Trump Is Shaking Europe So That Capital Has Nowhere Left to Run

A Ukrainian eye is trained to look for the Kremlin's hand in moments like this. And it is there. But the real question is not who is throwing wood on the fire. It is who benefits from the fire itself. The answer is an uncomfortable one: the biggest winner of the European revolt is not Moscow but Washington. To be precise, not Washington as a state and not the Pentagon as an institution, because there are no good or bad nations, only good or bad people. The winner is a specific man in the White House and the people around him.

Let me start by admitting a mistake of my own. When a wave of migrants hit Spain, I too saw a Russian trace in it. Yet it all began after the Spanish refused to raise their military spending in NATO. For Madrid even 2% is too much, and the 5% Trump demands is flatly out of the question there. And here things need to be called by their proper name. Whatever we say about collective security, the NATO budget is in effect the budget of the American war machine that supplies the alliance with weapons. Spain was the first warning sign, and I missed it.

Now that the facts are falling into a single picture, it can no longer be missed. The point is that Trump is still underestimated. He has become a thoroughly cynical man, and he is making full use of what is, in any case, his last chance to cash in on the office. Rewind his entire presidency and you will see it is built around one conversation with Europe: you will pay us more, because we need more money for the military umbrella we hold over you. And if not, sorry, guys, it's time to say goodbye.

The current revolt is remarkably well synchronized with exactly what Trump, through his intermediaries, is demanding of Europe. And what he demands is that Europe sign on to a new deal with Russia, lift the sanctions and start buying Russian oil and gas again. Even the strike on Iran fits this strategy. Once that war began, energy prices went up, and the Middle Eastern market, which had always been a traditional one for Europe, was shut. So Europe has been pushed, consistently and step by step, toward a single conclusion. By October those steps had become obvious.

Look at what people on the streets are complaining about: prices, budget deficits, inflation. All of it, directly or indirectly, presses governments toward one thought: unless we go back to Russian energy, things will only get worse. And, strangely enough, it is precisely at the peak of the protests that Trump's envoys enter the game. As The New York Times reported, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner proposed that the European Union resume buying more Russian gas and that Ukraine restart its transit. Their argument is simple: European politicians' voters are unhappy about energy prices.

There is one more detail that should not slip by. Back in July, Politico reported that FBI Director Kash Patel was planning a mid-October trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg. It would be the first trip to Russia by a sitting FBI director since 2013. What is interesting is something else. The heads of American intelligence and security services travel to Moscow, and for them this is normal. Yet you do not see the chiefs of MI6 or Mossad there. Why does no country except one consider it necessary to send people of that rank? My reading is that Russia functions as a colony under the exclusive supervision of the United States, and Washington lets no one else in. This warning sign cannot be ignored.

All the more so because Putin himself completes the picture. On October 9, during a phone call with Trump, he proposed, according to The Wall Street Journal, a three-way meeting with Trump and Xi Jinping to settle the question of Ukraine. The venue in question is the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shenzhen on November 18-19. Note this: Putin does not propose settling the question of Ukraine with Ukraine. He does not invite a single European leader, not a single representative of Europe at all. What he is effectively saying is: guys, we are the only ones left to run this planet, let's sort something out, because we are sick of this Ukraine.

So what place does this configuration leave for Ukraine? As I see it, for the United States Ukraine is a statistical error. Washington believes Ukraine should not exist at all, and history has shown more than once that the US was the last to side with Ukrainian independence.

For Russia, however, Ukraine is needed for a different purpose, and both Europe and Ukrainians themselves must understand this nuance. Moscow needs Ukraine in order to conquer Europe with the hands of Ukrainian soldiers. The plan that once worked for Stalin rested to a large extent on exactly this: Ukraine gives an army an enormous mobilization potential. Ukrainians have probably fought more than anyone else in the European part of the continent, and it so happens that they fight well. The current war proves it better than anything.

In other words, what Putin lacks for a march on Europe is precisely Ukraine. The war did of course have a financial dimension for Russia: it helped extract and absorb certain resources. But first and foremost it was fought for Ukraine's military potential. It is worth remembering that at the very start of the invasion Putin called on the Ukrainian generals not to lay down their arms but to turn them against Zelensky's team and go over to Russia's side. The offer to stand alongside Russia was made from day one, and there is no point in convincing ourselves it never happened. Ukrainian officers today are better than the best representatives of the Russian military establishment. That is simply true.

