What's Really Going on with the Trump-Putin Love Fest?

This article by Global Geneva Americas' Editor William Dowell was first published as part of A Different Place.

Before the U.S. 2016 election, the word on the street in Moscow was that Donald Trump was America’s Useful Idiot and that meant that from the Kremlin’s point of view he was golden. There was no question that the Kremlin preferred Trump’s self-delusional universe to Hillary Clinton. Whatever Hillary’s shortcomings as a presidential candidate, her short term as Secretary of State, proved that she was a sharp negotiator.

Trump looked like a potential patsy. The Russians had already spent considerable time and effort at cultivating him. Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson airbase in Alaska, when Trump invited Putin to ride with him in the presidential limousine, nicknamed, “The Beast” can be seen as the ultimate result of that effort.

Trump: More like candy than deal maker

Trump likes to see himself as a master deal maker, but in fact, his goal is usually basically transactional, in other words, a mixture of charm and intimidation leading to a sizeable financial payoff. In contrast, before he began his political career, Vladimir Putin was a KGB colonel.

A primary focus of intelligence agents is the seduction and manipulation of potential assets. To a former Soviet agent handler, Trump must have looked like candy, an emotionally insecure and vulnerable target that could easily be maneuvered into what amounted to a Manchurian candidate.

Putin - and Russia - have a lot to gain

Russia is not necessarily an enemy of the United States, but it is not a friend either. It is, in fact, a global competitor. In an increasingly transactional world, what the U.S. loses in influence and power opens space for Russia to gain. From Moscow’s point of view, global cooperation and the largely American crafted international financial order looked very much like euphemisms for American dominance.

It is not hard to see why the Kremlin thought it worth investing heavily in advertising and social media efforts to promote Trump as a potential engine of disruption. An FBI investigation following the 2016 election concluded that, although the Russians had engaged in cyber trickery on social media and a substantial investment in advertising on Facebook and other platforms, it had had little or no effect on the election outcome.

That was then. The real payoff to Moscow’s initial investment may have come during the Alaska meeting with Putin.

Peace in Ukraine - Trump's yearning for that Nobel Prize

Apparently unhampered by any restraint during his second term in office, Trump has focused on ending the stalemate between Russia and Ukraine. Trump has always hoped to do business in Russia, and lately he has begun thinking about possibly winning the Nobel Peace prize, which in his mind at least might put him at the same level as Barack Obama, who won the prize without even asking for it. In Trump’s thinking, peace in Ukraine might just do the trick.

America's weak point: Trump's ego

From Vladimir Putin’s point of view, Trump’s ego is America’s weak point to be ruthlessly exploited in what amounts to a global chess game. Putin’s obsession has been to recreate the old Soviet Empire that collapsed with Perestroika. In fact, that empire was the result of generations of expansive colonialism under Russian czars, determined to extend Moscow’s control through neighboring countries.

That colonial effort left pockets of ethnic Russians distributed throughout Central Asia. As these countries tried to gain independence, isolated ethnic Russian expatriates suddenly found themselves an endangered species. A notable example is Crimea, which officially belongs to Ukraine, but whose population is more than 60 per cent ethnic Russian.

Apart from Crimea, Ukraine, itself, has turned out to be a special case. A relatively large country geographically, it occupies critical territory between Russia and Europe.

During the Cold War, Russia tried to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles along Ukraine’s frontier. The missiles would have given Moscow the capability of striking at major European cities with less than ten minutes’ warning. That in turn would have given the Kremlin the power it needed to bully Europeans into conceding to Russian policy demands.

The US countered by deploying its own set of missiles that effectively neutralized the Russian threat. Both sides eventually stood down and signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that eliminated the missiles on both sides. The INF treaty expired in 2018, and Trump pointedly made no effort to reinstate the treaty.

Ukraine it turned out was advancing economically much faster than Putin’s oligarchy in Russia. Although Russia’s economy is ten times greater, Ukraine’s growth rate from 2015 to 2020 was 70.8 per cent. Russian economic growth during the same period was 8.8 per cent. Russia’s expansion was in service industries. Ukraine’s expansion was in technology.

