Trump's weakness invites imminent war

We should be a ready on a much shorter timescale than I previously feared

Today’s drone incursion into Poland brought to mind for me this piece I wrote earlier this year about how Trump’s pathetic handling of Vladimir Putin invites Russian aggression. Think about it: Trump keeps threatening to punish Russia for its continuation of the war, but then he always chickens out and does nothing. He is demonstrating that he has no intention of acting to stop Russia, even at great embarrassment to himself.

Given that dynamic, it’s completely logical for Putin to keep pushing and pushing, assuming that Trump will just back down again. Trump promises “peace through strength” but he could easily end up delivering “war through weakness”.

So enjoy this bonus post from earlier this year, which I think is still very relevant today. And please upgrade to a paid subscription if you are yet to do so - it helps to keep independent media alive.

Donald Trump likes to pretend that what he offers is “peace through strength”. His apologists will often tell you that the world was a relatively peaceful place in his first term because America’s adversaries were too scared to start conflicts. Now that he’s back in office, they say, he’s going to restore that deterrence and usher in renewed peace on Earth.

But this talking point is strangely at odds with another of Trump’s personas: the guy who seems personally happy to see Russia gobble up Ukraine and argues that it makes no strategic sense for America to try to stop it. How can Trump’s threats bring “peace through strength” when he actually isn’t making any threats at all and is instead siding with the aggressor? Wouldn’t that stance actually just encourage further aggression, and hence invite war?

This is now the central tension in Trump’s foreign policy, and it’s one that I’m worried could bring a wider war to Europe or Asia on a timescale far shorter than I had previously anticipated.

Going into Trump’s second presidency, the best case scenario was that it would be something like his first - strategically damaging, yes, but also reversible. Russia and China might see the opportunity to make some gains vis-a-vis the United States and Europe, but Trump would only let them go so far. He would still stick by NATO and remain ambiguous enough about Taiwan that Moscow and Beijing wouldn’t be tempted to go for broke. Then, when he left office, there might still be enough time to repair the damage. If there wasn’t, the consequences would still unfold across many years, maybe even decades.

What we’re getting instead is something much more radical - a Trump who seems willing to give everything away and lacks the strategic sense to even do so in a manner that maintains a basic level of American credibility and deterrence. He is tripping over himself to give Russia everything it wants on a silver platter, his obvious eagerness and blasé attitude about the future of Ukraine and Europe destroying any negotiating leverage that he possessed.

As a result, Trump’s unique combination of cravenness and incompetence might start to look to the Kremlin like something more than a particularly favorable period of time in which it can achieve some limited gains before normal business is resumed. It might start to look like a once-in-a-lifetime window of opportunity to go for broke and seize everything.

It’s clear that Putin’s aims are the collapse of the transatlantic alliance, the end of NATO and the U.S. nuclear guarantee, the continued fragmentation of Europe, and the re-establishment of a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. His invasion of Ukraine has helped with some of these aims, like straining the transatlantic alliance, while also working against others, such as maintaining the fragmentation of Europe. In order to use Ukraine as a stepping stone to his broader aims, he needs to start acting against NATO and the European Union themselves.

What might this look like? I suspect it would start with acts of sabotage or highly-targeted, plausibly deniable violence within the borders of the European Union. The aim would be to create panic within Europe and bring the question of America’s security guarantee to the fore. That guarantee might be disavowed by Trump entirely, or it might be chipped away by a series of actions to which the United States provides no response. If, as we can expect, Trump responds to acts of Russian violence by telling Europe that it is on its own, we can wave goodbye to NATO.

At this point, with the American security guarantee gone, Russia would dramatically step up its threats against the EU and the rump, America-less NATO. Russia would try to use these threats to create deep fissures in European unity, perhaps persuading some states to back it. But there would probably be a core of governments who agreed on turbo-charging European defense integration. They would then start fighting back, sending troops either to Ukraine or to other frontline states in Eastern Europe; those that possess nuclear weapons would respond with nuclear threats of their own.

At this point, things could go one of two ways. A much wider war could break out in Europe, potentially turning nuclear, or the United States could have second thoughts. This might be driven by Trump, who could have second thoughts after seeing the effect of his policies on the stock market and hearing them widely described as an embarrassment for America. Or it might be driven by elements of the U.S. defense establishment who recognize the immense danger the world is in. The U.S. might then blunder back in, leading Putin to feel betrayed and resulting again in a wider war.

I concede that this sounds very pessimistic. It is indeed a worst-case scenario. But after the events of recent weeks, it’s not an implausible one.

It all stems from the fact that Trump is not actually offering “peace through strength”, but “peace through weakness”. And that idea has always had one big problem, which is that weakness invites further aggression, not an end to it. The word “appeasement” has been over-used in American foreign policy discussions in recent decades, but watching Trump fawn over Putin and kick the war hero Zelensky to the curb is a classic example of it. For Putin, it must smell like the opportunity of a lifetime - for Europe, it smells like disaster.

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