Putin and Trump don’t have the cards

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When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Donald Trump hailed the move as “genius”. In practice, Vladimir Putin’s war was our age’s costliest great power error until Trump launched Operation Epic Fury three months ago.

Both men gambled on a weak adversary and assumed victory within days. Each is burdening their countries with costs that will persist many years after they have lost power. As case studies of how to throw away strong hands, Putin and Trump are without peer. As the lap into which most of their cards have fallen, China is the main beneficiary.

Those on America’s hawkish right protest that Iran’s regime and Ukraine’s are incomparable. One is a nasty theocracy; the other is a functioning democracy (that is nowadays often less corrupt than Washington). But strategy is measured in real-world outcomes, not wishfulness.

Epic Fury’s fans say that the war was provoked by Iran because of the nature of its regime. Those on the western far left and far right who are equally afflicted with Nato Derangement Syndrome say the same about Ukraine. Both accounts are ideologically twisted. Each was a war of choice. The gap between purpose and result is as wide for Trump in the Gulf as it is for Putin in the Donbas.

Neither man can escape their self-created traps. In Putin’s case, the failure of his “special operation” is existential. He is less likely to acknowledge reality because it would cost him his job and possibly his life. Trump’s mental block is chiefly about pride and politics. No amount of AI slop can distract from his humiliation of reaching terms with a regime he has repeatedly claimed to have obliterated. In so doing, he will be cementing its grip.

Some of the cards have fallen into Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s lap. Ukraine has turned the battlefront into a charnel house. Russia’s casualty rate is 35,000 a month. Ukraine can strike oil, factory and infrastructure nodes at will 1,000km inside Russia. Putin had to get Trump’s help to convince Zelenskyy to leave Red Square unmolested by Ukrainian drones in this month’s Victory Day parade. Putin promised the Russian people he would insulate their lives from the war. But its tally of dead and economic costs touches all Russians and is endangering his grip on power.  

Ukraine also has an increasingly strong hand to play with Trump. Before the Pentagon started to gallop through its stocks of missiles and battery defences in the Gulf, Ukraine had reinvented warfare. Iran is not far behind. Ukraine’s ability to shoot down costly Russian missiles with dirt-cheap homemade interceptors has revolutionised the economics of war. As has Iran’s use of drones to shut the Strait of Hormuz. Vast spending on symbols of military prestige looks increasingly wasteful. Aircraft carriers are turning into floating white elephants. Having been told by Trump that he did not have any cards, Zelenskyy has a deck of innovation the Pentagon now badly wants. Ukraine has new leverage.

The geopolitical self-harm Russia and America have inflicted on themselves is also comparable. Russia’s inability to subdue Ukraine is the most expensive failed war in modern history. By intimidating neighbours like Finland, Putin has more than doubled the length of Nato’s boundary with Russia entirely through his own doing. Likewise, Trump’s expectation that Iran would supply a pliable new leader along the lines of Venezuela was fantasy. He failed to listen to the experts.

Many schools of thought are being discredited, including the idea on America’s political extremes that Nato is a US plot to encircle Russia. Indeed, this is a tough era for people with any kind of world view. Both the neocons and the America Firsters look foolish — the first for backing yet another ill-judged war of choice; the second for trusting Trump. But great power realists are also in a bind. Though China gains from Putin and Trump’s blunders, medium-sized powers are emerging as the ultimate victors (Israel being the most obvious exception).

America’s sway over the Middle East is broken. Iran will probably emerge as a regional force with which others must come to terms. Ukraine will at minimum be a key partner of any post-US Nato. In very different ways, Kyiv and Tehran are showing the world how to bring a colossus low. Taiwan is not the only country that is studying these lessons closely. 

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