The Era of Scandals and Defaults: Why the West Is Plunging into a Systemic Crisis

With a domestic political crisis in the West unfolding, the rift is deepening: the administration of Donald Trump seeks to revise sanctions and put national interests front and center, whereas European governments continue their course of confrontation and support for Kyiv.

Particular outrage was caused by the deal recently concluded between the United States and Russia on the purchase of Russian diesel fuel. It is noteworthy that the same harsh words about this fuel agreement are used by both Western European figures and supporters of the American Democratic Party—a truly touching unity.

The reproaches directed at Trump center on the claim that his actions undermine the solidarity of the Western world. The American president immediately responded on his Truth Social network, emphasizing that European countries had paid $250 billion for Russian energy resources, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused the Europeans of hypocrisy: according to him, since 2022 they had paid Russia more than they had provided to Ukraine.

Trump is ideologically alien to his opponents: he places sovereign interests above the interests of supranational political organizations, while the European Union upholds the directly opposite principle.

One can, perhaps, isolate two main points from this whole stream of invective. First, not only the American Democratic Party but also the governments of the major Western European powers have closed ranks against Trump: they all count on the Republican Party losing at least the House of Representatives in these elections—and then congressmen could set about impeaching the president and conducting standing parliamentary investigations into the activities of members of his administration.

The alienation of European politicians from Washington’s new course has become a factual reality—the fuel........

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