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“There is reason for our American friends to celebrate, but some of the ‘we’re all ok now’ seems a little premature. We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead.”—Keir Giles, author of American Overthrow, Russia’s War On Everybody, and Who Will Save Europe?
Registration: Bette’s Book Club with “American Overthrow” author Keir Giles, Part 2
Keir Giles returns on Sunday, 11 am Pacific, for a post-midterms conversation on his latest book, American Overthrow, which is available now worldwide.
To pre-order American Overthrow (Hurst Publishers), follow this link or click this button:
To order outside of Amazon, the book is also available from Bookshop:
American Overthrow worldwide publishing dates:
September 3, UK and Europe
November 15; Available for purchase October 15, US
As I wrote in my review of his book: will Americans surprise Keir?
I think that’s a good place to start when we meet with him for Part 2 of our conversation, post-US midterms.
Here is an excerpt from an op-ed Keir wrote for The Independent:
There’s a well-known saying that calls people who repeat the same action while hoping for different results insane. Tragically, though, when it comes to American efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, insanity is among the most charitable explanations available.
America’s negotiating team, led by Donald Trump’s son-in-law and his golfing buddy, have proven remarkably resistant to learning either from their own failures over months of repetitive iterations of so-called “peace talks”, or from the accumulated experience of centuries of diplomatic engagement with Russia that lay down clear principles that determine success or failure. But then, they have different priorities.
This resistance to learning has been combined with the pursuit of profits from the process to produce a toxic mix that is too often indistinguishable from coercing the victim into surrender and rewarding the aggressor. A recent US initiative proposed resuming shipments of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine, with the profits held by a US intermediary in order to work around European sanctions. This proposal was unsurprisingly rejected by European officials, who joined talks this week in Abu Dhabi with their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts that yet again failed to move the needle on securing peace…
It was clear from an early stage in the cycles of negotiations that Putin had concluded he could string the Trump group along in order to extract ever greater benefits from the United States. The US is providing Putin with repeated confirmation that this is correct.
Last month saw the Trump administration floating the idea of yet another concession to Russia: lifting sanctions on the country’s flagship “government investment fund”, one of the Kremlin’s most powerful tools of international influence. The attitude is fuelled by the credulity of US investors who are unable to resist the lure of fantasy numbers dangled by their Russian counterparts, and unwilling to learn from the experience of businesses that have sunk money into Russia only to have it stolen by the Kremlin - in some cases repeatedly…
Moscow, though, finds it profitable to sustain the illusion that negotiations and compromise may provide a pathway to ending its aggression against Ukraine. Western countries accustomed to resolving peaceful disputes among themselves have been all too eager to buy into this idea.
In the previous decade, I wrote a book called Moscow Rules, where I brought together the key lessons foreign leaders and diplomats had learned in the past for how to handle Russia’s determination to expand its power and territory. One of the fundamental lessons, repeated consistently over history, was that unilateral concessions or expressions of goodwill in the hope that Russia will reciprocate are a direct route to failure, and are inevitably read as weakness and an invitation to demand more. A ceasefire in Russian-occupied Oleshky earlier this month affected just a tiny portion of the immensely long front line…
Ukraine has resumed strikes on Russia’s oil refining industry, after pressure from the United States to suspend them. That’s a tactic that is so effective that US efforts to prevent it are not a Trump innovation. The previous Biden administration also sought to constrain Ukraine from being too successful in the energy war. This mindset may also lie behind reporting last month that US Pentagon officials had asked several NATO countries to tone down their public statements both about the threat posed by Moscow and about how Russia itself is now suffering the consequences of its war.
On the face of it baffling, the requests would make sense in the context of an overall determination not to be beastly to the Russians in the misguided hope that they may play nicely in return. But another pattern that is entirely consistent throughout Russia’s history is that hesitation, indecision and disunity invite escalation from Moscow, as the Kremlin detects weakness it can exploit. In other words, pretending the threat isn’t there, or attempting to placate Russia instead of confronting it, inevitably make the problem worse not better…
Enormous wealth accompanied by moral bankruptcy have led the Trump group’s chosen intermediaries to back Russia’s efforts to make a wasteland and call it peace.—Keir Giles, excerpted with permission from the author
Among Keir’s other key books:
More on Keir Giles here:
KEIR GILES has advised governments worldwide on the Russian threat. A former senior fellow with Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme, he regularly comments for the BBC and international media. His prescient books include Who Will Defend Europe?, a Financial Times Politics Book of the Year.
More about American Overthrow:
AMERICAN OVERTHROW — HAS RUSSIA BROUGHT ABOUT REGIME CHANGE IN THE USA? The maelstrom following Donald Trump’s 2025 return to the US presidency left many bemused and disoriented. But for Russia-watchers, what unfolded was grimly familiar. So many of the Trump administration’s destructive actions have precisely aligned with the Kremlin’s own objectives; and to a startling extent, Trump’s America is beginning to mimic Russia itself.
Abroad, Trump has demanded the annexation of neighbours, and embraced war crimes in Iran and the Caribbean. At home, the war on truth and history, purges and the weaponisation of justice, the deployment of masked federal paramilitaries to the streets of major cities and more all mirror Vladimir Putin’s own consolidation of power. Dismantling obstacles to Russia’s ambitions, whether they threaten Europe or America itself, is a defining feature of Trump’s second presidency. And just like Putin, Trump shows no intention of departing at the end of his presidential term. Keir Giles examines America’s transformation through the prism of Kremlinology. What he reveals should alarm us all.
Quotes on American Overthrow:
‘Keir Giles draws direct parallels between the Trump oligarchy’s consolidation of power in the United States and Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia. This is not a bizarre or far-fetched comparison, and it should make readers of all political persuasions think twice about American politics.’—ANNE APPLEBAUM, author of Autocracy, Inc.
‘As Keir Giles makes abundantly clear in this expertly written and insightful book, Donald Trump’s political template is Vladimir Putin’s.’—FIONA HILL, former US National Security Council advisor
‘Giles highlights Kremlin method in Trump’s madness. A must-read.’—EDWARD LUCAS, former senior editor, The Economist
‘A meticulous forensic examination of how the Trump administration’s objectives precisely match those of the Kremlin.’—TOOMAS HENDRIK ILVES, former president of Estonia
‘For the last decade, I’ve chronicled how Moscow cultivated Donald Trump as an intelligence asset. In American Overthrow, Keir Giles—a Russia specialist at Chatham House—takes that story into the second Trump administration, where the payoff for Russia is finally revealed.
By assembling the scattered scandals of the Trump era into a single, coherent, and chilling whole, Giles does what the daily flood of headlines cannot: he shows how Trump doesn’t merely emulate Russia but often outdoes it—creating his own set of “alternative facts,” activating masked paramilitaries, threatening neighboring allies, and consolidating power in the hands of his billionaire friends.
The picture that emerges—a fractured Europe, a hobbled NATO, a White House at war with its own intelligence agencies—amounts to dividends beyond Putin’s wildest dreams. This is the rare book that says exactly what has happened: Russia has effected regime change in the United States with the active support of millions of Americans—and most of them still don’t even know it.’—CRAIG UNGER, author of House of Trump, House of Putin and American Kompromat.
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REGISTER HERE FOR BETTE’S BOOK CLUB WITH KEIR GILES