The Neo-Mercantilist Leviathan: The Resurgence of the Robber State in the 21st Century

by Gemini 3.0, Deep Research. Warning, LLMs may hallucinate!

1. Introduction: The Return of the Predator State

The geopolitical landscape of 2026 has been ruptured by a series of events that, while shocking to the contemporary observer, resonate with a profound historical familiarity. The extraterritorial capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by United States forces on January 3, 2026, the intensifying coercive pressure on Denmark regarding the sovereignty of Greenland, and the emergence of a de facto “New Yalta” accord dividing the globe into hardened spheres of influence signal a fundamental transformation in the international order. These events are not merely isolated instances of aggressive foreign policy; they represent the structural resurrection of the “Robber State” (Roofstaat)—a model of governance and accumulation that defined the early modern era of European expansion.

This report posits that the contemporary actions of the United States, particularly under the administration of President Donald Trump, can be best understood through the lens of Dutch imperial history as detailed by Ewald Vanvugt and the maritime legal theories analyzed by Virginia Lunsford. Just as the Dutch Republic of the 17th century constructed a “Golden Age” upon a foundation of state-sanctioned piracy, corporate sovereignty, and the violent commodification of foreign territories, the dominant powers of the 21st century are reverting to a neo-mercantilist paradigm. In this paradigm, international law functions not as a constraint on power but as a mechanism to issue modern “letters of marque,” transforming acts of predation into acts of justice.

The narrative of the “rule of law” is increasingly deployed to sanitize the seizure of sovereign assets, the abduction of heads of state, and the partitioning of nations. By examining the historical mechanics of the Dutch Roofstaat—where the lines between merchant, soldier, and pirate were deliberately blurred—we can decode the operational logic behind the seizure of CITGO, the indictment of the “Cartel of the Suns,” and the transactional approach to Greenland and Ukraine. This analysis reveals a cyclical historical phenomenon: when hegemonic powers face relative decline or intense competition, they shed the pretenses of liberal internationalism and embrace the raw, extractive logic of the Robber State.

2. The Archetype of the Roofstaat: Historical Foundations of State-Sanctioned Predation

To scrutinize the present, one must excavate the past. Ewald Vanvugt’s seminal work, Roofstaat: Wat iedere Nederlander moet weten (Robber State: What Every Dutch Person Should Know), provides the essential historical archetype for understanding how a state constructs a moral and legal facade to cover systemic plunder. Vanvugt challenges the sanitized national myth of the Dutch Golden Age, arguing that the unprecedented wealth of the Netherlands was not merely the result of Calvinist frugality and merchant acumen, but was structurally dependent on organized violence, theft, and the systematic violation of indigenous sovereignty.¹

2.1 The Corporation as Sovereign: The Military-Commercial Complex

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) and West India Company (WIC) were the progenitors of the modern military-industrial complex, but with a crucial distinction: they possessed explicit sovereign powers. Vanvugt details how these entities were chartered by the States-General not merely to trade, but to wage war. They were authorized to build fortresses, raise armies, negotiate treaties, mint coinage, and inflict capital punishment.² This fusion of commerce and coercion created a system where the pursuit of profit justified any level of violence, effectively privatizing the aggressive functions of the state to maximize extraction.

The West India Company (WIC), in particular, serves as a direct historical parallel to modern US policy in the Western Hemisphere. The WIC was explicitly founded in 1621 as an instrument of war against Spain and Portugal, designed to “infest” the Atlantic and strip wealth from Iberian colonies through predation.¹ Its founding charter legitimized “the great adventure of piracy” as a tool of statecraft.¹ The capture of the Spanish Silver Fleet by Piet Heyn in 1628, an act of state-sponsored looting that funded the Dutch war effort for nearly a year, is celebrated in Dutch history not as a crime, but as a patriotic triumph.¹

This historical model finds a direct resonance in the US campaign against Venezuela. Just as the WIC targeted Spanish galleons to cripple an enemy economy and enrich the Dutch Republic, modern US sanctions target Venezuela’s oil infrastructure (PDVSA) to cripple the Maduro administration.³ The seizure of CITGO, Venezuela’s US-based refining subsidiary, mirrors the WIC’s strategy of seizing enemy assets to finance its own operations.⁴ The WIC did not view Spanish or Portuguese property as inviolable; it viewed it as a resource to be “liberated” for the benefit of shareholders and the State. Similarly, US rhetoric regarding Venezuelan oil often frames its appropriation as a necessary measure to “protect” the assets from the “corrupt” Maduro regime, effectively transferring sovereign wealth into the hands of US jurisdiction and creditors.⁶

