine, and in fact Ukraine had no representative present at these talks.
Witikoff used the Kremlin’s interpreter during the meetings, and brought no aides into the room. Commentators treated this as a rookie mistake that put him at a disadvantage, but having an advantage over Putin was never the aim. Rather, Witikoff likely needed privacy to discuss the real business at hand, whatever it was –probably business similar to that discussed by Putin and Trump as they sat alone in the presidential limousine during Putin’s visit to Alaska (which also broke with diplomatic tradition).
As John Bolton observed in February, it was all a charade. “I think we know exactly what’s going to happen,” he said. “President Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin before the negotiations have even begun.”
Putin, Berlusconi, and the Personalization of Foreign Policy
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s relations with Putin in the 2000s provide a precedent that illuminates the costs of personalizing foreign relations. Berlusconi, a billionaire who owned all of Italy’s private television networks while he was PM, spun his close relationship with Putin, which broke a record for bilateral visits between heads of state, as a bromance (Putin gave him a bed and he gave Putin a duvet with their faces on the cover).
Yet much more was going on, which is likely why the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was largely shut out from high-level dealings with Russia. Only Berlusconi’s confidant, the Italian politician and fluent Russian speaker Valentino Valentini, was present at the Putin-Berlusconi meetings. U.S. Ambassador to Italy David H. Thorne would characterize Valentini as Berlusconi’s “unofficial intermediary/bagman,” and Valentini frequently traveled to Russia on Berlusconi’s behalf.
During Berlusconi’s third term (2008-2011), heightened Russian imperialism required Berlusconi to take more extreme positions to defend Putin. When Russia bombed military and civilian targets in Georgia that year in support of actions by separatists in South Ossetia., Berlusconi blamed the U.S., not Russia, for inflaming regional conflict.
U.S. Ambassador to Italy Ronald Spogli warned in 2008 and 2009 that Berlusconi had become a “mouthpiece” of the Russian leader, regularly voicing “opinions and declarations that have been passed to him directly by Putin,” with a foreign policy “designed to deny Russia nothing.”
Spogli suspected that Berlusconi may have been profiting from deals between the Italian and Russian energy companies ENI and Gazprom in exchange for supporting Russian efforts to “dilute American security interests in Europe.” A Italian Parliament investigation suggested that Berlusconi was poised to receive a percentage of profits from an ENI-Gazprom South Stream pipeline to be built under the Black Sea. By the time construction on the pipeline began in 2012 (it was canceled due to EU objections in 2014), sex and corruption scandals and the Eurozone crisis had driven Berlusconi from office, ending his usefulness.
Soon enough, Putin would find a new head of state to help with the task of weakening America’s participation in collective defense in Europe. This time, an American apparently lends himself eagerly to Putin’s anti-American agendas. Berlusconi gladly promoted Russian interests, normalized neo-Fascism to harm Italian democracy, and likely profited from his personalization of foreign policy. Yet Berlusconi did not try and destroy his own country’s international footprint and national security. That innovation belongs to Trump.
We are weakening because Trump is trying to destroy our national footprint. I wonder if his supporters who wanted a dictator for a day understood they were getting an authoritarian..
Is the entire GOP in on this? Does the entire political party of the autocrat have to be in on this intentional weakening of a nation?