The Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield

Episode 39- So The West Looked Into Putin’s Soul And Forgot A Russian Translator

• Henry R. Greenfield • Season 1 • Episode 39

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A festive Budapest masks a darker reality: a long war in Ukraine and a 33-page U.S. national security strategy that could upend decades of transatlantic habit. We pull the curtain back on a document that sounds tidy on paper but signals a seismic shift in practice—downgrading Europe, shrinking diplomatic footprints, and elevating a Gulf-first, oil-first calculus. The result isn’t just a new posture; it’s a rewrite of the post–World War II bargain that shaped NATO, Ukraine’s hopes, and the European security order.

We walk through the core claims and their consequences. Europe is told to step up or step aside. Ukraine faces a brutal equation as drones, artillery, and blockades meet the slow pressure of demography and displacement. Talk of “deals” blurs into concession chatter, while Moscow tests the West’s red lines and courts India and the Gulf. Meanwhile, a revived Monroe Doctrine approach narrows Washington’s field of view to the Western Hemisphere, closing consulates and trimming bases as a signal that the old umbrella won’t reach as far. Climate cooperation, development finance, and democracy promotion move to the back seat, replaced by transactional ties that reward immediate leverage.

We also look east. The strategy tacitly accepts a co-equal Chinese sphere of influence so long as certain lines hold around Taiwan and the South China Sea, an uneasy managed rivalry that will shape trade routes, supply chains, and ASEAN diplomacy. Upcoming expert voices from Asia and Ukraine will deepen the analysis with on-the-ground context—how money, logistics, and policy collide where it actually matters. If Europe wants agency, it needs to build capacity fast: munitions, air defense, energy resilience, and long-term funding tools that outlast election cycles. If Washington wants credibility, it needs professionals at the table and a coherent endgame.

Listen to unpack what this strategy means for NATO reliability, Ukraine’s survival, and the balance of power from the Black Sea to the Strait of Hormuz. If the map is being redrawn, the question isn’t whether to adapt—but how quickly. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to join the conversation and help others find the show.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield, your gateway to understanding today's geopolitical landscape. With 50 years of experience across 10 countries, Henry shares expert insights on world affairs, offering practical solutions and engaging guest perspectives. Dive into the Greenfield Report for lively discussions on the issues that matter.

SPEAKER_01:

