The Economics of Power
Where economics meets power.
By Roman Sheremeta
Roman Sheremeta
Roman Sheremeta, Ph.D., is a Professor of Economics and Chair of the Economics Department at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He is also the Founding Rector of American University Kyiv, which he helped establish in 2022.
He is a published author and contributor to the Kyiv Post and Kyiv Independent
Why the far left and the far right are converging on the same foreign policy – russia’s.
JUL 03, 2026
The standard model of American politics treats the far left and the far right as opposites. They are not. They are two ends of a horseshoe, curving toward each other where they would meet if the bar were closed. They share more than either side will admit, and the things they share are precisely the things that matter most for the survival of democratic institutions.
This is not a new observation. The clearest historical demonstration of horseshoe theory is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, in which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – ideologically the two extremes of the European twentieth century – signed a non-aggression agreement that allowed them to divide Poland between them. The pact lasted less than two years before Hitler invaded, but for those two years, the world’s most violent right-wing and left-wing regimes were operational allies. Their shared interest in destroying the European democratic order was more powerful than their stated ideological opposition.
The same dynamic is now visible in American politics, and it is producing the same convergence: a shared sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s russia and a shared hostility to the country resisting him.
The right-wing version
On the American right, the russia-sympathetic position is now mainstream. Donald Trump himself has spent a decade refusing to criticize Putin while attacking nearly every American ally. He capitulated to Iran recently on terms of complete surrender because the war was hurting his political standing, and he has signaled repeatedly that he is willing to abandon Ukraine on similar logic. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other prominent Republican legislators have actively opposed military aid to Ukraine. Tucker Carlson, who reaches more American viewers than any cable host, has spent the past three years platforming russian narratives, conducting an unchallenging interview with Putin himself, and arguing that russia is the victim of Western aggression.
This is documented and well-known. What is less widely understood is that the same convergence is now visible on the American left.
The left-wing version
On Tuesday, June 23, Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District. Avila Chevalier is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, endorsed by Zohran Mamdani, and now well positioned to win the general election in November and represent Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx in Congress.
On February 23, 2022 – the night russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began – Avila Chevalier posted on Twitter: “Cause the Cold War ended and we’ve been bullying Russia ever since. Also war is lucrative for these sociopaths.”
The phrase “bullying Russia” was not a coincidence. Vladimir Putin himself, at a Moscow rally in April 2021, accused the West of having “developed a nasty habit of bullying Russia for any reason or without any reason at all.” The phrasing of an American socialist congressional candidate, posted hours into russia’s invasion of Ukraine, matched the phrasing the russian president had used to justify the invasion a year earlier. Asked by reporters this month about the post, Avila Chevalier said she did not remember its context.
She is not an isolated case. Hasan Piker, one of the most-watched political commentator on Twitch and a major voice of the American left, denied russia would invade in the weeks before it did, has consistently argued NATO is the real aggressor in the conflict, has claimed American support for Ukraine has been “devastating” for Ukrainians, and has repeatedly echoed russian narratives about Ukrainian territory. He is not on the fringe of his movement. He is its most prominent young voice.
This is the same position the American right has reached. Different rhetoric, same conclusion: the United States should stop supporting Ukraine, russia is the misunderstood party, and the war is being prolonged for the benefit of American arms manufacturers.
Why this happens
The convergence is not accidental. It is structural.
The far right and the far left share a hatred of the democratic center. They share a belief that the existing American political order is fundamentally illegitimate and must be destroyed or replaced. They share contempt for the institutions – the State Department, the established media, NATO, the postwar international order – that the center built and depends on. They share a willingness to find common cause with any external power that weakens those institutions, regardless of whether that power’s actual values match their stated ones.
This is why Putin’s russia – nominally a far-right authoritarian regime built on Orthodox nationalism, oligarchic capitalism, and brutal homophobia – is now treated favorably by significant portions of the American socialist left. Putin’s actual ideology should be repulsive to any leftist. His regime is everything the American left claims to oppose. But russia opposes the American liberal democratic order, and for the horseshoe extremes, that is enough.
The same logic operates in reverse on the right. Putin’s russia is not, by any traditional American conservative measure, an admirable society. Its economy is corrupt. Its rule of law is nonexistent. Its democratic institutions are a sham. Reagan-era conservatives would have understood this immediately. But the modern MAGA right has decided that the American democratic order – its courts, its press, its civil service, its alliances – is a worse enemy than russia is. So russia becomes acceptable.
