No surprise?

I frequently and arbitrarily come across posts like this one on LinkedIn …

Jonny Resman, having a long and winding title / designation, claimed that “in a leaked draft of the U.S. National Security Strategy, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland were potential countries for U.S. coercion and influence, to make them leave the EU. The reason is to split and make it difficult for a strong and unified EU to act and focus on counter-U.S. national interests.”

He also voiced the opinion that “the US is becoming more like Russia, and unfortunately it seems that hatred and contempt for European values are equally strong on both sides of the European continent.”

Well, “I have seen the future - and it works” - however slightly different from how the originator of this (in-) famous quote, Lincoln Steffens, might have meant it [1].

Here I'm not talking about the Bolshevik revolution of 1919 but about a likewise ideology prone topic, the two layered US-foreign affairs communication.

Supported by long years of observation I received the irrefutable impression that the US foreign politics is two layered (1^st layer: material great-power / national-interest logic paired with a 2^nd layer: public moral vocabulary that helps sustain legitimacy and domestic consent).

And indeed, this impression is strongly echoed in classic realist and realist-adjacent literature. In the references there are three very “load-bearing” quotations that map closely onto my two layers, each given as an annotated APA reference, when the American diplomat and historian George Frost Kennan demanded in 1948 to drop the moral slogans and to think in “straight power concepts” instead: (“We should cease to talk about … objectives such as human rights … and democratization.”) [2].

Kennan later too remained a vocal critique of the “legalistic-moralistic” tradition as a recurring U.S. habit: “the 'legalistic-moralistic approach to international problems' … 'runs like a red skein through our foreign policy'.” [3]

As a 3^rd example the German-American jurist and political scientist Hans Joachim Morgenthau may serve, when in 1951 stating that the moral abstraction as a substitute for political thought may become a source of failure: “The intoxication with moral abstractions … is … one of the great sources of weakness and failure....” [4]

There is in addition a substantial scholarly literature that speaks directly to my two-layer model of U.S. foreign policy (material strategic interests vs. public legitimating narratives). Below are three academically influential works with prominent quotations supportive of that view, each with an annotated APA reference.

• Goddard & Krebs (2015): Legitimation as a constitutive element of grand strategy: “…legitimation … has significant and independent effects on grand strategy's… formulation and execution… audiences are mobilised… defines national interest.” (Goddard & Krebs, 2015) [5]
  
  
• Hall (2021): Populist foreign policy rhetoric and domestic mobilisation: “Trump's foreign policy rhetoric… aimed at creating a sense of crisis… to mobilise his domestic base.” (Hall, 2021) [6]
  
  
• Chow (2024): Strategic signalling and attitude shaping: “… states use whataboutism… to shape American public opinion … influences foreign policy attitudes.” (Chow, 2024) [7]

That should suffice. It is so obvious: shady dealings in plain sight. 

We could have known it long before. And a few of us probably felt it intuitively: For the US Europe is a useful idiot at best, to buy their LNG and weaponry, to co-fight their world-wide wars and to serve as a buffer to their adversaries. It was and it still is pure great power politics, but - before Trump - it was 'sold' to us as a charitable, free service for the benefit of humanity.

And to my utter astonishment, it worked throughout all the time.

So, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference in Germany found charming words [8] for his largely European audience - well, it worked again.

Despite the fact that Donald Trump since his first term in office had already dropped the mask and J.D. Vance had given a rather nasty, but presumably sincere, speech [9] at the same Munich Security Conference the year before Rubio, politicians, commentators and the press were largely in agreement that ‘it won't get that bad’. (side note: My grandmother reacted with these very words ‘It won't be that bad’ when my father, at the tender age of 17, was sent into the great meat grinder of the German campaign in Russia in June 1942) [1].

While the author of the above-mentioned LinkedIn post expressed the hope that the U.S. establishment might still be strong and potentially could stop the most devastating policy choices, it should be clear to all lucid observers that relying on hope cannot be a solution

It’s rather time to take action now!

So, who? Who should be in charge to take action?

Well, we the people, not our elected representatives.

They don't want to represent us at all. They're just career-hungry opportunists. The only thing that will help here is pressure from below, through a grassroots movement.

My advice: Get organised!

Where?

Well, the platform is there. You just need to join.

So, no one who follows world events with any degree of alertness should be particularly surprised - well, should not be.

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[1] The German “Russlandfeldzug”, formally Operation Barbarossa, began on 22 June 1941. It was the launch of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, breaking the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The operation opened the Eastern Front of World War II, which became the war's largest and most lethal theatre. Initial rapid advances in summer 1941 gave way to attrition, logistical overreach, and catastrophic losses, culminating in the strategic turning point at Stalingrad (1942–43).

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References:

[1] Steffens, L. (1919). I have seen the future, and it works. In F. R. Shapiro (Ed.), The Yale Book of Quotations (rev. & expanded ed., p. xxx). Yale University Press.

