In Focus

There are images that do not fade. They imprint themselves on the retina of History not by their beauty, but by the symbolic violence they radiate. The photograph of Donald Trump, enthroned in the Oval Office, wearing a predatory smile, brandishing the Nobel Peace Prize of activist Maria Corina Machado like a hunter exhibiting a trophy, belongs to this category.

The year 2025 will go down as the one where the ‘Mar-a-Lago Braggart’ believed he could tame History by the sheer force of his ego. Driven by a compulsive need to mark his territory—where an animal lifts its leg, he affixes his surname in solid gold letters—Donald Trump sought to transform geopolitics into a branding operation.

In 2025, peace in Ukraine is no longer a matter for diplomats, but for a real estate tycoon: Steve Witkoff, a friend of Trump, parachuted in as chief negotiator with zero experience. In the face of his blunders, all journalistic criticism is aggressively dismissed as a “foreign influence operation.” This marks the rise of “Real-Estate-Politik,” where war is treated like just another business deal. This playbook, first seen with Jared Kushner in the Middle East, reduces geopolitics to a transaction. Nations become assets, borders become contractual clauses, and human lives are a mere liability. The complexity of history is denied in favor of a bottom-line mentality. Peace is no longer an ideal to strive for, but simply a deal to be closed. And the greatest tragedy is watching the world applaud this deadly oversimplification.

The Anchorage Summit, held on August 15, 2025, between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, is presented by Laure Mandeville as a tragicomic illustration of American diplomatic failure. Far from being a negotiation, it was a « meticulously executed Russian psychological operation » resulting in a « strategic triumph for the Kremlin and a profound, self-inflicted humiliation for the United States. » The summit exposed the « ascendancy of a calculating master of the Kremlin over the « drunken boat » of American diplomacy, » with Putin using Trump as a « prop in a drama of his own country’s debasement. » The core message is that the US, driven by presidential ego and strategic incompetence, inadvertently legitimized Putin, eroded its own credibility, and dangerously imperiled the European security order by pressuring Ukraine to accept territorial concessions.