Timothy Snyder’s Imperialist Anti-Trumpism and the Notion of Russian-Inflicted “Superpower Suicide”

Paul Street

 May 8, 2026

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The esteemed liberal bourgeois and Russophobic historian and “Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) democracy expert” Timothy Snyder’s anti-Trumpism/anti-fascism is the anti-fascism of his fellow Democratic Party capitalist-imperialists, not the anti-fascism of decent people who want to live in a world beyond exploitation and oppression.

“Superpower Suicide”

“I’ve been thinking about how best to characterize what the United States is doing to itself on the scale of the world,” said Snyder on his Substack two weeks ago, “and I think ‘superpower suicide’ is probably the best term.” (Snyder said the same thing to his CFR comrades the day before.)

Snyder means “what the United States is doing to itself” under Trump, including the following, by his analysis:

* Privileging the enrichment of the president and his cronies building a cult around that president over sustaining the institutions of a coherent imperial state.

* Undermining proper succession in the imperial elite by calling into question past and future elections.

* Lacking a coherent imperialist ideology to justify and guide the nation’s reigning imperial position in the world.

* Failing to defeat adversaries: “Over the course of the past year,” Snyder says, “Trump has declared and quickly lost a trade war with China, then a war with Iran, and a consequence of both has been the enrichment of Russia.”

* “Shred[ding] essential alliances” (a reference primarily to Trump’s tangling with NATO).

* Attacking science and education by decimating US K-12 and university systems.

* Surrendering green energy leadership and development and thus “the future” to the Chinese.

Tears for (Supposedly) Declining US Power? Really?

Did Snyder, a longtime, often dead-on domestic political critic of Donald Trump, really mean to make an advertisement for Trump? Of course not, but that’s how many might interpret his thoughts on “superpower suicide.” That’s because for much of humanity, the US committing “superpower suicide” would be a welcome development. Dr. Martin Luther’s King’s 1967 identification of the United States as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” has stood the test of time. In his book Endless Holocausts: Mass Death in the History of the United States Empire, the political scientist David Michael Smith calculates that the US has been responsible or shared responsibility for the death of 54 million people between 1945 and 2020. Add in domestic social killing and move the date back to the founding of the American Empire in 1776 [1] and the body count climbs to 300 million.

In his 2013 book America’s Deadliest Export, William Blum reported that the United States after World War II: worked to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments; interfered in elections held by 30 sovereign nations; tried to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders; bombed more than 30 nations; and tried to suppress nationalist, leftist, and populist movements in at least 20 nations. (These numbers need to be updated for the last three years of the Obama administration and for the Trump and Biden presidencies to include, among other things, US funding and protection of Israel’s 2023-20?? genocide in Gaza, Trump’s boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s sovereign elected president, and Trump’s reckless and failing fiasco of a war on Iran.)

The United States is the only country to have attacked human beings (unnecessarily) with nuclear weapons (twice) and has brought the world remarkably close to nuclear annihilation on multiple occasions. It is also now the clear leader in the global march to societal collapse if not human extinction via climate collapse, ecocide (broadly understood), nuclear proliferation, pandemicide, and artificial intelligence.

The Trump fascist regime (not Snyder’s language even if he occasionally refers to Trump as a fascist) is terrible and should be removed from power as soon as humanly possible (more on this below), but, in light of all this terrible and ongoing US imperialism, how upset does Snyder expect decent and informed people to get about Trump (supposedly) leading US “superpower suicide”?

It’s difficult to determine precisely how far the United States’ superpower status has declined under Trump or the extent to which this decline is self-inflicted (“suicidal”) as opposed to a consequence of objective historical-material and structural changes in the world capitalist and imperial system (changes happening independent of who sits atop the US government). But it clear that the United States is still very much and will remain (minus a long overdue North American peoples’ revolution) for some time a rapacious global superpower with the capacity to annihilate millions if not billions of people and to cook and poison the planet beyond repair.

Because Russia

Another question arises: why on Earth would the United States commit “superpower suicide” (if that’s what actually happening)? It seems like an absurd thing for “us” (as Snyder refers to the US-American Empire) to do. The resolution of this seeming contradiction is that, like Hillary Clinton, like the late Madeline Albright, (author of a book released during Trump45 titled Fascism: A Warning) and like others in the (neo-)liberal imperialist elite, Snyder mistakenly thinks (or deceptively claims) that Trump is an agent of one of “our adversaries,” Russia. Snyder believes (or purports to believe) that Putin exercises seemingly supernatural power over the US Empire (others give Israel this power), like Rasputin’s influence over the Romanov dynasty before the Russian Revolution.[2]

A Homegrown and Systemically Rooted Menace to Humanity

Wrong. Trump is a homegrown product of American capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and nativism.[3] Trump represents not so much “superpower suicide” as the rise of a fascist section of the American ruling class that is responding to the limits of their competitive capitalist-imperialist system, including the rise of a new economic and potential military superpower (China), by shredding previously normative bourgeois-democratic rules and norms both at home and abroad. The problem with the Trump regime is not that it is committing “superpower suicide.” It’s that the underlying system of capitalism-imperialism has brought a fascist regime that represents a grave existential danger to humanity to power atop the most lethal global power in history a – a regime that urgently requires removal before it’s too late to sustain prospects for a decent future. This regime must be opposed and removed out of concern for humanity and life itself, not because it may be eroding the global power of an imperialist, mass-murderous Goliath that has never exhibited any such concern.

