Somewhere in the media, there was a short, diplomatically-tinged description of how, last year, three businessmen — two Americans and one Russian — sat together at a Miami Beach golf club. These were American businessmen Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Russian businessman Kirill Dmitriev. But they weren't just businessmen — they were also representatives of the presidents of the United States and Russia. They discussed opening up the Russian economy and allowing Americans to be the first to benefit. It was a vivid example of a new form of diplomacy: privatized or deal-based diplomacy.

For Vladimir Putin, the process made perfect sense and it likely did for U.S. President Donald Trump as well. Trump has used his position to significantly enrich himself and for him, international relations are business deals.

Since World War II, diplomacy has generally been based on certain principles such as national sovereignty, territorial integrity and so on, all underpinned by international law. Deal-based approaches have existed before, but not in such a brazen form. Although Trump presents himself as a dove of peace, his approach to the war in Ukraine is also transactional. Ukraine is just a problematic asset, the division of which is up for negotiation.

The meeting in Miami was the logical culmination of a strategy formed even before Trump took office for a second time. The goal was to bypass the U.S. national security apparatus and instead convince everyone that Russia should not be seen as a threat but as a land of rich opportunities where American businessmen could make serious profits.

The interest is mutual. Russian businessmen, such as Putin's longtime acquaintances from St. Petersburg — Gennady Timchenko, Yury Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers — have sent envoys to meet with Americans to strike deals. On the U.S. side, Trump Jr.'s friend Gentry Beach has held talks about participating in a Russian Arctic gas project. Trump campaign donor Stephen Lynch allocated $600,000 to a lobbyist close to the Trump family to secure a license to purchase the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

After a meeting between Putin and Trump in Alaska, a European security service delivered an envelope to senior security officials containing details of business plans that Trump's administration had been negotiating with the Russians. And so on. Incidentally, people have asked why Trump, upon taking office, made his first foreign visit to Saudi Arabia, rather than the traditional choice, the United Kingdom. The answer is simple: money.

First, Trump's family has significant business interests there through various projects. Second, his son-in-law Jared Kushner's investment fund is bursting with billions from Arab countries. And third, as Trump himself put it, he told the Saudis, "Invest a trillion dollars in the U.S. and I'll come."

Trump is now transforming U.S. foreign affairs into something resembling Putin's model. Over the years, Putin has built a system where foreign policy is no longer a function of the state but a matter for a narrow circle of beneficiaries. Putin is pleased to see an emerging order that he understands well: buy off a few key Americans and the rest follows through transactions — I give you this, you give me that.

Internationally, such a system means that big powers have big rights and small ones are pocket change to be traded. One might call it realpolitik, which certainly has its place in international relations, but stepping away from the principles of international law is dangerous, especially for smaller countries. The situation is particularly regrettable because the process is being driven by the very country that once led the post-war world order's creation and later demanded compliance from all others.

The U.S. is not alone. Several world leaders are surely watching this process with approval, seeing it as a justification for their own policies. Autocrats like Xi Jinping in China, Narendra Modi in India, Putin in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Robert Fico in Slovakia are among them. In such an environment, diplomats are pushed aside and matters are handled by personal emissaries of the leaders — people with their own interests or whose interests align with those of their bosses.

The existing international system is visibly falling apart. The U.S. is replacing the interpretation of aggression as a violation of international law with the inevitability of historical destiny. This also confirms that Putin read Trump correctly — his selfishness and greed validated the Kremlin's view that the U.S. would abandon support for the liberal order. And when the big players lead the way, the smaller ones inevitably follow.

In some cases, a small country has even been ahead of the curve — take Israel, for example. The United Nations has passed dozens, if not hundreds, of resolutions over the decades condemning Israel's violations of international law on the West Bank, in Palestinian territory. Now, we see Israeli leaders openly stating goals that were previously concealed.

Under the cover of events in Gaza, Israeli occupation authorities have floored the gas pedal. When, at the end of December, 12 European countries — plus Japan and Canada — issued a joint statement condemning the construction of new Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Israel's foreign minister responded unequivocally. He declared that Jews have the right to establish a homeland in Palestine over the entire territory of the former British Mandate. In other words, a state from the river to the sea — a slogan widely viewed as a symbol of Palestinian terrorism, yet long used by Israeli radicals as well.

Regrettably, Estonia was not among the nations issuing that condemnation. It could have been — perhaps should have been — because the remnants of international law are still worth preserving. We may well need them ourselves one day.

What might all this mean for us? The Finnish TV series "Conflict" offers a useful perspective — in it, Russian forces seize the Hanko Peninsula. When the Finnish president meets with a U.S. representative, the American warns that invoking NATO's Article 5 would be difficult because most U.S. forces are tied up in the Pacific and Indian Ocean regions — and after all, this is just a tiny piece of Finland that could be conceded in return for a favorable deal with the occupiers. The show's creators highlight a very real danger, one that could just as easily affect us.

It's unwise to place our hopes on the U.S. One could easily imagine a scenario like in the show, where an American says, "Ida-Viru County is just a small part of Estonia, mostly populated by Russians — and besides, Moscow has offered to share the profits from the Narva battery plant and Silmet's output with us." Sounds far-fetched? Or, through the lens of deal-based logic, entirely plausible...

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