Now that Donald Trump has won a historic victory and will return to the White House for another term in January, various pundits are predicting that the president-elect will hand over power to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, particularly when it comes to resolving the nearly three-year Russia-Ukraine conflict.
I’m here to tell you that President-elect Trump is a blessing to Ukraine and a nightmare for Putin.
Trump is the first American president to outwit Russia’s tyrant, who had previously duped four US presidents. Yes, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and, of course, President Biden. Everyone fell for the “former” KGB operative’s ruse, having blindly believed Putin that Russia could be America’s ally.
George W. Bush famously said he “looked the man [Putin] in the eye.” According to White House records, Bush hailed Putin, a “former” KGB operative, as “consistent, transparent, honest, and an easy man to discuss our opportunities and problems with.”
Friendship? Common values? Seriously? In February 2001, the FBI caught its own agent, Robert Hanssen, a KGB spy of 20 years. Hanssen, the most devastating spy in modern history, gave some of the most sensitive US secrets to the Russians, including our nuclear secrets, the existence of a secret American-built tunnel beneath the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the identities of Soviet spies who worked for America.
Bush and his advisers were clearly unconcerned about Putin’s first Foreign Policy Concept, which declared America’s “economic and power dominance” as a threat to Russia’s national interests, and his first military doctrine, which mentioned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a major threat to Russia’s security. Putin approved both in 2000.
Even the horrifying revelation made by the House Armed Services Committee in October 1999 regarding Russia’s “sabotage plans” against the United States did not break the spell that Putin cast on Bush. Transcripts of congressional testimony show that the committee possessed “dramatic evidence” of the KGB’s deployment of high explosives and arms caches on NATO and perhaps US territory for sabotage operations in the event of conflict.
Putin has played more than one US president. Vlad launched his charm assault against US presidents for manipulation with Bill Clinton. Clinton contacted Putin on March 27, 2000, the day after the Russian election, to congratulate him on his victory. Declassified White House papers show a remarkably friendly phone chat in which the leaders of erstwhile Cold War adversaries called one other by their first names, Vladimir and Bill.
Clinton stated a desire to improve relations with his Russian counterpart and the “relationship between the United States and Russia.”
“We can accomplish a lot together,” he told Putin. Vladimir reacted in kind, telling Bill that his trust was well-placed.
“It is clear to the whole world that I am a person you can work with,” Putin added. He also complimented Clinton for his remarks about the Russian dictator’s “modest personality.”
“Your statement about my modest personality was appreciated here… People in Russia and throughout the world took note of the US president’s statement.
Declassified recordings of 500 pages of phone discussions between Britain’s Tony Blair and former President Clinton between 1997 and December 2000 show that “Slick Willie” was also under Vlad’s spell. Clinton described Putin as “smart and thoughtful,” with “enormous potential.”
“I believe [Putin] is a man of great skill and ambition for Russia. His intentions are generally good and transparent, but he hasn’t decided yet,” Clinton told Blair.
Barack Obama was next. He famously offered Putin’s proxy, then-President Dmitry Medvedev, “more flexibility” in American policy toward Russia while unaware that his talk had been recorded by a microphone. In 2013, Putin persuaded Obama not to act on his earlier warning that Syria’s ruler, Bashar al-Assad, had crossed the “red line” when he used chemical weapons against his own people. Another of Putin’s emissaries, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, convinced his counterpart, John Kerry, that a retaliatory strike was unnecessary because Russia would eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. Putin’s maneuver enabled Obama to save face while claiming diplomatic success.
Four years later, however, Assad was still gassing his citizens. That is, until April 7, 2017, when President Donald Trump enforced Obama’s 2012 “red line.” Trump authorized the deployment of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat Airbase in Homs, the location of a sarin gas attack that killed over 80 Syrians on April 4, 2017.
When Putin described his relationship with Obama as “working and personal” and marked by “growing trust,” he really meant that he had outwitted yet another US leader and that his KGB techniques were working well, at least for Russia. After all, it was on Obama’s watch that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. And it was under Biden’s watch that Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, after Biden approved the move with his “minor incursion” comment.
Putin was able to persuade four presidents to start their terms with a foolish Russia “reset” policy that was designed to fail from the start.
How does Russia’s master manipulator do it?
Putin takes pride in his abilities to “work and communicate with people” as well as “work with information.” Working with information entails learning everything about your objective. Working with people entails interacting with your target in a way that caters to his vanity. Pushing your target’s buttons and exploiting his vulnerabilities is a standard intelligence tradecraft. Putin honed these skills as a KGB operative, recruiting spies in Eastern Germany who were eager to betray their country for Russia.
When a close acquaintance inquired about his role as a KGB officer, Putin said that he was a “specialist in communicating with people,” which may also be interpreted as “a specialist in human relations.” During a press conference in 2001, Putin explained that dealing with people requires the capacity to interact with a diverse spectrum of persons, from journalists and scientists to politicians and ordinary citizens: “It is critical to establish a dialogue and bring out the best in your partner.” You want to get achievements; you must respect your spouse and admit that he is better than you in some way. To gain his support, create a sense of unity and a shared cause.
Even the American media was so taken in by the KGB agent in the Kremlin that Putin was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine in 2007 and “World’s Most Powerful Individual” four years in a row by Forbes magazine from 2013 to 2016.
As part of the upgrade of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, Trump ordered the creation of a low-yield, nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile. This was a direct opposition to Putin’s “escalate-to-de-escalate” atomic plan, which aims to detonate a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon in the theater of combat operations, such as Ukraine, to prevent the US from engaging.
The Biden-Harris administration foolishly cancelled Trump’s program. Biden’s decision to abandon the Keystone XL project in 2021 fueled Putin’s war machine by increasing Russia’s oil income as energy supply declined due to a drop in US oil production capacity of more than 800,000 barrels. In reality, the United States imported over 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Russia, a gap that Keystone might have filled.
There is a reason why Putin did not invade anyone during Trump’s presidency and is now frightened of the next Trump administration. Vlad understands that “Teflon Don” is on to him and can beat him at his own game.