• This quotation by American investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens, made after his 1919 visit to Soviet Russia, has been anthologized in modern quotation collections including The Yale Book of Quotations edited by Fred R. Shapiro. It reflects Steffens’ early optimistic impressions of Soviet society before his later disillusionment.

[2] U.S. Department of State, Policy Planning Staff. (1948, February 24). Review of current trends: U.S. foreign policy (PPS/23) [Government report]. In Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, General; the United Nations, Volume I, Part 2, Document 4. Office of the Historian.

• This is one of the clearest primary-source statements of the “two-layer” logic I describe: Kennan explicitly advises U.S. policymakers to stop framing Far East policy around universalistic moral goals (“human rights,” “raising living standards,” “democratization”) and to prepare for “straight power concepts,” warning that “idealistic slogans” would become a handicap. The passage is not merely descriptive; it is prescriptive statecraft from inside the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff (PPS/23). It thus supports my view that a moral vocabulary can function as an overlay—useful for public posture, but potentially obstructive when it constrains interest-based policy.

[3] Kennan, G. F. (1984). American diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Rev. ed., pp. 95–103). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1951)

• Kennan’s “legalistic-moralistic” critique is a canonical realist argument about rhetorical framing and cognitive style: he targets the belief that international conflict can be tamed primarily by rules, moral condemnation, and juridical formulas—an outlook that plays well domestically but can misread power and interest. In the quoted formulation (pp. 95–103 in the revised edition), Kennan treats this as a persistent U.S. pattern (“red skein”), i.e., a repeatable public-facing mode of justification that sits uneasily atop the strategic realities policymakers must manage.

[4] Morgenthau, H. J. (1951). In defence of the national interest: A critical examination of American foreign policy (p. 3). Alfred A. Knopf.

• Morgenthau’s core claim is not that morality is irrelevant, but that moralism detached from political reality becomes dangerous—because it can enable crusading, self-deception, and policy incoherence. The “intoxication” metaphor captures how a moral narrative can become psychologically and politically compelling (a mobilizing “marketing layer”), while simultaneously displacing hard analysis of interests, power balances, and trade-offs (my “real politics” layer). In other words, Morgenthau supplies a classic theoretical diagnosis of why moral language so often accompanies interest-driven action: it is rhetorically potent, domestically functional, and strategically distortive if taken as the true decision rule.

[5] Goddard, S. E., & Krebs, R. R. (2015). Rhetoric, legitimation, and grand strategy. Security Studies, 24(2), 179–201.

• This framing article conceptualizes legitimation —public justification of foreign policy— as a distinct causal process alongside material structure and strategic imperatives. It argues that rhetoric and legitimation help construct the national interest and assemble public and elite support, shaping how states define threats and acceptable policies. In other words, the “marketing layer” of U.S. foreign policy has analytic salience in its own right — not merely as packaging for interest-based action.

[6] Hall, J. (2021). Donald Trump’s populist foreign policy rhetoric. Politics, published online.

• While this study focuses on Trump, it illustrates how rhetoric can have domestic political purposes distinct from strategic outcomes. Hall shows that foreign policy language is sometimes deployed less to explain substantive strategy and more to mobilise domestic constituencies through crisis framing—consistent with my idea that the “marketing layer” serves political legitimation and consensus-building even when the underlying strategy is driven by structural forces.

[7] Chow, W. M. (2024). The diplomacy of whataboutism and U.S. foreign policy attitudes. International Organization.

• This empirical IR study illustrates how rhetorical strategies (e.g., whataboutism, reciprocal moral framing) operate to influence domestic opinion about foreign policy. It underscores that public messaging — how foreign policy is explained and framed — isn’t epiphenomenal to state action but is used deliberately to obtain domestic consent or deflect criticism, even when material strategic choices are made for reasons unrelated to that messaging.

[8] Rubio, M. (2026, February 14). Remarks by Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference, Munich, Germany [Speech transcript]. U.S. Department of State. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-at-the-munich-security-conference/

• In this address delivered at the 62^nd Munich Security Conference, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio articulated the Trump administration’s foreign policy stance toward Europe and broader global security issues, emphasising shared Western heritage, transatlantic cooperation, and concerns about migration and cultural cohesion. The speech was widely reported in diplomatic and media analyses as seeking to balance nationalist rhetoric with reassurance to European partners, earning a generally receptive audience despite underlying strategic tensions.

[9] Vance, J. D. (2025, February 14). Speech by J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference 2025 [Speech transcript]. Munich Security Conference. https://securityconference.org/assets/user_upload/MSC_Speeches_2025_Vol2_Ansicht.pdf

• At the 61^st Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a highly controversial address that critiqued European approaches to democratic norms, free speech, and internal social challenges, framing those as more significant threats than external actors such as Russia or China. The speech marked a sharp departure from traditional transatlantic security discourse, prompting vigorous debate among European policymakers and analysts about the future of U.S.–EU cooperation.