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Alexander I (left) and Thomas Jefferson

With Russian forces having invaded Ukraine, the world's democracies roundly condemned Vladimir Putin's recognition of the separatist regimes of Donetsk and Luhansk. But Donald Trump liked what he saw. "This is genius," declared the former president of the United States in assessing Putin's strategy of declaring the independence of the eastern Ukrainian separatists. "How smart is that?" gushed Trump about the deployment of Russian troops as "peacekeepers" on Ukrainian soil.

Trump's praise of Putin echoed his time in the White House, where he pursued a conciliatory approach to Russia. Trump is certainly not the first U.S. president to express admiration for Russian rulers. But unlike his predecessors, the Trump-Putin love fest is not a marriage of convenience born of a common enemy; it's a true bromance between like-minded individuals, who disparage democracy and embrace authoritarianism.

The fight against the common enemy of Nazi Germany brought together the odd couple of the New York socialite FDR and the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1940s. But more than a century earlier, Thomas Jefferson and Tsar Alexander I shared an even more unlikely friendship as the French Emperor Napoleon threatened to conquer all of Europe.

While George Washington was the "Father of the People," our third president self-consciously styled himself as a "Friend of the People."

Jefferson abandoned the monarchical trappings of the presidency he walked to his inauguration and eschewed wearing a sword and embraced an everyman persona. In one carefully choreographed episode, he received the British ambassador at the White House while wearing slippers and a dressing gown. Jefferson had lived off the labor of enslaved people his entire life, but his political brand was about rejecting monarchy and entrenched Old World privilege.

Alexander I of Russia was about the most autocratic person in all of Europe in the early 1800s. Jefferson most famously took aim at King George III in the Declaration of Independence. But compared to Alexander, George was a raging democrat. Great Britain was a constitutional monarchy. The Crown governed through Parliament, which included the elected House of Commons.

The tsar of Russia faced no such constraints. Russia had no representative institutions to check the power of its ruler. Moreover, it was home to millions of serfs peasants bound to the land of a feudal lord until 1861. Russia was an extreme example of monarchy and entrenched Old World privilege.

Despite the deep ideological chasm that divided Jefferson and Alexander, the president proudly displayed a bust of the Russian tsar at Monticello, reflecting his "particular esteem for the character of the Emperor." Opposite the bust of Alexander faced that of Napoleon. While Jefferson lionized the former, he vilified the latter as "a cold-blooded, calculating unprincipled Usurper, without a virtue."

The president had served as U.S. ambassador in Paris during the early years of the French Revolution, and he had celebrated the emergence of a new sister republic, which he believed shared the United States dedication to liberty. Napoleon betrayed the republican revolution in France, installing himself as dictator before becoming the self-proclaimed emperor of the French in 1804. By 1809, Napoleon was the master of Europe, with the French Empire and its satellites extending from Spain to modern-day Germany.

Jefferson's celebration of Alexander was more about his hatred of Napoleon than it was about the tsar's "enlightened" rule. Unwilling to accept the leading role that Britain played in anchoring the numerous military coalitions of European states arrayed against Napoleon between 1803 and 1815, the president fixed upon Alexander as the savior of Europe.

Russian military power promised to rescue the United States from its awkward position as a neutral power squeezed between the belligerent British and French empires. And for this reason, Jefferson admired Alexander. The two leaders were not kindred spirits, but they did share a common foe in opposing the expansionist ambitions of Napoleon.

With Trump and Putin, the situation that existed between Jefferson and Alexander I is reversed. The United States and Russia seem to share few common geopolitical goals in the 21st century. Putin is bent on extending Russia's sphere of influence over its former imperial possessions by restoring 19th-century politics in Europe. The United States is more concerned about the future of rising Chinese power in the Indo-Pacific region.

What draws Trump to Putin is more about idolatry than ideology; more lizard brain impulse than an appreciation of whatever academics might call the Putin Doctrine. Putin is the autocratic strongman that Trump has always wanted to be. Putin is a mirror in which Trump views his own reflection. And if there is one thing we know about the former president, it's that there is nothing in the world that he loves more than himself.

Lawrence B. A. Hatter is an award-winning author and associate professor of early American history at Washington State University. These views are his own and do not reflect those of WSU.

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Way before Donald Trump's bromance with Vladimir Putin, Thomas Jefferson was enamored with another Russian dictator but for very different reasons -...