Patrimonial leaders. Orwell. And the science of negative power.

Remember the visit of the Ukrainian president to the Oval Office in February 2025 and his public degradation and demolition on that occasion?

Great military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen commented at the time: “It was planned that there would be a humiliation of Zelensky” and that he would “still sign a deal that the Americans would present as a very bad deal for Ukraine, a very good deal for the Americans, so basically that they could push Zelensky into signing whatever and this would set a precedent for the next signing, which would be a deal with the Russian president.” … “This plan has not worked.” … “Slowly the US president is beginning to realize that this is a problem he has … And he has a lot of credibility riding on that project.”

A Demonstration of Power Gone Wrong

Assume for a moment the deal had been signed: How powerful would the US president have appeared (to his followers) if the meeting had been friendly? Much less so. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pigs also solidify their power by sacrificing their animal allies for their human enemies – the pigs start walking on two legs against their original commandment “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.” But that commandment had been changed when it stopped being useful to the pigs. Notice something?

The Science of Threatened Power

But Zelensky did not sign – the US president’s power demonstration did not go as expected. Scientific research shows that gaining power (or wanting to) and loosing power (or fearing to) have completely different effects. Gaining power tends to make people creative – see Orwell’s pig Snowball and his windmill project.

Loosing a power struggle – the very definition of threatened power – leads to paranoia, distrust, and repression, wonderfully portrayed in Orwell’s pig Napoleon. The underlying neurobiology is also different – while Snowball was probably on a dopamine and testosterone ride, Napoleon will have been driven by the stress hormone cortisol.

The Final Warning: What Threatened Power Means for the Future

General learning: Beware of leaders with threatened power. Anders Puck Nielsen concluded: “The interesting thing is not what the US president says that he will do here and now – the interesting thing is what he will do when that turns out not to work.”

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