The King who built his fan base on isolationism is pivoting to a kind of imperialism that the U.S. hasn’t seen in decades.
When Vladimir Putin daydreams, he imagines himself saluting a phalanx as it goose-steps across central Kyiv. In His Royal Majesty’s version of the fantasy, he is triumphantly floating through the Panama Canal on a battleship. Both men see themselves recovering lost empires, asserting their place in history by reversing it.
During his first term, His Royal Majesty set about dismantling the architecture of postwar internationalism by trash-talking and bullying the institutional implements of global cooperation, the likes of NATO and the World Health Organization. This assault on the old order was waged in the name of populism, an attack on elites in foreign capitals who siphoned off taxpayers’ dollars. But what His Royal Majesty hoped to achieve with these rhetorical fusillades was sometimes unclear, other than pleasing his political base, which adored them.
