Since Trump, governments everywhere are wondering what colour their armies (pawns) are and what alliances they will need to make

By Loukis Skaliotis

Donald Trump’s global trade war and the way he has applied tariffs as a tool of coercion against foes and allies alike was the focus in my article last week. His foreign policy approach is no less controversial, and a sign as to who his allies really are.

His approach to taking over Gaza, remaking it into the Côte d’Azur of the Middle East no less, and the request to take over the mineral rights in eastern Ukraine in exchange for any military assistance, reveal his transactional nature. It reminded me of a favourite board game we used to play when I was a kid. ‘Risk’ was a game where players sat before a map of the world (yes, there was a time we had no computers), and were allocated a number of armies (pawns) along with a set of countries where to station them. We then went ahead to fight each other – making strategic alliances in the process – until the winner had conquered the most countries and achieved world domination. It was a fun game, primarily as the war we fought had no casualties. No people dying and suffering in the process.

Trump’s approach to the Palestinians living in Gaza is no less dehumanising. They are simple pawns to be moved around to fit the strategy of the grand master. And the strategy is slowly and surely emerging. Witness US Vice President JD Vance’s address in Munich last week. For Trump’s US, the enemy is not some external power like Russia or even China – something that bonded the US and Europe together – but rather it is the ‘enemy within’, a line of thought that is inconsistent with the preachings of Trump and his associates.

What is deeply worrying is the apparent determination of the Trump administration to fight this line of thought in Europe, not by military means, but through deploying the same tactics that secured Trump’s victory in the 2024 US election. Why use military force when you can achieve even better results by securing control of governments through the electoral process? Vance’s meeting with the far-right leader in Germany while shunning the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was a public display of this strategy. His address, castigating Europe for not listening to the voices of its people and ignoring their wishes, was a veiled threat that European governments are prone to be changed at the ballot box. The principle of not interfering in other countries’ elections is clearly something that Trump does not feel bound by.

This fight against the enemy within in Europe seems to be a key objective of the Trump administration. I recalled a meeting in Nicosia back in 2022, which I attended with Brad Parscale, an American, who was seeking interested parties in European countries to collaborate in the use of his software for using social media to influence how electorates formed their opinions. I was curious why an American was so keen in identifying partners in Europe and Israel, while not showing particular interest in the financial aspect of the project. But then again, Parscale was not a simple sales executive trying to promote his software. He was the key person behind Trump’s successful social media presidential campaign in 2016, and after a brief stint in the wilderness, came back to ensure that the 2024 campaign returned Trump to power. He has gone into business with Tim Dunn, a billionaire oil man, who was instrumental in moving Texas politics to the far right and then set his sights on doing the same in Washington, ushering Trump to power. Dunn’s approach was not so much to go against the opponents directly – the Democrats in Texas – but rather promoted through financing the Republicans challenging the incumbent of the same party who did not conform to Dunn’s religious-right orthodoxy. This successful strategy is what he used with Trump, and we are now witnessing being pushed into Europe.

The approach is echoed by Trump himself. In a televised press briefing the previous week, on the peace process between the US and Russia, he indicated he would respect the opinion of an elected representative of a sovereign nation, referring to Ukraine, but went on to indicate that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was also subject to a popular vote, mentioning that his poll numbers were not that great. This was reiterated more forcefully last Tuesday, after the meeting in Saudi Arabia between the US and Russia, where he said that the people of Ukraine had to express their opinion on the peace deal he was preparing, completely undercutting Zelenskiy. On Wednesday, he upped the ante calling the Ukrainian president a dictator.

Like a game of ‘Risk’, governments everywhere are wondering what colour their pawns are and what alliances they will need to make. A word of warning to those who are thinking that befriending Trump will help them achieve their aims. Mitch McConnell the former US Senate majority leader, who has just announced he will not run for reelection and perhaps is the person most responsible in ensuring Trump came to power in 2024, by refusing to impeach Trump back in 2021, is a good example.

McConnell was the architect of the strategy of going after judicial power in the US, culminating in the taking over of the Supreme Court by Trump loyalists. Now, he was left a sad and lonely figure when the Senate voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as defence secretary and Robert F Kennedy Junior as health secretary. He was one of three Republican senators voting against the totally unqualified Hegseth, while his was the only Republican vote against the equally dangerous Kennedy. But then McConnell should know, when you let a bull in a china shop don’t complain when things get smashed.

Loukis Skaliotis is an economist