What russia knows
The convergence is not just an organic intellectual phenomenon. It is the product of sustained russian effort.
In Europe, this is documented. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party took a 9.4 million euro loan from a russian-linked bank in 2014. A 2023 French parliamentary inquiry concluded that the party had served as a “communication channel” and “mouthpiece for the Kremlin.” Russian intelligence services have spent the past two decades cultivating relationships with both the European far right and the European far left – funding favorable media, providing strategic guidance, and amplifying narratives across both extremes simultaneously.
The reason this works is that both extremes serve the same russian strategic objective: weakening the Western democratic order from within, by attacking the center from both sides at once. Russia does not need the American left to adopt russian values. It needs the American left to attack the American center. It does not need the American right to adopt russian values either. It needs the American right to attack the same center. The result is a pincer movement against democratic institutions, executed by Americans who think they are operating on their own initiative.
The asymmetry, and why it does not save us
The right-wing version of this convergence is currently far more politically powerful in the United States. The MAGA movement has captured one of America’s two major parties and the presidency. The left-wing version remains, for now, a minority within the Democratic Party, concentrated in deep-blue urban districts.
This asymmetry does not save the country. It means only that the right-wing version is producing concrete damage faster – Ukraine, NATO, Iran, the institutional architecture of American foreign policy. The left-wing version is producing damage at the level of cultural authority and the long-term direction of one of the two parties. If it continues to grow, the result will be a Democratic Party whose foreign-policy instincts on russia, NATO, and Ukraine are indistinguishable from MAGA’s. At that point the country will have lost the only remaining institutional check against the russian strategic objective.
The horseshoe is closing. The center is squeezed from both sides. And the only people benefiting from any of it are sitting in Moscow, watching the country that won the Cold War quietly forget why it fought.
© 2026 Roman Sheremeta
Putler’s got all the far right and far left in the west working determinedly for his side.
Normal democratic politicians do support Ukraine, but nowhere near as strongly as extremists such as the magaputler shitheads and the far left figures like Jeffrey Sachs, George Galloway and JeremIRA CorbLenin support putlerstan.
The horseshoe coalition.
I prefer saying the horse’s ass coalition.
“for those two years, the world’s most violent right-wing and left-wing regimes were operational allies. Their shared interest in destroying the European democratic order was more powerful than their stated ideological opposition.”
That’s ringing more than a few alarm bells.
“Tucker Carlson, who reaches more American viewers than any cable host, has spent the past three years platforming russian narratives, conducting an unchallenging interview with Putin himself, and arguing that russia is the victim of Western aggression.”
A modern day Lord Haw-Haw, who has done more than enough to deserve the same fate.
“The far right and the far left share a hatred of the democratic center. They share a belief that the existing American political order is fundamentally illegitimate and must be destroyed or replaced.”
Exactly right.
“Reagan-era conservatives would have understood this immediately. But the modern MAGA right has decided that the American democratic order – its courts, its press, its civil service, its alliances – is a worse enemy than russia is. So russia becomes acceptable.”
And that is why magaputlerism has to die.
“The horseshoe is closing. The center is squeezed from both sides. And the only people benefiting from any of it are sitting in Moscow, watching the country that won the Cold War quietly forget why it fought.”
And that’s where we are now :
Krasnov-approved Putlerist scum like AfD, Reform and National Rally, are in poll position at the moment.
“The left-wing version”
Examples here include Avila Chevalier, a *candidate* for a congressional seat, and Hasan Piker (never heard of him), who is a commentator on a streaming platform. Neither is really representative of anything. AOC and Bernie Sanders, who *are* representative of the Democratic Socialist platform, both support Ukraine.
(Reminder for the resident MAGAts – I’m not a Democratic Socialist. Just a patriotic liberal Democrat who loves his country and wants to keep America free.)
He’s never been unconditionally pro-Ukraine. He offers unconditional support for the palis, not Ukraine.
But he’s not pro-ruSSia.
Except when he honeymoons there…………
Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane, traveled to the Soviet Union in May 1988 for what he *jokingly* called “a very strange honeymoon”. The 10-day trip was not a private getaway, but rather an official diplomatic delegation of roughly a dozen city officials to establish a sister-city partnership between Burlington, Vermont, and Yaroslavl, Russia.
As mayor of Burlington, Sanders spearheaded the sister-city program to encourage citizen-to-citizen exchanges and defuse Cold War tensions.
Guess what – the tensions have returned.
I just checked on Sanders legislative record and I deed you’re correct. The one foreign bill that he opposed was because Israel funding was included.