This is exactly why Ukraine should be seen as the resource base of war, and why it is critically important for Europe to keep that resource rather than lose it. If anyone today wants to believe there will be no next war, there will be one, 100%. There has not been a single century in which Europe did not fight. And who wins it will be decided precisely by which side Ukraine is on. No country, except Russia, which has always held first place here, can field such a resilient force today.

But why break Europe from the inside just to make it buy Russian gas again? After all, if the situation stabilizes, gas prices will fall anyway, and in the 1990s Europe grew precisely on cheap Russian energy. There are at least three reasons.

The first: Europe is today the only one supporting Ukraine and paying its bills. The second: Europe is the only one preventing Putin, on the political track, from persuading everyone that Ukraine should be handed over to Russia. And the third reason is the most important: Europe is the only competitor of the United States capable today of taking the hegemon's crown.

Why Europe? Because no one else can offer capital the conditions required for a change of hegemon. These are the rule of law, military force and a navy, and that is essentially all. And this means the European Union specifically, not Britain, Germany or France on their own. The United States once had all of this too. But today it cannot offer anything that would multiply capital's wealth enough to keep it in America.

So the United States is now noticeably overpaying to keep capital at home and to stop it from crossing the ocean back the other way, to Europe. For Washington this is a problem, and Trump solves it in his own way, through pressure. It is extremely profitable for him to burn Europe or split the European Union so that it ceases to exist as a competitor. Then capital will be left without a single reserve airfield to escape to.

And there is plenty to escape from. What has set in is the so-called financial autumn: capital demands higher returns, and the United States can no longer deliver them. Most startups, even in artificial intelligence, are inflated, and their growth cannot keep pace with shareholders' demands. The market is growing, but it is growing like a balloon being pumped up, and far from everyone understands how this will end. Besides, capital did not start fleeing America yesterday. It has been doing so since the 1980s, when it began looking for jurisdictions in places like Ireland and on the islands. The tax pressure with which American authorities sustain their own existence overloads companies, and they look for other jurisdictions. That is why the most powerful American giants are effectively no longer American but European.

There is one more part to this story: the dollar. Today the dollar has become a trap for the whole world. Everyone understands that it no longer reflects its value, because inflation keeps eating it from the inside. The United States pays probably more than anyone in the world to keep the dollar standing, but no one can exit it in a single day either. Still, attempts are already being made. The fact that gold has doubled in price shows that people are moving their capital into weightier assets and are not looking for ways to keep it in dollars. Meanwhile the euro is confidently holding its ground and is part of the reserves of many countries. For Washington this is a problem, and far from the last one.

The euro's only supposed competitor is the Chinese yuan. But the yuan is not a reserve currency in the full sense, because the Communist Party of China can at any moment ban its acceptance or sale. A currency tied to the will of a party is no longer reserve capital.

Nor should personal interest be forgotten. Trump understands that whoever comes after him, even if Vance or Rubio wins the next election, his family will no longer get richer from it. So he needs to secure money for his grandchildren in advance, and he needs to do it today. And Putin does not mind. As The New York Times reported, at a meeting with Witkoff and Kushner on September 5 he personally raised the sale of Lukoil's foreign assets, valued at roughly $20 billion. Among the likely buyers the paper named people linked to the Trump and Witkoff families. The way I see it, everything is heading toward a situation where nobody pays anything for these assets, and it becomes a modest $20 billion bribe for getting things settled.

This is what explains the speed with which the American side is making decisions on the negotiating track. There it has already been decided that Ukraine is to blame for everything and that, in any case, one has to be on Russia's side. Explaining anything to Ukraine is not considered necessary: take it as it is, because it suits us, full stop.

Can Europe seize the moment, declare a state of emergency and sweep out everyone who is shaking it? The problem lies in the very rule of law that Europe offers capital. The letter of the law is observed there so strictly that they will not take such a step. If in the United States Trump cheats at cards all the time, in Europe that trick will not work. Remember how many resignations there have been over the slightest reputational risks created by the actions of those in power.

Even the talk of sending troops into cities, which is already under way in Italy and France, runs into the same thing. Anything is possible, but first it has to be established which articles of law would allow it. Democratic values there really are inviolable. This is not Ukraine, where you can bring out cardboard signs against Zelensky today and for him tomorrow. So everything depends on how the street affects electoral politics. If it shifts the balance of power, governments will act one way; if not, the other. Right now they are simultaneously looking for legal grounds for forceful steps and calculating how this will play with voters.

