By David K. Shipler 

When Vladimir Putin sent Russiantroops into Ukraine three years ago, he made several bets that might haveseemed like sure things to him then. One, that Ukraine would quickly fold. Two,that the United States had no staying power. Three, that Europe was toofractured to mount effective resistance.

            Ukraine hasfought valiantly, however. The US under President Biden mustered huge suppliesof weaponry and diplomatic support. Europe united to provide even more militaryaid than the US. And instead of crumbling, NATO added two new members, Swedenand Finland.

Nevertheless, Putin’s gamble finallybegan paying off last week, thanks to his admirer Donald Trump, who is soobviously volatile that next week might be different. Putin once labeled himunpredictable. By contrast, the Russian leader has the patience of a chessmaster—albeit an emotional player, as I wrote in the WashingtonMonthly two months before the invasion.

His long game relies on a wish anda belief: his wishful, messianic ambition to expand and restore a Russianempire, and his passionate belief that Western democracies are vulnerable tomoral decay, internal disorder, and external subversion.

He is acting in both thesedimensions simultaneously, and now has a willing (or unwitting) partner inPresident Trump.

Russia has tried to accelerate thedecline of democracies by exacerbating domestic divisions with onlinedisinformation during elections, which probably helped elect Trump in 2016. Moscowis promoting pro-Russian parties in Germany and other NATO states, a Russianinterference campaign that has been joined by Elon Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance, who have championed rightwing European parties with neo-Nazi sympathies.

Trump, apparently a propagandavictim, is parroting Russian lies by denouncing Ukrainian President VolodymyrZelensky as an unelected dictator who started the war, fictions that areembarrassing the United States. And for the first time in the 80 years sinceWorld War II, the trans-Atlantic security alliance of NATO is under attack byWashington in cahoots with Moscow. In other words, Trump’s re-election isalready proving a boon to Putin’s agenda.

Putin comes to this moment leadinga wounded, humiliated nation. And humiliation is a toxin, often overlooked as afactor among the military and economic forces that dominate internationalrelations. There is nothing like lost dignity to poison a leader’s behavior.

The 1991breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 separate countries was hailed in the West, butPutin called it, depending on translation, “the greatest [orgreat] geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” He clearly saw it as asecurity problem. As the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact disintegrated, its EastEuropean members eagerly courted membership in the opposing militaryalliance—the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And NATO, pledgedto defend any member subjected to attack, gladly picked them up one by one,trophies of the West’s supposed victory in the Cold War. The expansion of NATOto Russia’s borders violated multiple oral promises by American and WestEuropean leaders that the alliance would not be enlarged. Former Soviet leader MikhailGorbachev said he was “swindled.”

 The sting of Russia’s diminished stature wasadministered in a derisive comment by President Obama after Putin seized Crimeafrom Ukraine in 2014. "Russia is a regional power that is threatening someof its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness," Obama declared.

 Putin’s response? To further humiliatehis country by invasion and internal oppression. By aggressive means, he seeks dignityby regaining the power to swagger across the global stage. And Trump is poisedto help him.

Putin’stwo-track strategy—pursuing both short-term security and historical destiny—isclear from his writings and speeches, which apparently go unread in the OvalOffice. They raise a question about what might restrain Putin on those twotracks. It seems obvious that only a strong counterweight to his ambitions—fromEurope and the US—presents a deterrent. The war has cost Moscow dearly; itsarmed forces have been badly damaged, much of its manufacturing has beenreoriented toward military industry, and its economic stress is growing acute.If allowed to play out longer, those elements in themselves might deter suchadventures. But not if the aggression is now rewarded.

Onthe security track, Putin’s demands include no NATO membership for Ukraine; noEuropean troops in Ukraine; and ideally a rollback of NATO from other nearbycountries, such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (former Soviet republics), andformer Warsaw Pact members such as Poland and Hungary. Trump might grant mostof Putin’s wishes, including reducing the US military in Europe, with specificlimits or bans on certain tactical weapon systems capable of reaching Russianterritory. If NATO disintegrates under Trump’s unprecedented assault, we canimagine Putin in the Kremlin performing whatever rhapsodic acrobatics his72-year-old body would allow.

 It is conceivable that a Putin-Trump pactwould carve up Europe into spheres of influence, as the US, the Soviet Union,and the United Kingdom did at the 1945 Yalta conference after World War II. Trumpalso might be amenable to chopping up the world into American, Russian, andChinese zones of hegemony—a 21st century brand of colonialimperialism. That would betray American allies in Asia, particularly SouthKorea and Japan, and pave the way for China’s takeover of Taiwan.

Oddly,the supposed master of “the art of the deal” gave up three of his bargainingchips before negotiations over Ukraine even began. He, Vice President J.D.Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have collectively staked out a veryweak position going into talks. They’ve already said that Ukraine will not joinNATO, will have to give up territory to Russia, and will not get the shield ofAmerican military support that has kept the country alive in the face of thebrutal Russian onslaught.

Whyforfeit your opening position before the opening? How does the tough guy in theWhite House think he can handle a canny fellow like Putin by caving in advance?

Itcan be argued, as Hegseth did, that the NATO and territorial concessions aremerely statements of reality. All 32 members would have to agree to admitUkraine into NATO; Hungary and possibly Turkey would be expected to object. Besides,admitting a member at war with Russia would mean a NATO war with Russia. As forRussian-occupied territory, the virtual stalemate on the battlefield can’t betranslated into a Ukrainian victory at the negotiating table. The realities won’tproduce Ukraine’s maximalist desires.

Still,those are positions to be traded away for something from Putin in return. Trumpseems keen to just end the war without caring about how it ends. Carelessnesswill lay the groundwork for another war, and for Trump’s ignominious legacy asan appeaser without a spine.

Nothingin Trump’s emerging policy addresses Putin’s second track: his messianicyearning to recreate the Russian empire, of which Ukraine is a linchpin.  

            “Putin’sattachment to Ukraine often takes on emotional, spiritual, and metaphysicalovertones,” wrote EugeneRumer and Andrew S. Weiss back in 2021. Alongside his tangible geopoliticalconcerns, they observed, he is driven by the personal compulsions of historicalfabulation and ethereal bonds to a land that he denies constitutes a country.

“By his own account,” writesMichael Hirsh of Foreign Policy, “Putin sees himself not as the heir tothe Soviets but as a champion of Russian civilization and Moscow’s Eurasianempire, whose roots extend back to a much earlier Vladimir—St. Vladimir, theGrand Prince of Kyiv from about 980 to 1015. St. Vladimir was ruler of what theRussians consider their first empire, the Slavic state known as KievanRus—based, of course, in Kyiv, the capital of what is now Ukraine.”