The New Epithet

When Hoover Institute fellow Niall Ferguson had the temerity to criticize the Trump Administration’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine by stating that they were giving up major concessions and receiving nothing in return Vice President JD Vance retorted on X (formerly Twitter) calling Ferguson’s points moralistic garbage and accusing Ferguson of being (gasp!) a globalist.

Globalist is apparently one of the worst epithets in the Trumpian vocabulary right next to RINO (often used together as in RINO globalist) and only slightly less offensive than traitor. Mr. Vance went on to say that President Trump deals with reality not history as if the history of Russian aggression against its neighbors is irrelevant. He asserts, “Russians have a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons in Ukraine, and that advantage will persist regardless of further Western aid packages” so that apparently means we should let the Russians do what they want.

Mr. Ferguson’s criticism of the Trump administration’s dealing with Moscow related to tactics, not strategy. In his response Ferguson conceded all of Mr. Vance’s points noting that he had discussed the very same points in his articles and speeches on the war. Ferguson stated that newly minted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had essentially conceded to all of Vladimir Putin’s demands without any concessions in return (and without the involvement of Ukraine who would actually be making the concessions).

But Mr. Ferguson never really addressed why the Vice President was so virulent in his condemnation of his criticism of the administration’s negotiating tactics. But I got a clue from an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Filipp Piatov, the deputy head of the politics department at Bild, a German newspaper titled Germany’s AfD Is No Friend of America, (published February 18, 2025).The op-ed asserted that the far right AfD (or Alternative for Germany) shares some ideas and policies with MAGA Republicans such as anti-wokeness and opposition to immigration. Its Germany First policies, however, are not only Euro-skeptic but also reject Europe’s (and Germany’s) dependence on America.

The op-ed was in response to Vice President Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference where he chastised the Europeans on their anti-free speech policies. The implication of Mr. Vance’s comments were that, although he mentioned no one by name, the European Union and leading countries within the EU were blocking the free speech of populist parties such as the AfD and that they needed to listen to these people. But the point of Mr. Vance’s speech was not that Europeans must be open to dissident voices as part of our shared Western values, but that the Europeans (and other countries as well) should be receptive to the ideas of nativists such as AfD (and by implication MAGA).

Mr. Piatov wrote that Mr. Vance and Elon Musk (an AfD supporter) may not realize that AfD leader Alice Weidel “recently wrote an op-ed referring to Germans as “slaves” of the U.S., offering a glimpse into the party’s deeply anti-Western ideology.” But I disagree. I think Mr. Vance not only understands AfD’s anti-Western ideology but shares it.

Mr. Vance, prior to his election, was a speaker at the National Conservatism Conference in July of 2024 along with many other speakers that have since been nominated for senior positions in the Trump administration. National Conservatism, as I noted in my commentary, What the Heck Is National Conservatism (and why should you care), published August 12, 2024 rejects globalism and Enlightenment philosophy.

Most people have a positive impression of the Enlightenment and the Western civilization that has made the world a safer, healthier and  more prosperous place in which to live. But Western values imply that these are universal values and principles shared among many peoples and nations – a concept rejected by National Conservatists such as Vice President Vance.

Which gets us back to Mr. Vance’s accusation that Mr. Ferguson is a globalist. Taking a cue from the progressive left, MAGA Republicans are now renaming things in order to redefine our reality. People who believe in Western principles and values (now defined as moralistic garbage) are now globalists (for that matter it is the MAGA Republicans that are the real RINOs). So Niall Ferguson is a (ugh) globalist and not a scholar of Western history and civilization.

The reason the Trump administration has already conceded to most of Putin’s demands is that it rejects the Western values expressed by Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and supports the concept that the Ukraine lies within Russia’s sphere of influence. Likewise, Europe should not really be a part of a grand Western alliance but should have a separate national identity and sphere of influence as should the United States and China.

This is the new world order that President Trump is trying to make. Russia’s concept of its sphere of influence includes not only Ukraine but also Poland, Finland and the Baltic states. Europe considers those countries as part of its sphere of influence. These grand spheres of influence are like tectonic plates and, like tectonic plates, when they grate together violent reactions occur. The subject countries within these spheres of influence have no ability to determine their own fate  but remain vulnerable to tectonic cataclysms. This may be the reality of the world as seen by Messrs. Vance and Trump, but is that really the kind of world we want to live in?