And European politicians should not be taken for fools. Even on Tsargrad, a Russian nationalist outlet, one of the authors recently complained: we call Europeans stupid, but look at their diplomas and at the schools Macron's people graduated from. These are professionals who have spent their lives in politics and understand it in their own countries better than anyone from outside.

Another coincidence that cannot be ignored is elections. Europe faces a whole series of national elections in the near future, and the current events are shaking the governments in power and reducing their chances of re-election. It is also clear why the protests feature those who are associated with the Kremlin and, today, with the United States as well. Whatever anyone says, the flagship of this anti-European raid is the United States, and Russia is merely helping.

Working out who in Europe is right-wing and who is left-wing is hard in general, and I am not sure they understand it themselves. But mass street riots have always been the business of the left. The right may burn a shop or a car, but protests like these look different. So I am not convinced the right has anything to do with these events. Rather, the current political elites pragmatically flirted with the left while the left-wing trend lasted. Now tension in society has built up, and they are using those they used to play with.

Now about the gas that Trump is once again pushing on Europe. It is worth remembering how this story ended on the eve of the full-scale war, when the Russians decided one day: why not raise prices three or four times? Europe really did get used to cheap energy, but let us weigh it honestly. Even when it was cheap for Europe, it hardly brought down the price for the end consumer in any noticeable way. Big energy companies never give up profit, and they sold at market prices, 100%. So the promises that a return of cheap oil and gas will lower prices will not come true. The only thing that will rise is these companies' profits.

Which raises the next question. If Europe clings so tightly to the rule of law and becomes a quiet harbor for capital, will it not start cutting its support for Ukraine? That trend is logical. But it has to be developed in the opposite direction: through support for Ukraine, through use of its military potential, through giving Ukraine the role of flagship specifically in the military sphere. In general, Europe now urgently needs to forget about American participation in NATO and create its own closed military bloc. It has everything it needs to become the hegemon of the new world, and this has to be seen through to the end. Backing away from it is not an option.

Everyone sees this, both China and the United States. Beijing's position, by the way, is remarkably consistent. The Chinese seem to have genuinely adopted the old saying: sit on the riverbank and the corpses of your enemies will float by. They do not get involved in a single quarrel; they simply watch as Europeans scrap with Americans, Americans with Russians, and Russians with Ukrainians.

The only thing that unites China and America with regard to Europe is the wish to divide it. For Beijing a split Europe means more Chinese goods on its markets and a decline in European manufacturing capacity. Europe still remains a competitor in the market for high-tech and truly reliable goods. The machine tools made in Switzerland, Italy, France and Germany are the best in the world; that is a fact. And however much the Chinese undercut prices, they cannot match that quality.

Does China benefit from the United States once again running everyone and telling them how to live? After all, if Europe disappears, China will be next. The wisdom of leaving a buffer, the way Poland was once left between Germany and the USSR, is understandable. But for now China has accepted that the United States holds the superposition, and it simply stands next to the future winner. If Europe wins, it will say it supported Europe all along. If the United States wins, it will say the same about them. I do not recall Europe ever coming to China as a united bloc and pressing it with tariffs.

The main problem of the European Union is the absence of a common view and a common understanding. Countries do not look for ways to pool their efforts on issues that concern everyone. There is still neither a single army nor a single intelligence service. The model is built in an interesting way: we earn together, but we pay our debts separately. It is supposedly more flexible and more pragmatic, but when it collides with a reality inherited from ancient times, it has no answer. Europe looks for an answer through high politics and agreements. But what can you negotiate with a cannibal who has come to eat you?

The point is that security always means restricting rights. If you want to be safe, give up part of your rights, part of your freedom of speech, part of your privacy. But Europeans lived in a dream country. They looked at the world through their own eyes and saw themselves in it, the way anyone in a conversation sees their own position in the person opposite. Russia, however, holds no such position. Nor do those who come to Europe not to live by its rules but to make use of it. Europe tries to correct such a person through left-wing movements, through love, through Christian values. How do you do that with someone who does not share those values and laughs at them? We see the consequences: it does not work and could not have worked. And yet the experiment goes on. Migration quotas are not being abandoned. At the same time, everything is being done to make Ukrainians leave Europe, although they are the most hardworking and the least criminal. This absurdity rests on the belief that the world is beautiful and everyone wants one and the same thing. People may indeed want roughly the same thing, but their paths to it differ.