This is Henry R. Greenfield reporting once again from Budapest, Hungary, where the mood is somber and a bit wary in the holiday festive Christmas season of 2025. For the past six weeks, we have been traveling first to Asia and then around Europe while we attempted to put together various Greenfield reports, especially on what is happening or not happening in the on-again, off-again Trump-Putin negotiations to end the war between Ukraine and Russia, we have been thwarted time and again by Trump taking a new twist or turn. Today, the document finally arrived to put some clarity on the future of foreign relations between the United States of America and the rest of the world. If Project 2025 was a huge, thick tone on every aspect of America first in changing the United States back to the 1950s, when it was primarily a white-only country run by white men, the grandly name, the National Security Strategy 2025 for the United States, is a document, while only 33 pages long, is deep on policy, which will lead the USA or not, depending, of course, on the whims of its own sponsor, Donald Trump, for the next three years and possibly for decades to come. Why, you might ask, over the next two weeks, we will explore the meaning of this document and how it will officially change the way the United States works with Europe, the European Union, and its members, as well as Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and of course Russia. But first, let us set the move for what is happening in Europe today. And frankly, it has nothing to do with any of what Trump is saying, as Europe continues to be who have they increasingly become over the past 80 years. In Budapest, everywhere you go, there are so-called Black Friday sales, which now have continued for another week or two, and the malls are filled with shoppers. Everyone is shopping like there is no tomorrow, especially in the few upscale malls, where scenes of revelers dancing on the keys of a giant piano. Allah Tom Hanks and the movie Big are designed to make you feel the holiday season is indeed bright. But all is not well, and everyone knows it. Year four of the war between Ukraine and Russia has dragged on and on, and year five is looming just around the corner. Sooner will be longer than the entire World War I, and contains trench warfare like that war, and as in all Euro wars, new innovations in the killing fields. One hundred and ten years ago, it was the introduction of planes dropping quaint little bombs, and the bloody red barons squaring off in the skies above the trenches in northern France, and then moving on with booming massive guns, the so-called guns of August, as when the war began in that month of 1914. It then went on to introduce tanks as the cousins, the Battenbergs of the United Kingdom, of course, who then later renamed themselves Mountbatten, to lessen their direct connection to the German Hohenzollern family, all the while being the grandchildren of the greatest empire in world history, at least in territory, that is, Queen Victoria of the Grand British Empire. Lost in history, of course, has now been the 500-year empire of Prussia, now completely gone and part of Poland, along with other empires like the Austro-Hungarian that began the war with the assassination of their archduke by a disgruntled subject in their sprawling empire. Gone with the Ottomans and their 1,000-year empire, gone with, of course, that German Empire, the Russian Tsarist Empire, and after World War II, the final nail in the coffins for the French Empire, the Dutch Empire, the Portuguese, yes, there was a Portuguese Empire, and it extended quite lately all the way into the 70s, even in Angola. And of course, the great empire of all, the greatest empire, the British Empire, where the sun never set, and we thought, well, hurrah, huza, and with that gone, the world would be free. But it was not. There was still the United States and its allies against the Soviet Empire, which collapsed in ignomy, while the KGB paper shredder won Mr. Vladimir Putin fed those documents into that shredder as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The end of history, according to Fukiyama, was, of course, in the end, the end of nothing at all. As soon as Russia found themselves another erstwhile dictator, they were back in the game of attacking and preparing for invasions and reconstituting their old Soviet empire, lamented by Putin, the collapse of which as the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. Really, Vladimir? Worse than over 20 million people dying from the Soviet Union in World War II? And yet the fools in the West said they were looking into his soul and saw someone they could work with, including Trump, who now wants, according to the national strategy, a stable relationship with a country that John McCain characterized as one big gas station, due to both the massive amount of gas that was coming out of Russia and the fact that nothing was being developed and has not changed either in the past quarter of a century since Putin came into power. Along the way, the businessmen arrived in Moscow, Trump among them, all reveling in their new corporate ripoff opportunities. And Putin slowly but surely reeled them all in and continues to do so to this very day. No, the national strategy does not call out Putin in any way whatsoever, just in case you're wondering, like the sheikhs and the Emirati and the Saudis in the Gulf, Putin gets a pass. After all, he's Vladimir Putin, and as far as Trump is concerned, that is more than enough and far greater than any weak European ally. For Putin, it may we remind you, be only expansion after expansion after expansion. First there was Chechnya, then Crimea, now Ukraine, Moldova is next. And after that, who knows? How about any of those stands? They all have oil and resources, and people as Putin has fewer and fewer people, and they keep having more and more as he keeps killing his own and future territories in the eastern Ukraine, which have been reduced to wastelands after four years of bloody war. As Europe sits and ponders and ignores the reality of the war in Ukraine, once again for the fourth Christmas in a row. The question is, what, if anything, will be done