Not surprisingly, Ukraine found itself naturally drawn to the economic success of Western Europe. After Russia annexed Crimea—ostensibly to defend Russian nationals living there—Ukraine’s economy was cut in half. Ukraine naturally began building its defenses along territory that it still managed to hold, hoping to prevent further onslaughts from Moscow.

The result was a string of fortress installations along the frontier that separates eastern Donbas from the rest of Ukraine. Putin, so far, has found it extremely difficult to break through that line of defense which runs through Donetsk. Putin has tried recruiting soldiers from Russia’s Siberian gulag and hiring mercenary troops from North Korea.

Trump's hot and cold relationship with Ukraine has favoured Russia

Jeff Danziger

Putin must now deal with a Ukraine that loathes Russia

So far, nothing has really worked. Anywhere from 70 to 80 per cent of the casualties from the fighting these days come from relatively inexpensive drones that Ukraine manufactures by the thousands. The Ukrainians may have a smaller population than Russia, but they are highly intelligent, well-educated, and determined to fight for their independence. With the help of the United States, they have been more than successful.

Putin’s concern these days is that after the carnage he has wreaked on Ukraine, he has turned what was once a somewhat friendly neighboring state into a passionate enemy that he has failed to dominate. Putin has effectively boxed himself in, and there is no exit—unless he can play his Trump card.

Trump’s dreams of a future Nobel Prize that might just put him at the same level as Barack Obama, who won his Nobel without even trying. Peace in Ukraine might just do the trick, if, and only if, Volodimir Zelensky can be convinced to drink a poisoned cocktail of suicidal diplomatic proposals.

A peace settlement that handed Ukraine’s current fortified defenses over to Russia without a shot being fired was probably too good to hope for, but Trump’s apparent decision to agree to Putin’s insistence on fixing on a peace settlement without a ceasefire would be almost as effective.

Putin knows that if he can get Zelensky to surrender Kyiv’s fortified line of defense, the peace agreement won’t really amount to much. After all, what did the West, including the United States, do when Putin invaded Ukraine eight years after seizing Crimea? Nothing!

Western Europe is weak and unprepared, and the US? Well, Donald Trump is Vladimir’s best buddy in the whole world. After all, what other head of state got to ride with Trump alone in the presidential limousine, known as “The Beast?”

The bottom line is that if Zelensky gives in to Putin’s wishes, Ukraine is toast. With Trump clueless about international affairs and simply not interested, the U.S. is out of the picture. Without the U.S., NATO is at best unsure of itself and not united enough to take action on its own.

Will Trump realise that he is being taken for a fool?

Even if Trump suddenly wakes up and realizes that he has been taken for a fool, or in intelligence parlance, transformed into an unwitting asset, the TV news coverage of Trump smiling and nearly kowtowing to Putin will send a worldwide message to America’s already dumbfounded former allies. The U.S. is not only no longer the leader of the free world; it is effectively no longer even there.

What was Trump thinking of? Even more important, what was Putin trying to sell Trump on in their private conversation without witnesses that took place during their drive in the presidential limousine?

The best guess is that Putin may have offered Trump a vision of a world divided into three autonomous zones of power in which China is handed effective control over Asia, Russia gets to control Europe, the U.S. controls North and South America, and no one gets in the others’ way, a kind of Yalta-2, in hich the allies agreed to let Stalin have unfettered control over Eastern Europe.

Ironically, that is the way that George Orwell predicted the world would evolve in 1984. A computer-driven artificial intelligence, Big Brother, would keep the public happy while the system continuously rewrote history to make sure that the government, alias Big Brother, was always right, or at least seemed to be. Putin may have thought that Trump could be just dumb enough to accept the concept.

The Yalta agreement led to the Cold War and the battle over what came to be known as the “Iron Curtain,” when it became evident that Stalin unsurprisingly wanted to control more than Eastern Europe. What will happen this time around, the rest of us will have to wait to find out.

Foreign correspondent and author William Dowell is Global Geneva's America’s editor based in Philadelphia. Over the past decades, he has covered much of the globe, including Iran, for TIME, ABC News and other news organizations.