What is most striking is that such reasoning comes from the territory that has seen more wars than any other in the history of humankind. Europe has always been on fire; it was the place where wars never ended. And a short stretch of time, some 80 years, lulled it to sleep. It seems to have woken up, but it still does not understand what is happening: whether it has opened its eyes, or whether the nightmare that began in its sleep simply continues on the street. Sometimes you need to take a step back. The stars are seen best from the bottom of a well, but to see them you have to fall to the bottom, and Europe does not want to.

Mercantilism in itself is normal. It is normal for a person to think in economic terms and in terms of their own gain. It is even more honest: such a person does not lie that they want everyone to live better, but says outright that they want to earn more. What is not normal is when this is done at the expense of those beside you. When people say we are all in the same boat, but I want more than everyone else, and you will have to row. What is not normal is when responsibility is not shared. The democratic system that Russians contemptuously call the Anglo-Saxon world really was built largely thanks to the United States. It has its flaws, and it needed crash tests and refinement. But that did not happen, because the majority is satisfied. Italians and Germans do not want to move anywhere, they are comfortable at home, and that is exactly what lulls them.

Ukraine woke up not because it was lucky. It got such a kick from the war that now, whether it wants to or not, it switches on its brain every day and looks for a way out. It has no alternative. Europe, on the other hand, imagines it has one: it can negotiate, make concessions, offer something. But there is no one to negotiate with.

What is under way now is a battle for the superposition. Trump is convinced he holds it. China is convinced it does. The Russians are also confident they will hold out, because they have plenty of resources. But how do you hold out when you have spent your whole life sitting on a pipe and can do practically nothing else? Oil and gas once provided about half of Russia's budget revenue, while forecasts for 2026 say their share will not exceed 20%. In other words, the country does not have even half the money it used to live on, yet its ambitions are the same.

That is why the only thing Putin is doing now is offering anything at all to get back on the market and sell as before. He cannot stop this machine. Oil flowing from a well cannot be switched off with a button; it has to flow constantly, and if it does not sell, it has to be stored somewhere. Everything in Russia is built on extracting a lot and selling a lot. And now that it has all stalled, Putin comes to Trump and says: you need money, how much? Take everything, just sell us again.

Taking advantage of this, Trump will use Russia as a battering ram against Europe. One could even build a grand conspiracy theory on this: the idea of going to war came to Putin from the United States. Something like: let's wash this Europe into the ocean, we are fed up with it, there is too much democracy in it, and it has taken it into its head to live better than America. Let's turn the whole of Europe into East Germany, bring back the Stasi, why not? In truth, anything is possible.

But one thing is obvious: Europe must rethink its view of the world. Not through the prism of Ukraine, but with the understanding that the only state that constantly held Moscow back and was a bone in its throat was the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and before it the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Nothing has changed since then. When we were united, we formed that redoubt, that impassable barrier because of which Moscow could do nothing to Europe. Back then we were ahead of our time in building such a great country. Today it is gone, and no one is doing anything to revive it; if anything, the opposite. And without Belarus, which today sticks out like a knife pointed at the Baltic states and Ukraine, that redoubt cannot be restored.

Meanwhile Putin is already sketching the scheme of a new war, repeating that Russia will not give up Kaliningrad. In other words, the war will be fought over Kaliningrad. A blockade can be provoked, or it can be staged: cut off supplies, create a famine, and then call in the same specialists who worked in Bucha and ask them to do a "Bucha" in Kaliningrad. Russia has Ukrainian uniforms. All that matters is that it looks as if Ukrainians came in and slaughtered the people of Kaliningrad. Why not? For the Russians, I am convinced, there are no obstacles today to doing such a thing.

So everyone, and Europe first of all, must finally stop expecting logical, fair or chivalrous actions from Russia. Russia cannot act that way and never has. It acts treacherously and basely, and this practice has not changed in any way over the centuries. While Brussels looks for legal grounds to restore order on its own streets, Moscow and Washington are already negotiating over who will be first to take the European market, European capital and, if Europe fails to keep it at its side, the Ukrainian army.

My new book The Economics of Losses is available in English on Amazon. The Ukrainian edition, Економіка збитків, is out in paperback.