Ivan Krastev

They are facing Trump and small group around him.

They do believe that even in this administration, there are people for whom NATO is a value, and losing NATO is against American national interest.

So this is why they are going to be, in my view, much more assertive than in other situations.

But do you know what is interesting?

Part of the pressure coming from this politics is that you cannot distinguish between important and unimportant.

This is very typical, by the way, for the monarchical politics because important is what matters for the guy.

And from this point of view, being strategic, particularly if you're working with the guy, is the biggest mistake that you can do.

Be sure that you know what he cares about.

When he said that basically he wants to buy Greenland, I was trying to say this is also a risky strategy because probably the sovereign fund of Norway can come with a higher price.

And don't forget...

And also Adam is making a point, which is very important, because between Putin and Xi, both of them are obsessed with a long history.

You remember famous Xi saying, we see a change, which is, are you really going to bet on Trump if you want to build the relations with the United States?

And this is the interesting story with the Russians.

From our point of view, they're overexcited about Trump.

But on the other side, the Russians are very much afraid that they can make a deal that is not going to survive for a long time.

And this is why on one level, he cannot make a deal.

But on the other, others don't believe that they can make a deal with him because they still don't know what is a post-Trump America.

We know that post-Trump America is not pre-Trump America.

I don't believe that anybody has doubts on this, but how exactly it's going to look like, what kind of a geostrategic vision it's going to have, what kind of political values it's going to share.

From this point of view, paradoxically, what we're seeing everywhere is identity politics, but on a global level, everybody's asking themselves who we are.