to change this deadly carnage? More talk, more bombs, more death, more drones. The new tech, of course, now perfected to blow up everything, including thousands of kilometers from the front lines in eastern Ukraine. The population of Ukraine has been decimated. It is now down 25% from 51 million down to 37 million and falling over the course of the past 30 plus years. In that time, by the way, the population of India is almost doubled. In several other developing countries, which have been producers for the United States, have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, including China. But Ukraine, it has been a slow and now faster death spiral. Is this what independence was supposed to bring? The destruction of much of Ukraine and no secure future? Meanwhile, while Europe diters, Trump offered his Russian concession plan. This was followed by Marco Rubio, changing it to a reasonable plan, with some losses by Ukraine, including Crimea and territory lost in battle to date. A rejection, of course, was then put in by Putin after playing out Trump's erstwhile negotiators, saying he wants to get all of the East or he will win it in battle, as he put it, when he arrived in India recently, while doing yet another gas deal with Modi, again thumbing their nose at Trump. Followed by Trump, of course, complaining. His best friend Orbot leaving here in Budapest and getting cheap oil from his other best friend Putin using the Hungary I Love You, Victor Orbon exception by Trump. And now what? Waiting, more death, more refineries are blown up, the Black Sea is ablaze this week. Putin says he won another city in the east, more missions to Moscow by the Russian plants, excuse me, sorry about that. The Trump team, which everyone is characterized as, at the very minimum, unorthodox. Why? Because it is Jared Kushner again, a property developer, and Steve Whitkoff, another property guy and golfing buddy of Trump, and Marco Rubio once in a while, who used to be a senator, and of course there are no career diplomats who speak Russian or really know anything about Russia. Wow, can you imagine in that room who's going to be able to control the conversation? They don't even have a Russian speaker. Perhaps they will look into Putin's eyes and see his soul once again, or the lack thereof. Tomorrow I returned to France. I had hoped to be able to be here in Budapest and talked with locals about the proposed peace conference to be held in Budapest once again, as Orban has said was promised to him. Hopefully it would not be like the last time, the so-called infamous Budapest memorandum, where Ukraine gave up their nukes for security guarantees that were hollow at best and were completely thrown out within a few years. There could be a Christmas miracle, but at the moment, Europe and Ukraine seem to be fresh out of miracles, and the peace pipe man, Donald J. Trump, who, by the way, in this great document, the National Security Strategy for 2025, goes into great detail about how he has stopped eight wars. Well, that peace pipe guy is so caught up in his various scandals, ranging from Epstein to his losses in the recent election to bombing boats and getting pushbone on an alleged war crimes, murdering the survivors in the Caribbean, that some are already saying he's a lame dog president. Has Trump lost his mojo? Well, I think not. I'm not sure about any of that, but what I am sure is that he has failed to stop the Ukraine-Russia war. He has consistently been bested through ill preparation, I might add, by China and Xi Jinping. He has hollowed out U.S. alliances and in fact celebrates that and has forced a fat and lazy Europe. Yes, you are fat and yes, you are lazy Europe, into moving away from the United States and developing serious military capabilities not seen since, yes, World War II, and we know how that ended. The goals of Trump, which are almost exclusively personal gain for himself and his family, especially in the Middle East and more specifically in the Gulf, continue to move right along. The U.S. economy is flat at best, and the apt-named affordability crisis is haunting Trump as bad as it did Biden. Regardless of what Trump and his spin masters want to say, Biden, by every economist's estimation, saved the U.S. from the COVID epidemic, turned the economy around, and left it a clear number one over China. In fact, this week, Trump even used the same value that we have talked about over and over on the Greenfield report of a$30 trillion economy that he inherited from Biden when he left. The economy was$20 trillion. And China was only one and a half trillion behind. And now China is not yet only less than$19 trillion, and the U.S. economy is$31 trillion when Trump took it over. What does that tell you? Remember that growth throughout the Biden years have been a record 16 million new jobs. Over and over we hear, oh, those were all Trumpian jobs. At 16 million? Pandemic or not, Trump's first 10 months have gone from$200,000 a month, at the very minimum under Biden, to below zero in August, and now a modest$119,000 for September, no data for October, due to the Trump plan and Republican mandated shutdown. And now in November, yet another loss of 32,000 for the month of November and total layoffs of 1.7 million people this year alone. But you would never know it from the Trump propaganda machine. You would think everything was fantastic in the golden age of Trump. Ask that to the 250 million Americans who are hurting from tariffs. Trump's numbers are the worst in his presidency. Falling to in either 1.0 or 2.0 doesn't matter. It's at 36% and falling. But it matters not. And that is what this Greenfield report and the coming reports are going to focus on. While Europe diters and Macron is off to China to try to do deals. In Germany, by the way, is specifically called out by Trump in the national strategy for investing in China in the largest chemical complex in the world. Instead of paying for their own military or even investing in their own country, Trump has said he has had enough. The national strategy talks about civilization change in Europe, the end of the Euro, and by extension, U.S. values to over-migration from the Middle East, from Africa, from everywhere, to