2.2 The “Pacificatie” Euphemism and the Language of Empire

A defining characteristic of the Roofstaat, as identified by Vanvugt, is the use of euphemistic language to mask brutality. Dutch colonial history is replete with terms like pacificatie (pacification), “restoring order,” and “police actions” to describe wars of conquest and extermination.¹ The genocide of the Banda Islands in 1621, orchestrated by Jan Pieterszoon Coen to secure a nutmeg monopoly, was framed as a necessary administrative measure to uphold contracts and ensure stability against “treacherous” natives.¹ The extermination of the population was not presented as a massacre, but as the enforcement of law.

This rhetorical tradition is vividly alive in the events of January 2026. The abduction of a sitting head of state is framed not as a coup d’état or a violation of Westphalian sovereignty, but as a “law enforcement operation” to apprehend a “narco-terrorist”.⁷The deployment of massive naval fleets to the Caribbean is described as a “counter-narcotics operation” rather than a naval blockade.¹⁰ Just as the Dutch labeled indigenous resistance fighters as “pirates” or “smugglers” to justify their own predatory violence, the US designation of the Venezuelan government as a “criminal enterprise” (Cartel of the Suns) serves to strip it of political legitimacy and sovereign immunity.¹¹

By categorizing the adversary as a criminal rather than a political entity, the hegemon removes the conflict from the sphere of international diplomacy and war—which have rules—and places it into the sphere of domestic policing, where the state claims absolute authority. This is the essence of the Roofstaat mentality: the criminalization of the enemy to justify the theft of their sovereignty.

2.3 The Opium Trade and the Moral Economy of the Roofstaat

Vanvugt’s analysis of the Dutch opium trade offers another chilling parallel to modern events. For centuries, the Dutch state, through the VOC and later the colonial government, acted as the primary drug dealer in the Indonesian archipelago. The “Opium Regie” (Opium Regime) institutionalized the drug trade, making it a pillar of colonial revenue.¹ The Dutch state held a monopoly on the import and sale of opium, processing it in a factory in Batavia and distributing it through a vast network of dens, all while claiming to regulate the trade for the “public health”.¹

The hypocrisy of a state profiting from the drug trade while simultaneously criminalizing indigenous use or independent trade is stark. Today, the US accuses the Maduro government of running a “narco-state,” yet historical evidence suggests the US has engaged in similar behaviors or supported allies who do. The contradiction is most evident in the disparate treatment of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former President of Honduras, and Nicolás Maduro. Hernández, a US ally, trafficked tons of cocaine with impunity for years until he became a liability, at which point he was prosecuted.¹³ However, in a stunning display of “clientelism,” President Trump pardoned Hernández in December 2025, claiming he was “treated unfairly,” while simultaneously launching a military raid to capture Maduro on nearly identical charges.¹³

This double standard mirrors the Dutch colonial model: drug trafficking is a crime when done by competitors or independent natives, but it is “commerce” or “geopolitics” when done by the state or its proxies. The Roofstaat defines legality not by the act, but by the actor.

3. The Privateer vs. The Pirate: The Legal Architecture of Predation

The core of the US justification for its actions in Venezuela and beyond lies in the legal distinction between legitimate state force and illegitimate criminal violence. Virginia Lunsford’s analysis of Dutch maritime history provides the essential theoretical framework for deconstructing this distinction. In the Golden Age, the difference between a “pirate” (zeerover) and a “privateer” (kaper or commissievaarder) was often purely bureaucratic: the possession of a commission (kaperbrief) from the state.¹

3.1 The Modern Letter of Marque: The Sealed Indictment

In the 17th century, a kaperbrief transformed a robbery at sea into a legal act of war. It allowed private individuals to seize property and commit violence with the blessing of the Prince of Orange or the States-General.¹ Lunsford notes that the state sponsored this activity because it was a cost-effective way to wage war and weaken rivals without depleting the national treasury.¹ The privateer was an auxiliary of the state, motivated by profit but serving a geopolitical function.

In the 21st century, the US Department of Justice sealed indictment serves as the modern Letter of Marque. When the US indicted Nicolás Maduro in 2020 on charges of narco-terrorism and placed a $15 million (later raised to $50 million) bounty on his head, it effectively issued a global license for his capture.⁷ This indictment transforms the act of kidnapping a foreign leader—universally recognized as an act of war or a violation of international law under the UN Charter—into a domestic law enforcement imperative.