Notes

+1. One theme that emerges strongly from Ken Burns’ recent PBS series on the American Revolution is that the North American colonists’ move for independence from the British Empire was driven largely by their lust for a continental empire of their own. The United State of America was born imperialist.

+2. Here it is worth noting that Snyder’s main historical work Bloodlands; Europe Between Stalin and Hitler largely blames the rise of the German Third Reich on big bad Soviet Russia, Hitler on Stalin, resurrecting a previous right-wing German historical narrative. See Daniel Lazare’s properly critical review of that volume, titled “Timothy Snyder’s Lies.”

+3. For more on this topic, including a beginning bibliography, see Paul Street, “Timothy Snyder Needs to Study Some American History,” The Paul Street Report, May 4, 2026.

Paul Street’s latest book is This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America (London: Routledge, 2022).

Blind Eyes at the United Nations While the U.S. Bombs for Nonproliferation

John Laforge

 May 8, 2026

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Image by Maria Oswalt.

There is deadly irony in the juxtaposition of Trump’s ‘anti-nuclear war’ on Iran, and the ongoing United Nations Review Conference for the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, or NPT RevCon.

The decision to initiate a war of aggression against Iran killing thousands of civilians was made (among other public pretexts) in order to prevent Iran’s allegedly intended future construction of a nuclear weapon.

The 1970 NPT prohibits the development of nuclear weapons or the transfer of nuclear weapons among or between nations that ratify the treaty. The NPT has slowed the spread of such weapons, while pushing the spread of nuclear reactors. The U.S., Iran, and 187 other UN member states are parties to the NPT.

Iran’s civil nuclear program is lawful under NPT rules, and its representatives are here in New York attending the RevCon which runs until May 22. Still, one after another UN member representative used their ‘general debate’ time to attack Iran for its processing of uranium and Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, but not the United States for its unprovoked, internationally illegal war on Iran.

No friend or military ally of the United States except Israel was consulted or informed about the U.S.’s February 28 Middle East blitzkrieg — with plenty of reason. Trump’s war of distraction would never have been supported much less joined by U.S. allies because: 1) Iran’s nuclear facilities were “totally obliterated” in June 2025 by U.S. Air Force and Navy bombardments; and 2) the International Atomic Energy Agency — the UN body that oversees compliance with the NPT — has reported since 2025 that it has found no evidence of an ongoing Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The catastrophically ill-advised and criminal U.S. war on Iran had to be launched by surprise, without NATO, or UN or U.S. authorization, because the White House’s justifications were so easily debunked, and because the NPT is already working to stop the spread of nuclear arsenals.

During the first days of the NPT RevCon, member states spoke with a shocking and confounding display of double standards, with one after another condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Iran’s alleged violations of NPT inspection rules, but not one criticizing the U.S. attack on Iran, its January 3^rd bombing of Venezuela, or its June 2025 bombardment of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Argentina for example said, “This Review Conference is taking place against a backdrop that we cannot ignore …. the nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran…,” while the Nordic States together singled out Russia, saying its “war of aggression against Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law, including the United Nations Charter….” The U.S. war on Iran was evidently aggression non grata.

The nuclear weapons states’ 56-year-long violation of the NPT’s Article VI — requiring good-faith efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons — was often bemoaned, but the U.S., U.K., Russian, Chinese, and French violators were never called out by name. (North Korea, India, Israel, and Pakistan have nuclear weapons but have not joined the NPT.) Likewise, open, ongoing U.S. violations of the Treaty’s Articles I and II — which forbid the U.S. transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear States Parties including Germany, Italy, Holland, and Belgium — were ignored, while the European Union’s delegate said, “The EU condemns in the strongest possible way Russia’s … announced deployment of nuclear weapons in the territory of Belarus.”

Comically, a few ministers openly excused the U.S.’s Article I & II violations — its stationing of B61 thermonuclear gravity bombs at six air bases in Europe — as when the representative of the Nordic States, asserted that “NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements are fully consistent with the NPT”. The 110-member Non-Aligned States Parties Group politely pushed back and condemned the practice, noting without naming names, “The Group reiterates its deep concern over … practices that run contrary to the principles and objectives of the Treaty such as … nuclear weapons sharing arrangements”.

The most brazenly selective and myopic presentation to date was the “Joint Statement on Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine” signed by 43 NPT States Parties. The paper said, “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law, including the UN Charter….” Every use of the word ‘Russia’ in the text could have been replaced with ‘the U.S.’ and still made perfect sense. The letter endorsed Ukraine’s but not Iran’s “independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity”; Ukraine’s but not Iran’s “inherent right to self-defense” in accordance with the UN Charter “against Russia’s”, but not the United States’ “ongoing illegal war of aggression.” The paper acknowledged the critical danger of attacking nuclear sites and condemned Russia, but not the U.S., both of whom continue to put “nuclear facilities at risk.” The group did manage to generally denounce “indiscriminate attacks that have resulted in civilian deaths and destruction of critical infrastructure….” Yet, the 43 states urged the General Assembly “to condemn Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric”, but not Trump’s mindless threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” or his genocidal outburst that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

For UN member states to ignore U.S. government violations of the UN Charter and the Laws of War is evidence of not just hypocrisy and double standards, but a submissiveness reminiscent of the groveling fear of state terrors of 1930s. More than just Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez and Pope Leo XIV the have to stand up to the megalomaniacal madman of the hour. ### [905 words]

John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.