Trump has shifted the world in Putin’s favour - by Andrew Roberts for The Spectator – 07.03.25
- Michael Julien
- Mar 8
- 4 min read
The verbal pummelling of Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House last week was an ugly moment of bitter truth. We saw the West tearing itself apart thanks to Donald Trump’s vanity and J.D. Vance’s disdain for the Ukrainian leader.
If there is anything positive to be taken from the uncomfortable spectacle, it is that Europe now understands it has to take its defence much more seriously. And it is a mercy that negotiations between Zelensky and Trump have not been derailed for good.
The Ukrainian President spent the week doing what his US counterpart accused him of failing to do: thanking the US for military and other aid it has received since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago. Zelensky appears keen to return to the table to discuss a minerals deal. The US would gain some mineral rights in return for an implied guarantee that the US would act against future Russian aggression.
Yet Trump’s awful treatment of Zelensky has still done great damage. He called him a ‘dictator’ for failing to hold nationwide elections when much of the country is a war zone (a comment the US President bizarrely later denied making). With this, and in telling Zelensky that he ‘holds no cards’, Trump emboldened Putin.
The Russian leader is certain to demand most, if not all, of the land his forces have occupied since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Putin could then be further empowered to turn his attention to Moldova and possibly the Baltic states too – using the same flimsy excuse that ethnic Russians in those countries need protecting.
Trump appears to see an Orwellian future world carved up between three superpowers: the US, China and Russia. The first two certainly qualify for that status, but Russia? To go by its population and natural resources, Russia should have the second- or third-largest economy in the world.
However, according to the International Monetary Fund, it does not even make the top ten, ranking behind every G7 state, India and Brazil.
Rather than forcing Putin into submission, Trump is offering him a lifeline.
It possesses a vast nuclear arsenal, but its conventional forces have been badly exposed by the Ukraine war. It has suffered hefty losses, driven by poor strategy. While it has superiority in terms of the number of men it can conscript as cannon fodder, it has been heavily outplayed by Ukraine’s technical prowess in drone warfare. A war of attrition would, of course, most likely lead to Ukraine’s eventual defeat, but it would also be at the cost of exhausting Russian forces.
Forty years ago, Ronald Reagan used the Soviet Union’s economic stagnation to win the Cold War. Despite being dismissed as a warmonger, he understood the arms race was draining the Soviet economy, condemning its people to poverty. Why not, then, continue the arms race until the Soviets were forced to throw in the towel? Once they did, Reagan engaged in disarmament, becoming the greatest peacemaker of the 20th century.
Trump has done the opposite. Russia is in the same position today as the Soviet Union was in the 1980s: its economy is being drained by the demands of its military spending. But rather than forcing Putin into submission, Trump is offering him a lifeline. Russia’s leader can end the war in Ukraine and claim victory by holding on to substantial territory. Afterwards, he will rebuild his forces until the time when he is positioned to attempt another land grab elsewhere.
In his first term, Trump appeared to have a way with dictators. He could do business with them because he understood raw power. He did not just rattle his sabre at Kim Jong-un, telling him he had a far bigger nuclear button, but flattered him with a visit. Subsequently the North Korean leader, at least for a while, calmed down.
With Iran, Trump ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, but then stood back when Iran retaliated with minor strikes on US air bases in Iraq; he understood that Iran’s leaders would need to offer a token display of resistance and he did not allow the situation to escalate.
But Trump has shown Putin more than respect – he has actively helped to bolster his position. The war in Ukraine may be heading for a more rapid end than many could have imagined six months ago, but it will come at the price of letting Putin – a man who has waged chemical warfare on the streets of Britain – off the hook.
With more determination on the part of the West, the Ukraine war could have been the end of Putin. Instead, Putin’s ambition to reverse what he has called ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century’ – the break-up of the Soviet Union – remains undiminished.
Perhaps we should have expected drama in front of the cameras when Trump and Zelensky met. Both men, after all, were TV stars before becoming leaders. But their bust-up in the White House was a spectacle from which one wished to avert one’s eyes. It was a tragedy – one which has shifted the world in Putin’s favour.
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Written by The Spectator.
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