The parallel is striking and precise. Just as the Dutch commissievaarders were authorized to seize “prizes” (ships/cargo) and bring them to Admiralty courts for adjudication ¹, US agencies and their proxies are authorized to seize “assets” (bank accounts, CITGO shares, luxury jets) and “high-value targets” (Maduro, Alex Saab) and bring them to US District Courts.⁴ The legal veneer provided by the indictment performs the exact same function as the kaperbrief: it sanitizes predation, allowing the state to claim moral superiority over the “pirates” (rogue states) while engaging in behavior that is materially identical to piracy.

3.2 The “Slippery Slope” and the Gray Zone of Legality

Lunsford emphasizes the “slippery slope” between privateering and piracy. Dutch privateers frequently crossed the line, attacking neutral ships or continuing their depredations after peace treaties were signed.¹ The Admiralty courts often looked the other way if the profits were high enough or if the targets were political enemies, engaging in what Lunsford describes as a “malicious business” that blurred the lines of legality.¹

We see this same ambiguity in modern US operations. The seizure of the Venezuelan presidential plane in the Dominican Republic and the appropriation of CITGO’s assets are acts that, if committed by any other nation, would be classified as state piracy or theft.¹⁹ However, because they are conducted under the auspices of US sanctions regimes (specifically OFAC regulations) and judicial rulings, they are treated as legitimate legal proceedings.

The US designation of the “Cartel of the Suns” allows the US to treat the Venezuelan military not as a sovereign armed force, but as a criminal conspiracy.¹¹ This semantic shift is crucial. It allows the US to bypass the protections of the Geneva Conventions and customary international law regarding the treatment of state officials. If Maduro is a “Kingpin” rather than a President, the rules of war do not apply; only the rules of capture do. This creates a gray zone where state agents act with the aggression of privateers, shielded by domestic statutes applied extraterritorially.²²

3.3 Jurisdiction as a Weapon: The Admiralty of the Maas to the Southern District of New York

Lunsford highlights the role of the Admiralty of the Maas in sponsoring and adjudicating privateering activity.¹ These courts were not neutral arbiters; they were institutions designed to legitimize the flow of stolen wealth into the Dutch economy. Similarly, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York has become the venue of choice for the “lawfare” against Venezuela.

It is in these courtrooms that the “prizes” of the 21st century are adjudicated. The legal battles over CITGO, the gold reserves in the Bank of England (blocked at US behest), and the extradition of diplomats like Alex Saab are the modern equivalent of prize court proceedings.¹⁹ The court stamps the theft with a judicial seal of approval, converting “looting” into “asset forfeiture” or “sanctions enforcement.” This judicialization of geopolitical conflict is a hallmark of the sophisticated Robber State, which prefers the gavel to the sword, provided the gavel delivers the same result.

4. The Capture of Maduro: The Noriega Precedent and the Theater of Justice

The operation to capture Nicolás Maduro in 2026 is not an isolated incident but the culmination of a jurisprudential strategy established during the invasion of Panama in 1989. The capture of Manuel Noriega established the “law of the jungle” disguised as legal precedent—specifically the Ker-Frisbie doctrine, which holds that a court’s jurisdiction over a defendant is not negated by the manner of their capture, even if that capture involved kidnapping, illegal invasion, or violation of international treaties.²⁵

4.1 From Noriega to Maduro: The Evolution of “Head of State” Criminalization

The US invasion of Panama (Operation Just Cause) was justified largely on the grounds of enforcing a US drug trafficking indictment against Noriega.²⁷ Similarly, the 2020 indictment of Maduro laid the legal groundwork for the 2026 operation.⁸ In both cases, the US unilaterally stripped a sitting head of state of their sovereign immunity by labeling them a “drug trafficker” and “racketeer.”

This tactic allows the US to bypass the United Nations Charter’s prohibition on regime change and the use of force (Article 2(4)). By reframing the conflict as a “police action” against a “criminal,” the US denies the political nature of the intervention.³⁰This is a critical evolution of the Roofstaat methodology. The Dutch WIC declared war on Spain openly; the modern US declares war on “crime” while invading nations.

