Putin’s Trump: Functional General in the Asymmetric War
- john raymond
- May 30
- 2 min read
Since the beginning, Trump has acted not as a rogue actor but as a functional general in an ongoing asymmetric war aimed at destabilizing the Western liberal order.
This is not hyperbole. It is strategic description.
Western liberal democracy is not brought down by tanks or missiles. It is eroded from within: through distrust, disinformation, division, and the performance of legitimacy in service of its opposite. In this theater of war, Trump is not the wildcard—he is the commander. His genius, if we can call it that, is in willful alignment. He knows which fault lines to strike, which truths to warp, and which institutions to ridicule in order to shatter coherence. And by design, and help from compromised advisers, his moves echo the doctrinal tactics of asymmetric warfare that have defined Russia’s playbook for decades.
What makes Trump so effective is that he never appears to be part of a broader strategy. He looks chaotic. Disconnected. Personal. But when you step back and look at the architecture of what’s been broken—NATO’s credibility, the transatlantic alliance, Ukraine’s security, America’s civil trust, the functional role of the presidency—you see the outline of method. You see campaign after campaign not of governance but of destabilization. And in each of those, Trump has taken point.
He has attacked allies. He has lifted enemies. He has flooded the zone with contradictions so thick that the press can no longer keep up. And through it all, he maintains the theater of grievance: he is the victim, the outsider, the savior betrayed. That narrative is itself an asymmetric weapon. Because it licenses any betrayal, any abandonment of truth, under the banner of patriotic rebellion.
Trump is not the disease. He is the general of its transmission. And the longer the West treats him like an anomaly instead of a field commander for a hostile theory of power, the longer it remains unarmed against the war he is winning.
This is not a rogue actor. This is a functional general. And the battlefield is your democracy.
Comentarios