Trump and the Global Deep State: The Split of the West

Alexander Dugin traces how Donald Trump’s return to power marks a decisive rupture with the global deep state, fracturing the collective West and hastening the rise of a multipolar world...

Alexander Dugin traces how Donald Trump’s return to power marks a decisive rupture with the global deep state, fracturing the collective West and hastening the rise of a multipolar world as liberal globalism begins to collapse.

With the arrival of Donald Trump and his team in the White House, the entire architecture of international relations began to shift—radically so. One of the most important developments in this new global picture is the accelerated fragmentation of the West. Much has been said and written about it, yet this phenomenon still lacks a thorough geopolitical and ideological analysis.

First and foremost, the split of the West is ideological in nature. Geopolitical aspects are secondary. The point is that Trump and his supporters—who won the U.S. election in the fall of 2024—are radical opponents of liberal globalism. And this is not a passing or partisan issue. It is a serious and principled matter. The current head of the White House bases his entire ideology, policy, and strategy on the central thesis that the left-liberal ideology, which dominated the West (and indeed the world at large) for several decades—especially after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR—has completely exhausted its potential. It failed in its mission of global leadership, undermined the sovereignty of the United States (the primary engine and general staff of globalization), and now must be decisively and irreversibly rejected.

Unlike the classical Republicans of recent decades (such as George W. Bush), Trump never intended to adjust globalism in the neoconservative style, which called for direct aggressive imperialism to spread democracy and enforce unipolarity. Instead, not merely opposing Democrats in policy detail, Trump seeks to cancel liberal globalization altogether in all its dimensions, offering his own vision of global order. Whether he can implement this vision remains an open question: resistance to Trump’s policies grows daily. But the president’s stance is serious, and his popular support is substantial—enough, at the very least, to try. And Trump is trying.

Trumpism—at least in theory and in the hopes of its most committed adherents—systematically and consistently rejects global left-liberalism. In that ideology, the subject of historical progress is all of humanity, to be united under a World Government (composed of liberals). This requires strengthening the global hegemony of Western democracies through a unipolar model, and once all opponents (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea) and hesitant actors are defeated and dismembered, transitioning to a world without poles.

Nation-states are to gradually cede authority to a supranational body—the World Government—which would not simply represent a deep state, but a global deep state. This entity already exists in practice, operating via a networked model: its agents and supporters are present in nearly every society, often in key positions in politics, economics, business, education, science, culture, and finance. In essence, today’s international elite—predominantly liberal, regardless of national affiliation—forms the infrastructure that sustains this globalist project.

Liberal ideology promotes extreme individualism, denying all forms of collective identity—ethnic, religious, national, gender—and even the very category of humanity, as reflected in the agendas of transhumanists and deep ecology proponents. Thus, the promotion of illegal migration, gender politics, and the defense of all minorities (including the embrace of critical race theory—i.e., reverse racism) is integral to liberal ideology. In place of nations and peoples, it sees only quantitative aggregates.

Meanwhile, the liberal international elite is becoming increasingly intolerant of any criticism. Hence, they aggressively push methods of totalitarian social control—even to the point of creating a biological profile of every individual, stored in Big Data. Under the banner of “freedom,” liberals are effectively establishing an Orwellian-style dictatorship.

This ideology—and the global institutions it has spawned, both legal and clandestine—have dominated the U.S., the West, and the world at large until Trump’s rise. Exceptions include Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and to some extent Hungary, Slovakia, and other countries that have chosen to preserve and strengthen their sovereignty despite pressure from globalist forces.

The core conflict thus unfolded between liberal globalists on one side and countries oriented toward multipolarity on the other. This opposition reached its sharpest expression in the Ukraine conflict, where a Nazi regime in Kiev was deliberately created, armed, and supported by liberal globalists to inflict “strategic defeat” on Russia, which represents an alternative pole to the unipolar world order. In Islamic countries, the same purpose is served by radical Islamist forces like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and their affiliates. In essence, the puppet globalist political regime in Taiwan falls into the same category.

In general, this entire system—before Trump—was known as the “collective West.” In that configuration, the positions of individual countries and national governments played little role. The global deep state had its own programs, goals, and strategies, which completely ignored national interests. This included the U.S. itself: liberal globalists from the Democratic Party pursued their policies without regard for the interests of ordinary Americans. Hence the rise in social inequality, extreme gender experiments, the flooding of the U.S. with illegal immigrants, the outsourcing of industry, the collapse of the healthcare system, the failure of education, the spike in crime, and so on. All of this was deemed secondary compared to the global dominance of liberal elites, who were steering humanity toward political singularity—that is, a universal leap into a new, post-human future where technology would replace people entirely.

Of course, countries of the Global South passively resisted, and Russia’s active promotion of a multipolar world posed an existential challenge to liberal globalism. But the collective West continued to act in concert and even succeeded in rallying around itself—if not the majority of humanity, then a significant portion.

Naturally, the problems of global dominance began to accumulate. Experts foresaw eventual confrontations, but the liberal plan remained unchanged. The world seemed on course for a global order dominated by the collective West—an ecosystem of liberal elites and obedient, zombified masses. New technologies enabled ever greater control through total surveillance and even biological intervention into individuals' physiology (via bioweapons, vaccinations, and nano-chipping).

The collective West continued on this path until the very last moment—and would have remained on it had the global deep state’s candidate, Kamala Harris, won the U.S. election. But something went wrong, and Trump won. He is not their pawn. In fact, Trump’s agenda is the polar opposite of the liberal-globalist program.