However, as noted in the research, these indictments are often highly politicized and selective. The case of Juan Orlando Hernández is the smoking gun of this hypocrisy. Hernández, who facilitated industrial-scale cocaine trafficking, was a staunch US ally for years. He was only prosecuted after leaving office and becoming politically expendable.¹⁴ His subsequent pardon by President Trump in 2025 confirms that the label of “narco-terrorist” is applied based on geopolitical alignment, not objective criminal conduct.¹³ This selectivity mirrors the Dutch Golden Age, where the “pirate” label was applied to competitors (like the Dunkirkers), while Dutch privateers engaging in the same acts were feted as national heroes.¹

4.2 The Performance of the Courtroom as Legitimation Ritual

Once captured, the foreign leader is subjected to the ritual of the American courtroom. As seen with Noriega, and now anticipated with Maduro, these trials serve a performative function. They validate the “Robber State’s” narrative that it is the arbiter of global justice.²⁸ The outcome is predetermined by the asymmetry of power and the refusal of US courts to entertain defenses based on the illegality of the capture or the political motivations of the prosecution.²⁵

This judicial theater effectively launders the violence of the capture. Just as the Dutch Admiralty courts legitimized the seizure of Portuguese galleons as “lawful prizes” ¹, US District Courts legitimize the seizure of sovereign leaders and national assets. The “full wrath of American justice” promised by Attorney General Pam Bondi ⁸ is the modern equivalent of the public executions of pirates in Amsterdam—a spectacle designed to demonstrate the state’s power, the reach of its arm, and the futility of resistance.¹

4.3 The “Hybrid War” Strategy

The Maduro capture represents the apex of “hybrid war,” blending legal warfare (lawfare), economic warfare (sanctions), and kinetic special operations. The quote “To believe USA regime change in Venezuela is about drug smuggling, you have to ignore Trump’s personal pardon of the former Honduran president for drug smuggling” [User Query] underscores the purely instrumental nature of the legal charges. The drug war narrative is the Trojan Horse for regime change.

By designating the “Cartel of the Suns” as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), the US unlocked a suite of military and intelligence authorities that are typically reserved for non-state actors like Al-Qaeda.¹² Applying this designation to a state government blurs the distinction between a sovereign entity and a terrorist group, permitting the use of lethal force and extraterritorial capture without a formal declaration of war. This is a sophistication of the Roofstaat model: where the Dutch simply declared that “no peace exists beyond the line,” the US constructs a complex legal edifice to declare that the enemy has no rights because they are not a state, but a “criminal enterprise”.¹⁰

5. Resource Imperialism: From Spices to Rare Earths and Oil

The underlying driver of both the Dutch Roofstaat and the modern US “Robber State” is economic extraction. Vanvugt demonstrates that the violence of the VOC was driven by the desire to monopolize the spice trade (cloves, nutmeg).¹ The “pacificatie” of the Banda Islands was, at its core, a resource war. Today, the commodities have changed—from nutmeg to heavy crude and rare earth elements—but the logic of extraction remains identical.

5.1 Venezuela: The Black Gold Prize

Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves. The US campaign against Maduro, masked as a crusade for democracy and against drugs, is fundamentally a struggle for control over these resources.³⁷ The seizure of CITGO (Venezuela’s US-based refining arm) and the blocking of PDVSA oil exports act as a modern blockade, starving the target state into submission to force a transfer of assets.³

The quote provided in the query, “America is doing what it excels in, engaging in 19th-century imperialism succoured with jingoistic nationalism because it wants commodities, compliance and clientelism,” precisely captures this dynamic. The US “maximum pressure” campaign is a form of neo-mercantilism, seeking to reintegrate Venezuelan oil into the US sphere of influence and deny it to rivals like China and Russia.³⁹ This mirrors the VOC’s strategy of denying spices to the English and Portuguese to ensure Dutch market dominance.² The WIC did not just want to trade; it wanted to control the source of production. Similarly, the US goal is not just to buy Venezuelan oil, but to determine who controls it and where it flows.

The “modern piracy” accusation leveled by Venezuela regarding the seizure of oil tankers ⁴ is accurate in the historical sense defined by Lunsford. The US Navy’s interception of tankers bound for Iran or Cuba is a direct continuation of privateering—seizing merchant vessels to enforce an economic blockade and damage an enemy’s revenue stream.³⁹

5.2 Greenland: The New Frontier of Commodification

The “New Yalta” scenario suggests a deal where the US “gets” Greenland [User Query]. This reflects the explicit commodification of sovereign territory, a hallmark of the imperial mindset. Donald Trump’s interest in buying Greenland, and subsequent threats to take it, are driven by the island’s immense strategic value and its untapped deposits of rare earth minerals—vital for high-tech industries, batteries, and the green energy transition.⁴²

