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Why we need to start treating Trump's America like Russia
Expansionist desires, aggressive military actions, and the consolidation of power in its internal affairs used to attack political enemies, Keir Giles explains how, while writing his new book, he came to realise the two
countries are becoming exceedingly hard to tell apart
Wednesday 02 September 2026 11:58 BST
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.
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
open image in gallery
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 days
So 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.
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 administration
Looking 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.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-putin-us-russia- american-overthrow-keir-giles-b3042746.html
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