After the ‘Oval Office battle’ with Zelensky, which left dead and wounded in the Western camp, can we still speak of a rationale behind Trump's behaviour? What are the interests that motivate his decisions? Are they really measurable? Or is Trump the destroyer of the West, obviously in the pay of the Czar?

Beyond the prejudices and heuristics that are always established in moments of great emotion and information confusion, let's try to answer these questions by remaining as rational and practicable as possible.

Let’s start with an assumption founded on a basic, empirical fact. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), as of 2024 the cost of the US federal debt, i.e. interest payments, exceeds the Pentagon's budget: $882 billion, which could rise to $952 billion this year and break through the $1 trillion mark in 2026, the CBO continues. Projections for the next 10 years show a deficit that will systematically exceed 6% of GDP, and a federal debt that will exceed 120% of GDP. To sum up, the US has a structural rather than a contingent problem, which is related to its ability to maintain the level of public spending needed to fuel its military primacy while ensuring an unchanged level of social welfare, medical care, etc..

This explains why the Trump administration, supported by a considerable part of the US political establishment, intends to reduce military spending while pressuring its European allies to spend more on defence. A way of seeking compensation and ensuring a more balanced burden sharing, in an attempt to avoid a trap that will be triggered, sooner or later.

This step is closely linked to a review of the international order. An order today based on an US liberal hegemony that was established after the end of the Second World War, and whose current costs, according to the Trump administration, exceed the benefits that the US and the West have enjoyed for more than 70 years. A situation that motivates the goal of somehow ending the Ukrainian game, easing the conflict with Russia and shifting it mainly onto European allies, and trying to reset relations with Moscow in the name of an “economic-commercial” pragmatism that has always been the trademark of the Trump family. This ‘rapprochement’ would also serve – here is the second step – to prevent the Eurasian geopolitical bloc between Russia and China, which has been consolidating in recent years, and which poses a threat to a ‘sea empire’ like the American one. In this ‘neo-Kissingerian’ exercise, Trumpian revisionism would rely on the fact that Moscow is certainly not dying to stay in the Dragon’s arms, but would prefer to keep its hands free and even try to reopen some channels with the West itself.

All in all, Trump's choices seem to be driven by a clear strategic logic aimed at creating a system based on a club of great powers – the United States, Russia and China –, leaving Europe in a secondary role and trying to create divides by using the traditional instrument of bilateral relations and partnerships. An old-fashioned world dominated by the logic of power and where power relations are back as the great regulator of international life.