How Ukraine’s Geopolitical Power is Rising

Why it’s Bad for Western Authoritarian Movements

Something has been happening in the dynamics surrounding the war in Ukraine that is going unnoticed by most, but is starting to emerge in conversations among those who analyze the war. It’s almost certainly the dynamic which has caused the shift in temperature by Donald Trump and JD Vance in recent days. It’s not a moral evolution on the part of the Trump Administration. These are men who purely think in terms of the maintenance of their own power.

But what has been happening in the war, now well into its third grueling year, is something that nobody expected. Through sheer grit, determination and the pressure of necessity driving the magic of invention, Ukraine has emerged as a global leader in what is now unmistakably the most important defense technology for the current age: drones.

Ukraine’s drone technology has evolved across two crucial dimensions. First, their tactical first-person-view (FPV) drones—relatively short-range but devastatingly effective—now account for 60% of all Russian military fatalities, fundamentally altering the battlefield calculus. But more importantly for geopolitical power dynamics, Ukraine has achieved genuine strategic innovation: domestically produced long-range drones capable of striking targets thousands of kilometers inside Russian territory. These drones are incredibly cheap to manufacture and Ukraine is beginning to produce them domestically at scale.

What the corrupt regime in Washington is beginning to realize is that they’re going to need Ukraine’s drone technology to counter China. In a scenario where the Russian initiative collapses, the US risks being pushed to the sidelines. A Europe no longer willing to be subservient to the United States—given the abusive treatment and trade wars being waged upon them—would rush in with investment to gain access to that technology. This leaves America on the sidelines and Zelenskyy in an unexpectedly strong negotiating position.

Ukraine’s long-range drone capabilities have begun exacting crippling costs on the Russian economy. Fuel rationing has started in regions outside the relatively wealthy urban centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the regime does its best to isolate its elite citizenry from the effects of the war. This is not a sustainable strategy. Treating their rural population like cannon fodder while protecting urban elites is bound to reach a tipping point. Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare and its increasing dominance in drone technology are driving exactly that wedge deeper into Russian society.

This situation reveals the catastrophic strategic costs of the administration’s transactional approach to international relationships. By treating alliances as protection rackets rather than partnerships, by threatening to abandon NATO allies unless they pay sufficient tribute, and by conducting diplomacy through intimidation rather than cooperation, the administration has systematically destroyed the trust relationships that technological cooperation requires. Ukraine’s drone innovations didn’t emerge in isolation; they developed through partnerships with European allies who maintained support even when American commitment wavered.

Now, when the Pentagon desperately needs access to Ukrainian capabilities for the China competition that supposedly justifies the entire “America First” framework, they’re discovering that reliable partnerships can’t be rebuilt overnight. Tough rhetoric and strategic repositioning cannot substitute for years of consistent cooperation. The administration’s crude transactionalism has created exactly the kind of strategic vulnerability that competent realism would have anticipated and avoided. America needs what Ukraine has developed, but Ukraine has every reason to prefer European partners who didn’t spend years threatening abandonment. The United States is discovering it lacks the technological leverage it assumed it possessed permanently.

The deeper lesson extends far beyond Ukraine policy to the fundamental architecture of 21st-century power competition. In an era where technological innovation increasingly determines military advantage, the capacity to foster and maintain innovative partnerships becomes more strategically valuable than raw military spending or traditional alliance hierarchies. China understands this perfectly—their Belt and Road Initiative, whatever its flaws, represents systematic investment in long-term technological cooperation relationships that could prove decisive in future conflicts.

Meanwhile, America’s approach has been to demand tribute from existing allies while systematically alienating the innovative smaller powers whose technological capabilities could prove crucial for maintaining competitive advantage. When Estonia develops cutting-edge cybersecurity capabilities, when Taiwan leads in semiconductor manufacturing, when Ukraine pioneers drone warfare—these innovations emerge from necessity, desperation, and partnership networks that can’t be purchased through transactional relationships or recreated through strategic repositioning. The administration’s framework treats alliance relationships as costs to be minimized rather than strategic assets to be cultivated, creating exactly the kind of technological isolation that competent great power competition would seek to avoid at all costs.

