Elon Musk’s Collision Course with the Liberal International Order

When considering the political state of the world, it seems almost natural for humans to develop cult-like behaviours around certain prominent figures. If an individual demonstrates sufficient charisma and understanding of a given subject, a primal instinct in our brains appears to deem them suitable to lead the pack.

One of the most prominent examples of this tendency in the modern era can be observed among the followers of Elon Musk. What began as admiration for his technological and entrepreneurial achievement has, for many, evolved into a blind trust in his statements regarding American and European politics.

Whether balancing the U.S. federal budget will prove as effortless as managing Tesla’s business operations is something I am more than willing to let Musk discover for himself. DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), along with his other domestic political ambitions, is therefore not the subject of this article. Instead, the focus lies on another vast system of laws and traditions that Mr. Musk so eagerly criticizes—the liberal international order and its proponents.

It is a tale as old as time: wealthy men intervening in politics to slay the dragon of “stubborn bureaucracy.” One begins to wonder whether this phenomenon is simply inevitable for those who command sufficient power.

In fact, since the dawn of modern technology in the 1980s, the industry’s most prominent figures have wielded considerable political influence. However, their impact has largely remained domestic and beneath the international radar; news of Steve Jobs advocating for legislation on computers in schools, or Bill Clinton, in 1992, introducing a new tech policy to win the votes of Silicon Valley giants, was never of particular interest to other nations. 

Hence, it is not Musk’s personal or national pursuits which have provoked reactions from EU leaders. Instead, what has nearly forced European leaders to denounce statements from a man with no official political office is his blatant disregard for a fundamental tradition in international politics: the respect for sovereign states’ domestic affairs. This principle has, time and again, been violated by international interventions, and in those instances, by other sovereign nations or terrorist organisations. It has, however, rarely been violated to this extent by an unelected individual wielding the immense economic power of Elon Musk.

While it is Musk’s more recent statements that have raised concerns among European leaders, his controversial remarks had already exposed his compromised understanding of international relations as early as 2022. On October 3rd of that year, he posted on his soon-to-be-acquired platform X a proposal for peace between Ukraine and Russia followed by a poll. His proposal included UN-supervised elections in the annexed regions, formal recognition of Crimea as part of Russia (“as it has been since 1783, until Khrushchev’s mistake”, as Musk put it), and a requirement for Ukraine to remain a neutral state.

First and foremost, Ukraine cannot be considered a sovereign state if it is restricted in determining its foreign relations. Whether knowingly or not, Musk is echoing Putin’s narrative, whose primary objective is to undermine Ukraine’s claim to sovereignty. And, he manages to do so twice within the same tweet.

The second time is his proposal concerning Crimea which disregards and trivializes Ukrainian national history entirely, something Putin has actively been doing as part of his propaganda war. Additionally, demanding elections in the annexed regions to determine the future citizenship of their populations implicitly legitimizes Russia’s claims to these areas and, to some extent, validates Putin’s war. For those looking to understand Ukraine’s historical context and Putin’s numerous distortions of it, Martin Sixsmith’s book, Putin and the Return of History: How the Kremlin Rekindled the Cold War, provides an excellent overview.

Reading Musk’s so-called “proposal”, it becomes evident that some of the fundamental principles upheld at least on a surface level in the Western world for decades– non-intervention, respect for sovereignty, and the rule of law– have completely eluded him. Over the past two years, he has repeatedly demonstrated this lack of regard.

He has referred to Great Britain as a “tyrannical police state,” suggested that King Charles should use his power as monarch and head of state to dissolve parliament, and even advocated for the arrest of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Furthermore, Musk has used his platform, X, to campaign for Germany’s far-right nationalist party, AfD, ahead of the upcoming national election, claiming they are “Germany’s only hope.”

The fact that the German security services have classified sections of AfD as extremist, or that prominent party members have downplayed the crimes of the SS, seems irrelevant to Musk when choosing his political allies. In response to EU’s criticism of X, Musk has called Věra Jourová (then Vice President of the European Commission) “the epitome of banal, bureaucratic evil” and argued that it is undemocratic for the European Parliament to delegate authority to the Commission.

To the untrained eye, Musk’s involvement in political discourse may seem harmless. Like any citizen in a society aiming to be democratic, he has the right to express his opinions. However, the issues with the examples above can be summarized into two key concerns.

First, Musk is no longer merely the world’s wealthiest man—he is also the owner of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms, giving him unparalleled control over public discourse. Secondly, he has become deeply involved with the U.S.’s international political presence, an involvement that does not simply critique specific policies or political decisions. Rather, they seek to undermine and delegitimize the very democratic mechanisms and institutions that sustain the European states he so blatantly criticizes.

Musk has repeatedly stated, in no uncertain terms, that he deeply admires and wishes to protect the core democratic values of Western civilization. However, his perception of Western civilization bears little resemblance to reality. The democratic West has always been built upon a strong and resilient bureaucracy. What remains a mystery is which political system Musk actually supports. What has, however, become indisputably clear – through his own words and actions – is that he fundamentally opposes the international order that Western civilization has created.