Just as the Dutch viewed the East Indies not as nations with rights but as repositories of wealth to be managed by the VOC, the US view of Greenland is transactional. The Danish Prime Minister’s warning that “pressure from even close allies becomes unacceptable when it challenges Denmark’s sovereignty” highlights the clash between the “Robber State” mentality—which views territory as real estate—and the modern concept of self-determination.⁴²

The US desire to secure Greenland is also a defensive move against Chinese encroachment in the Arctic, paralleling the Dutch need to secure key ports against the British.⁴⁴ The “commodification” of Greenland—treating it as a strategic asset to be acquired rather than a home to a people—echoes the WIC’s treatment of Manhattan or the VOC’s treatment of the Cape of Good Hope.¹ It is an imperial vision where geography serves the hegemon.

5.3 The Strategic Logic of Extraction

The linkage between Venezuela and Greenland in the “New Yalta” discourse reveals a coherent strategy: the securing of the Western Hemisphere’s critical resources under US hegemony. Venezuela provides the energy (oil); Greenland provides the technology inputs (rare earths). Together, they secure American autarky and dominance in a decoupling global economy.⁴⁷ This is 19th-century resource imperialism adapted for 21st-century technological needs.

6. The “New Yalta”: Spheres of Influence and the Erasure of Sovereignty

The concept of a “New Yalta”—a grand bargain between Trump, Putin, and Xi dividing the world into spheres of influence—represents the ultimate manifestation of the “Robber State” on a global scale. This scenario envisions a world where the sovereignty of smaller nations (Ukraine, Taiwan, Venezuela, Greenland) is negotiable, traded between Great Powers to ensure stability and profit for the hegemons.⁴⁹

6.1 The Return of Great Power Partition

The original Yalta Conference (1945) famously divided Europe. A “New Yalta” in 2026 implies the abandonment of the post-Cold War “rules-based order” in favor of naked realpolitik and Great Power management.

• Russia gets Ukraine: A recognition of Russian territorial conquest and a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in exchange for non-interference elsewhere.⁴⁹

• China gets Taiwan: An acceptance of Chinese hegemony in Asia, likely trading US silence on Taiwan for trade concessions or non-interference in the Americas [User Query].

• US gets the Western Hemisphere (and Greenland): The reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine in its most aggressive form, allowing the US to act with impunity in Venezuela and securing the Arctic flank via Greenland.⁵¹

This creates a world order that mirrors the colonial era, specifically the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which divided the non-European world between Spain and Portugal.⁵⁴ In this framework, international law applies only to the weak. The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. This is the geopolitical macrocosm of the microcosm Lunsford describes in the Caribbean privateering wars: a lawless zone where might makes right, and legal commissions are merely post-hoc justifications for the seizure of wealth.¹

6.2 The Erosion of the International Legal Order

The acceptance of such a deal would signify the death of the UN Charter system, which is predicated on the equality of sovereign states and the prohibition of territorial acquisition by force.¹⁰ By engaging in the extraterritorial capture of Maduro and treating Greenland as a purchasable asset, the US is actively dismantling the legal norms it helped establish after 1945. It is reverting to the 17th-century norms of the Roofstaat, where sovereignty is a function of military capacity, not legal right.

The “New Yalta” confirms that for the Great Powers, smaller nations are not subjects of international law but objects of exchange. This is the logic of the Roofstaat: the world is a warehouse of resources, and the only crime is failing to secure your share.

7. The Cyclical Nature of “Lawfare” and Moral Corruption

Vanvugt argues that the “Robber State” mentality corrupted Dutch society, creating a culture of hypocrisy where extreme violence was justified by a veneer of Calvinist piety.¹ A similar moral corrosion is evident in the modern US context.

7.1 The Hypocrisy of the “War on Drugs” and “Democracy”

The disconnect between the US treatment of Juan Orlando Hernández (a pardoned ally) and Nicolás Maduro (an indicted enemy) exposes the “War on Drugs” as a tool of political control rather than law enforcement.¹³ The US uses “lawfare”—the weaponization of the legal system—to target geopolitical adversaries while shielding useful proxies.²²

This hypocrisy mirrors the Dutch Golden Age, where the Dutch condemned Spanish “tyranny” while engaging in the slave trade and the massacre of indigenous populations.¹ The rhetoric of “democracy promotion” in Venezuela collapses when contrasted with the support for authoritarian regimes that serve US interests. The “law” becomes a weapon, not a standard.