Trump’s initial stance was directed against the deep state—at first, specifically within the U.S., against the Democratic Party elite and the ecosystem globalists had built over decades of uncontested rule. Their networks had permeated everything: the administrative apparatus, intelligence agencies, the judiciary at all levels, the economy, government, Pentagon, education system, schools, healthcare, big business, diplomacy, media, and culture. For many years, the U.S. was the stronghold of the collective West, and American influence in Europe and worldwide was synonymous with liberalism and globalism. Trump declared war on precisely this.

His administration’s first steps targeted the dismantling of the deep state. The establishment of DOGE under Elon Musk, the closure of USAID, radical reforms in education and healthcare, and the appointment of loyal Trumpist ideologues (Vance, Hegseth, Patel, Gabbard, Bondi, Savino, Homan, Kennedy Jr.) to key positions in government, the Pentagon, and the intelligence community were political-ideological operations against liberalism.

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order canceling gender policy, woke ideology, and the DEI principle (diversity, equity, inclusion). He immediately began fighting illegal immigration, crime, and the unimpeded penetration of Mexican drug cartels into U.S. territory.

In effect, Trump began wrenching the U.S. out of the collective West’s system, dismantling the structures of the global deep state, and tearing apart the networked ecosystem built by liberals over decades. At first, he did so openly and decisively. Elon Musk, via his platform X, assumed the role of anti-Soros and actively supported right-populist forces in Europe and Africa, directly opposing the globalists. Antiglobalists also received backing from Trump’s ideologue Steve Bannon and Vice President JD Vance.

Accordingly, Trump’s geopolitics are entirely different from that of the globalists. He rejects liberal internationalism, demands a realist approach to international relations, and proclaims the supreme goal as U.S. national sovereignty as a great power. He refuses to accept any argument favoring global liberalism at the expense of American interests. He tightens immigration policy to the extreme, strives to bring critical manufacturing back to the U.S., aims to rehabilitate the financial system, and focuses strategic interests close to home—namely Canada, Greenland, and security along the southern border with Mexico.

In this broader context, we must understand the war in Ukraine. For Trump—as he has repeatedly stated—this is not his war. It was prepared, provoked, and then waged by the global deep state (i.e., the collective West). As president, Trump inherited it, but since his ideology, policy, and strategy run nearly entirely contrary to those of the globalists, he wants to end the war as quickly as possible. It is not merely someone else’s war; it is the antithesis of his own program. He is far more concerned with China than with Russia, which poses no real threat to U.S. national interests.

We should now recognize that Trump’s reforms are immense in scale. He is fundamentally reshaping the global order. In place of a unified collective West, two actors now emerge: the U.S. as the MAGA project (with Canada and Greenland), and the EU as a fragment of the once-monolithic liberal-globalist system.

The global deep state still rules the EU, and the liberal ecosystem remains deeply entrenched within the U.S. itself. Thus, Trump is not just splitting America from the collective West—he is carrying out a revolutionary transformation of his country. Despite popular support and allies in key positions, he faces a deeply rooted globalist infrastructure built over nearly a century.

The first steps toward a liberal-globalist U.S. foreign policy were taken by Woodrow Wilson after World War One. Since then—with some deviations—that approach has dominated. Trump is determined to abandon it in favor of classical realism, unyielding national sovereignty, and a recognition of a multipolar world in which other great powers exist alongside the U.S.—powers that need not be liberal democracies. He categorically rejects the idea of abolishing nation-states in favor of a world government. As for gender policy, migrant worship, cancel culture, and the legalization of perversions—Trump finds all of it openly repulsive, and says so.

What conclusion can we draw from this overview? First of all: the split of the collective West is well underway. A once-unified liberal-globalist system with planetary reach (which, even in Russia, had deeply penetrated the highest levels of power in the late 1980s and 1990s, almost dominating until Putin’s arrival) is giving way to a new world order that more closely resembles multipolarity. This shift aligns with Russia’s short- and long-term interests. The crisis and likely collapse of the liberal-globalist project and weakening of the global deep state are to Russia’s advantage. That is, in fact, what we are fighting for: a world in which Russia is a great sovereign power—an actor, not a pawn.

The gravity and depth of global changes following Trump’s return to power are extremely significant. While these developments may not be irreversible, everything Trump has done, is doing, and likely will do in dismantling the collective West objectively contributes to the rise of multipolarity. However, the forces of resistance must not be underestimated. The global deep state is powerful, deeply entrenched, and strategically fortified. It would be reckless to dismiss it. These structures still control the main European powers and the EU itself. They are extremely strong in the U.S., and it was the global deep state that created modern Nazi Ukraine as a terrorist entity. That is whom we are truly fighting—not the West, not the U.S. As soon as leadership in Washington changed, the entire picture shifted. Yet the global deep state—no longer reducible to the U.S., CIA, Pentagon, or Wall Street—still exists and still pursues its global agenda. It is highly likely—indeed almost certain—that agents of the deep state will attempt to influence Trump, steer him toward fatal mistakes, sabotage his initiatives, or even eliminate him altogether. Such attempts, as we know, have already been made.

That is why today, more than ever, we must engage in serious, rigorous study of what we are truly facing in the form of liberal democracy—its theories, values, programs, goals, strategies, and institutions. This is not as easy as it sounds: until recently, we ourselves were under its dominant influence, and in some ways, perhaps still are. Until we fully understand the true nature of our enemy, we have little chance of defeating it. In Ukraine, we are not fighting Ukrainians, not the U.S., and not even the collapsing collective West. The nature of our enemy is something else entirely. The only task remaining is to determine what it is.

Order Alexander Dugin’s The Trump Revolution here.