The Kremlin’s Playbook: How Alexander Dugin’s Geopolitical Fantasies Became Trump’s Foreign and Domestic Policy

In 1998, I read a book.

In 1997, Russian political philosopher and full-time Rasputin cosplayer Alexander Dugin published Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia. It was a thick slab of paranoid fantasy, geopolitical cosplay, and just enough actual strategy to make it dangerous. While the West was busy doing keg stands on globalism, Russia was quietly digesting Dugin’s call for the U.S. to eat itself from the inside out.

And spoiler alert: we’re halfway through the meal.

Dugin’s grand vision calls for non-military conquest through manipulation, disinformation, and psychological warfare. His “greatest hits” include:

  • Undermining U.S. influence globally (especially in Eurasia, Russia’s favorite playground);
  • Fomenting internal divisions like race, religion, and partisan idiocy;
  • Pushing American isolationism hard enough to make Ron Paul blush;
  • Backing separatist and nationalist movements in Europe (while pretending not to meddle);
  • And weaponizing disinformation like it’s the 21st century’s hottest export.

It’s not tanks and troops…it’s chaos with plausible deniability.

You don’t have to squint hard to see how the Kremlin has turned Dugin’s playbook into a political religion. From Brexit to AfD in Germany to France’s love affair with Marine Le Pen, Russia has been the shady guy in the trench coat whispering sweet nothings into the ears of Western discontents.

As confirmed by the European Parliament and intelligence communities, Russia’s meddling in Europe didn’t stop at memes. It involved money, media manipulation, and enough bots to make Elon Musk nervous (Politico, European Parliament Report, 2019).

But the real prize? America.

Let’s line up the receipts.

You have read that name before on this here snarky Substack. Remember this asshole?

While Dugin wants to destroy liberal democracy from Moscow, Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) wants to burn it down from Silicon Valley. His vibe? Less czar, more startup CEO…but with absolute power.

Yarvin calls democracy a failed experiment and wants to replace it with a king-like CEO figure who rules efficiently by decree. Basically, he wants to take your least favorite Twitter billionaire and hand him the nuclear codes.

And wouldn’t you know it? His dream king looks an awful lot like Donald Trump.

Yarvin’s ideas have found fertile ground in Trumpworld. He’s influenced J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel, and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a plan to replace civil servants with loyalist lackeys and hand the president an autocracy starter pack. (The Verge)

So while Dugin wants to kneecap America geopolitically, Yarvin wants to gut it ideologically. And in Trump, both found the perfect demolition contractor.

This is not a coincidence. It’s a convergence.

Dugin’s strategy of isolation, division, and decay is no longer theoretical-it’s been beta tested. Trump’s presidency, aided by far-right ideologues at home and disinformation campaigns abroad, has become the closest real-world execution of Dugin’s vision.

Not by accident. Not through ignorance. But through a perfect storm of authoritarian ambition, intellectual radicalism, and foreign manipulation.

America isn’t just stumbling into decline. It’s being ushered there, one executive order, culture war, and cable news segment at a time.

This isn’t the fall of Rome. This is the rise of something worse…with Wi-Fi.

Originally published at https://vagabondvisions.substack.com.