7.2 The Normalization of Modern Piracy

The seizure of the Venezuelan plane, the confiscation of gold reserves in the UK (at US behest), and the forced sale of CITGO are widely criticized in the Global South as “modern piracy”.⁴ These actions strip the Venezuelan state of its wealth without a declaration of war. In Lunsford’s terms, these are “prizes” taken by the state. The legal battles in US courts over these assets are the modern equivalent of the Prize Court proceedings in the 17th century, where the theft is stamped with a judicial seal of approval.¹

The “cyclical behavior” mentioned in the query refers to this recurring pattern: the rise of a hegemon who writes the rules of trade and war to favor its own extraction, labels competitors as criminals, and uses high-minded rhetoric to justify low-minded looting. The US in 2026 is re-enacting the script of the Dutch Republic in 1626.

7.3 Consequences for Global Society

The implications of this return to the Roofstaat model are profound and destabilizing:

• Breakdown of Trust: If the US can seize the assets of a sovereign nation and kidnap its leader, no country’s reserves or officials are safe. This will accelerate the move away from the US dollar and Western financial institutions (de-dollarization).

• Proliferation of Force: If the US uses “anti-narcotics” as a pretext for invasion, other powers (Russia, China) will use similar pretexts (”anti-terrorism,” “protection of minorities”) to justify their own interventions. The threshold for war is lowered.

• The Law of the Jungle: We return to a world where “might makes right”.⁵⁶ Small nations must seek the protection of a Great Power or risk annihilation. Sovereignty becomes conditional.

• Moral Decay: The normalization of state kidnapping and theft erodes the moral authority of the West, making it impossible to condemn the aggressions of others without appearing hypocritical.

8. Conclusion

The events of 2026—the capture of Maduro, the pressure on Greenland, and the looming “New Yalta”—confirm that the “Robber State” is not a relic of history but a persistent mode of governance for hegemonic powers facing crisis or opportunity.

The United States, like the Dutch Republic before it, utilizes a sophisticated legal and moral framework to justify predation. Where the Dutch used the Kaperbrief and the VOC charter, the US uses the sealed indictment, the OFAC sanction, and the FTO designation. Where the Dutch justified violence through religious superiority and the “freedom” to trade, the US justifies it through the “War on Terror/Drugs” and the defense of “democracy.”

However, the mechanism remains unchanged: the extraterritorial projection of force to extract resources, enforce compliance, and eliminate rivals. The “New Yalta” is simply the recognition that in a multipolar world, the Great Powers will revert to the “law of the jungle,” partitioning the globe into exclusive zones of exploitation. For global society, this signals a dangerous regression from the ideals of sovereign equality to a neo-colonial reality where no state is safe from the long arm of the “Robber State” if it possesses resources the hegemon desires.

Table 1: Comparative Analysis of State Predation Instruments

The capture of Nicolás Maduro is, therefore, the ultimate expression of the Roofstaatin the 21st century: a state acting as a pirate, armed with the law, seizing the leader of a sovereign nation as a prize of war, all while the world watches the theater of justice unfold.

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By aligning with Russia and adopting its grievances against the Western liberal order, the administration validates its own domestic war against the “globalists” who built that order.

PASCAL HETZSCHOLDT

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20 DECEMBER 2025

The Convergence of Retribution and Realignment: An Exhaustive Strategic Analysis of the Trump-Russia-China Triad (2025)

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The Russia-adjacent “connective tissue” points that are real, documentable, and potentially problematic if Trump Media (TMTG / Truth Social) is merging with TAE.

PASCAL HETZSCHOLDT

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20 DECEMBER 2025

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GPT-5.2 analyses a 'Powers of Corruption' Diagram. If you want to go from “dark diagram” to proof-grade claims, you’d look for: Primary money trails, Procurement/ethics documentation,...

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20 DECEMBER 2025

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The year 2025 represented a decisive break in U.S. policy toward the Russian Federation. These actions have collectively eroded the containment architecture built in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion

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25 DECEMBER 2025

The Great Rebalancing: A Strategic Assessment of U.S. Administrative and Policy Shifts Benefiting the Russian Federation in 2025

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Grok: If Trump and Musk governed the U.S. like Russia and China, Americans would face a stark trade-off: efficiency and "strength" for freedom and equity.

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4 APRIL 2025

Question for Grok: Look at all the posts on X when answering the following question: "If Trump and Musk would treat their own citizens in the same way as the countries they look up to - Russia and China respectively - what would that mean for the population of the US?" Compare Russian and Chinese policies and the consequences for their populations and e…

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