The Concept of Limited Sovereignty: Expert Explains Why Trump and Putin Think Alike
Political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko explained that Trump and Putin consider only major geopolitical players to be truly sovereign states — and this already creates problems for Ukraine in peace negotiations, Politeka reports.
He spoke about this on the program “Dialogues” with Ruslan Bortnyk.
“We are approaching a problem related to Trump’s worldview, which strongly resembles Putin’s worldview. Essentially, both Trump and Putin share — though with slightly different interpretations — the concept of limited sovereignty for countries that are not great powers. In the view of both Putin and Trump, there are the ‘big guys’ — the world’s largest states, major economies with nuclear weapons that influence global politics. They possess full, almost unlimited sovereignty, except in cases where their sovereignty is limited by other big guys,” Fesenko explains.
In other words, he notes, if the US and Russia — in Trump’s and Putin’s understanding — are in the top league of geopolitics, then the EU is in the first division, and Ukraine is in the second or third. This, the expert emphasizes, is why Putin went to war against Ukraine and why Trump says we “don’t have the cards.”
“This approach to sovereignty contradicts the standards of modern international law and liberal values. And this is a challenge for us, because in this sense, Trump thinks almost like Putin. Unfortunately, Trump’s approach is already creating certain problems for us in the negotiation process — not yet critical, but the risks are there,” Fesenko stresses.
According to the expert, Ukraine will have to adapt to this new reality and will be forced to act together with Europe. Security interests, he explains, will pull Ukraine toward Europe — because Ukraine needs allies, even if they are not as powerful as the US, but still possess economic and military potential. And Europe, looking ahead, needs an ally that has already demonstrated its ability to defend itself and can be useful.
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