1. This week, Donald Trump is acting like the Kremlin's perfect hand grenade, tossed into Europe to blow up the West from within. He is attacking the European order (EU), the Transatlantic security alliance (NATO) & the American-led, rules-based international order simultaneously
2. America helped build these orders because they serve 1) US interests and 2) foster international security, stability & trade. Putin's main foreign policy goals for the past two decades have revolved around weakening the West by weakening these three pillars of global politics.
3. Putin couldn't have done better if he had designed a Trumpian hand grenade himself: the US president is slapping tariffs on the EU, attacking NATO allies, praising the Kremlin, and flirting with legitimizing Russian aggression that violates the rules of the international order
4. Trump lashing out at the NATO, the EU, and global organizations like the WTO is made worse by the ongoing disarray with Brexit, which looks likely to weaken Europe/the UK and divert a lot of resources within Europe to internal problems, which necessarily empowers Russia more.
5. Russian information warfare/hybrid warfare theory is based on a simple concept: use a small amount of non-military resources to weaken your enemy from within. Whether Brexit or Trump happened *because* of Russian information warfare efforts, Putin got his result in both cases.
6. I fear that the next several days *could* be one of the most historically consequential & destructive weeks in post-Cold War history, if Trump continues his reckless attempts to blow up the international order that ushered in 70 years of post-WWII prosperity, peace & security.