the point where Europe, according to Trump, would no longer be a reliable ally for NATO in the future. There is much to unpack, as they say, in the National Security Strategy, but suffice it to say, Europe is downgraded. As the Europeans play and have a lovely Christmas, and I return to France, Trump has provided a Christmas surprise that no one, at least not in Europe, no one wanted to hear. Europe is effectively on their own. The U.S. will focus on the so-called Western hemisphere, using what Trump calls the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. That's right, that document that's over 200 years old and was designed to keep the Europeans out of Central and South America, and now is partially at least aimed at keeping China out. In future episodes of the Greenfield Report, we will talk about what will that mean for U.S. military spending, the downgrading and closing of bases, especially in Europe. Where also, by the way, diplomatically, the United States is pulling out, where five, count them, five U.S. consulates are slated to close in France alone in the coming year. The U.S. is abandoning Europe. And just as we have predicted over and over in the Greenfield Report, it is all about making money in the Gulf. While Trump says Middle East, he specifically notes it is about making money with Saudi and those sheiks, as we mentioned, in the UAE and Qatar. And if he can get some regime change, he will bring Iran into his money-making scheme as soon as he can. By the way, they call that out too, but it's not yet succeeded, even though he claims that he has permanently crippled Iran and the Ayatollahs. There is much to say about China in the national strategy and its role in Trump after completely being outclassed by Xi Jinping in his totally ill-prepared meeting with the Chinese leader in South Korea. He has all but given up on bullying sea and will go into acceptance mode as China as a co-global partner with their sphere of influence in Asia, as long as they don't try to take Taiwan or block the South China Sea, which China claims in practically in its entirety. It is the view of the Greenfield Report that the only strategy is one of Trump's personal priorities and have nothing to do with the long-term interests of the United States or its allies. Again, we will be covering Asia with our new guest, Mr. Christopher Fussner, a longtime Republican operative and philanthropist, as well as highly successful U.S. businessmen who will be providing insights on Asia and ASEAN. Chris, you may or may not know, has lived in Singapore for the past 40 years. And what this new national strategy by Trump will mean for that part of the world, as well as Ukraine, where Mr. Fussner has provided hundreds of ambulances as part of his worldwide medical missions that he sponsors, also in places like Nepal. Yes, before you say it or even think it, there are a lot of Republicans out there who are incredible contributors to the human good throughout the world, and Chris is one of them. We will also once again revisit Steve Kroll, our reporter in China, who has been traveling throughout that country since we last spoke to him. In the end, the national security strategy by Trump is in line with exactly who he actually is. If you read the document, it does not sound unreasonable to the average American. Of course, who would not want to put America first? Who would not want to stop the flow of fentanyl? Who would not want to create more jobs? So far, none of this has happened under Trump, but it doesn't matter. What matters is how he will approach the rest of the world. And it is nothing at all like the way the United States has worked with the world over the past eighty years since the end of World War II. You will recall that in one of the very first episodes of the Greenfield Report, we talked about the end of Europe's American century, where we've moved far beyond the end of the century of American dominance and also cooperation with Europe to a completely now new strategy, which we have been laying out in the Greenfield Report over the last months. There will be no more multilateral agencies, there will be no more climate change discussion, there will be no more assistance to developing countries, there will be absolutely no more promotion of democracy. In fact, Trump specifically states that acceptance of places like the Middle East and the Gulf states with the traditional, let's just call them sheikhs and kings and queens and princes, that's reality. And we are not going to try to change that. That is the true meaning of America first, meaning Trump first, and everyone else after that, and buttering him up and flattering him will no longer work, especially for the Europeans. In Trumpian terms, they gave him nothing but grief so far, and along with his attack dogs, as we call him, Captain Pete Hegsith, Department of War Secretary. And J.D. Vance, Europe is in for a rough ride. Enjoy your Christmas, dear Europeans. Your change in lifestyle may be coming sooner than you think. The question the Europeans should be pondering is: will Trump truly abandon them? Is this just a bluff? Will he back off, or is this just another part of the slow burn and turn to the Gulf? As we have said again and again, which Trump now has made official policy of the United States of America. It is time, as Trump would put it, to drill baby drill, and oil is the name of the game. Back to the future for Trump and the hell with the future of the planet. Then again, hasn't it always been that way with Trump and the oligarchs and those who really control this planet? This is Henry R. Greenfield reporting from Budapest on my way back to La Belle, France, signing off and also giving us some thoughts on the new national strategy as outlined by Donald Trump and the future of the United States foreign policy to the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for joining us on the Greenfield Report with Henry A. Greenfield. We hope today's insights into the ever shifting geopolitical landscape have sparked your curiosity and broadened your perspective. Stay connected with us for more in depth discussions and expert solutions. Until next time, keep exploring the world beyond the headlines.