In February, when the administration set out to humiliate Zelenskyy before the global press, impressing upon him that Russia had “all the cards,” it now seems likely that the Ukrainian president already knew his fortunes were shifting. This explains why Zelenskyy showed more pushback in that meeting than one would expect from someone who thought he held no cards.

The contrast couldn’t be more devastating for Trump’s image: a failed mogul who inherited vast American alliance networks and systematically destroyed them through petty dominance games, facing off against a comedian-turned-wartime-leader who built technological capabilities and international partnerships from nothing through sustained commitment and genuine cooperation. Trump squandered America’s inherited advantages while Zelenskyy created Ukrainian advantages that didn’t exist three years ago. One represents the politics of performance and extraction; the other represents the politics of innovation and alliance-building. The poker table reveals which approach actually builds power and which merely performs it.

Now the administration finds itself staring across the table at a completely different game than the one they thought they were playing. The Ukrainian president they meant to intimidate in February is sitting with a steadily growing chip stack—domestically produced long-range drone capabilities that Pentagon analysts are calling game-changing, energy infrastructure strikes that are crippling Russian domestic stability, and European allies eager to invest in Ukrainian technological partnerships that could reshape the defense landscape for decades.

Meanwhile, the administration’s hand looks increasingly weak. Their threats to abandon NATO allies have pushed European partners toward independent relationships with Ukraine. Their accommodation of Putin looks strategically idiotic now that Ukrainian capabilities are proving decisive against Russian forces. Their “America First” positioning has left America on the outside looking in at exactly the technological cooperation that the China competition requires. The administration that thought it held all the leverage is discovering that in geopolitics, as in poker, the player who’s been quietly building their position while others perform dominance often ends up controlling the table. Zelenskyy isn’t just surviving their pressure—he’s turned it into strategic advantage by forcing America to come back to a table where Ukraine now holds cards that Washington desperately needs to see.

This geopolitical dynamic has profound implications for the authoritarian regime trying to consolidate in Washington. If Ukraine pulls off a surprise victory and the Putin regime collapses, this wouldn’t just damage Russia—it would collapse MAGA’s entire ideological scaffolding. The movement’s core claim is that democracies are weak, decadent systems doomed to lose against more decisive authoritarian regimes. Ukrainian success directly refutes this narrative by demonstrating that democratic societies under existential pressure can innovate more effectively, build more durable partnerships, and ultimately outcompete authoritarian systems that appeared overwhelmingly superior.

Moreover, a victorious Ukraine with advanced technological capabilities would be positioned to actively support American democratic movements, openly criticizing American democratic decline with the moral authority that comes from successful resistance to authoritarianism. The leadership would face the nightmare scenario of being lectured about democratic governance by someone who proved it works under the most extreme conditions imaginable. This is why you should expect to see their tones shift dramatically—they desperately need to position themselves on the winning side before Ukrainian victory makes their previous accommodation of Putin politically toxic.

The Ukrainian drone revolution offers more than just a cautionary tale about the strategic bankruptcy of transactional diplomacy—it provides a roadmap for how democratic resistance can reshape seemingly impossible power dynamics through innovation, partnership, and sustained commitment to principle over expedience. Just as Ukraine transformed from dependent client to technological leader through necessity-driven innovation and alliance cultivation, American democratic movements have the opportunity to build transnational partnerships that could prove decisive in countering domestic authoritarian consolidation.

The same European allies and Ukrainian innovators who are reshaping the geopolitical landscape represent potential partners for American democrats willing to think beyond traditional political boundaries. When the administration discovers they need to court Zelenskyy rather than humiliate him, they’re acknowledging a fundamental truth about power in the 21st century: sustainable influence flows to those who foster genuine partnerships rather than demand tribute, who innovate solutions rather than perform dominance, who build coalitions rather than exploit dependencies. Their frantic rhetorical repositioning isn’t just diplomatic embarrassment—it’s involuntary recognition that the future belongs to democratic cooperation, not oligarchic accommodation. And that future is being written right now by those wise enough to see the opportunity that authoritarians’ own strategic blindness has created.