Playing chess on phone: US President Donald Trump (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin in deep conversation (File photo)
The mystique of engaging with the US President Donald Trump will remain a hot topic. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s sensational visit is the latest instance underscoring that it can be dangerous to get too close to the sun’s orbit. It burns.
India also took the same route, as Ramaphosa did, with its trademark ‘hug diplomacy’ to envelope Trump in rings of feigned engagement laced with flattery in the hope of easing likely tensions over trade. There is much in common between Ramaphosa and Prime Minister Modi, two elected rulers governing two difficult emerging powers jostling for space in the world’s pecking order, where compassion and empathy come at a premium.
Both Ramaphosa and Modi thought Trump was in need of wise statesmen like them who were steadily gravitating toward the American camp as potentially valuable ‘counterweights’. But in the event, they overlooked that Trump is a singularly unsentimental person who after all made his fortune in New York City, which Nick in Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel The Great Gatsby characterises as an exciting, stimulating place where secret, scandalous relationships can get lost in the noise of the city.
Trump saw through their poor opinion of him. The Indian establishment has since put Trump in the dog house. So will Ramaphosa.
If the Gulf oligarchies also took a similar approach but with far better results, it is because they appealed to Trump’s avarice. Yet, that isn’t coming cheap. FT’s man in the Gulf told BBC that Saudi Arabia may have to borrow money to invest in Trump’s America First.
‘The Line’ — a 170 km long 500-metre-tall linear city, which will be built near the Red Sea in Neom in northwest Saudi Arabia as part of the Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 — has been reportedly paired down to 1.7 km, as income from oil prices drop to $50 per barrel, insufficient to balance the budget.
Nonetheless, the oligarchs are ecstatic. From their limited perspective, Trump is back in Oval Office and that’s what matters — no more sleepless nights over colour revolutions; safety of the princely trillions stashed away in western banks guaranteed for a rainy day.
The sheikhs are swearing fealty to the petrodollar. None of them showed up at the Red Square on Russia’s Victory Day. (Nor did Modi or Ramaphosa.) OPEC+ has lost its sheen. BRICS membership holds no charm. All in all, it’s a Faustian deal that costs Trump, well, nothing.
Yet another variant of the same approach is Europe’s way of tackling Trump — alternating between an alluring seductress and a vengeful Siren from Greek mythology. But nearing 79, Trump has turned his back on temptations, and, importantly, will not decouple from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, because he came into the Oval Office determined not to inherit ‘Biden’s war’ under any circumstance.
That brings us to Putin’s way. Putin is not one of those bombastic politicians masquerading as statesmen on world stage. He is platinum grade in statecraft and governance — and brilliant in wartime, too. Unsurprisingly, Trump has a sneaking respect towards Putin, unlike towards the Europeans, Gulf sheikhs or the Global South toward whom he has a sneering contempt for their pretences and vanities — and being free riders.
For both Putin and Trump, the immediate priority is to mend the Russian-American ties which are in Ground Zero. They are lucky in a way because things can only get better. Nonetheless, for both, this translates as putting the Ukraine war on rear view mirror, which demands monumental power of concentration that at times has been stressful, as inherent in any creative process.
Trump combined colossal strength with grit to reach a goal that was uncertain and might still spell doom for the western alliance. The tension increased as he began understanding that Russia’s victory is irreversible. But then, he also pins hopes that it can open a very dramatic relationship between the US and Russia, a first step toward remaking the world order as a concert of three big powers — the US, Russia and China.
For posterity, Trump hopes to remain one of the small group of the most exalted statesmen of this century, who were left to express the tragic experience of humanity with the greatest depth and universal scope. On his part, Putin’s highly cerebral mind instinctively sized up that Trump would be the best American president that Russia would ever have in a long while.
But their retinues are far from convinced. Rubio articulated defensively at a recent Senate hearing: “It’s irresponsible to not have the two biggest nuclear powers on the planet communicating… That doesn’t mean we’re going to be allies or friendly unless conditions change. But we have to at least be able to communicate with them… “
His Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov responded with a lengthy explanation : “We are naturally sober-minded people in the political sense. It is crucial not to succumb to illusions, to remain realistic and aware that there have been numerous instances where the United States has drastically reversed its stance. Such is life. There is no escaping this reality.
“This factor must be taken into account. We certainly consider it carefully in planning our actions… both sides clearly agreed that the foreign policy of normal countries should be rooted in national interests. This reflects the positions of Trump and Putin. This is not about ideological considerations or attempts to expand influence indiscriminately.
“This was the central theme of our discussions in Riyadh. In observing current developments, I believe the Trump administration is acting in accordance with this approach.”
Now, that is Putin’s own vision. Make no mistake, on the previous day, at a grand ceremony at the Kremlin’s hallowed St Catherine Hall, Putin bestowed on Lavrov one of Russia’s highest honours – the Order of St Andrew the Apostle the First-Called — praising him in glowing terms.
Curiously, Putin also announced on the same day (May 22) that “a decision has been made to create a buffer security zone along the Russian border. Our Armed Forces are working on this now. They are also effectively suppressing enemy firing points.”
A defining moment
What does Putin’s seemingly innocuous announcement, buried in a lengthy speech regarding the repair and reconstruction of Kursk region, mean? It means that Russia is creating a new war front for Group North comprising the Ukrainian oblasts of Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv!
The front-line will now almost double in length, which will of course hopelessly overstretch the Ukrainian forces and bring Russian heavy armour to the great flat Ukrainian plains on which the expressway runs from Sumy to Kiev without any natural obstacle.
Notably, Putin’s announcement came after his conversation (lasting over two hours) with Trump on May 19. According to Wall Street Journal, Trump later told European leaders for the first time that Putin is not ready to end the war as he believes he is winning.
But Trump did not agree to the demands of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders to increase pressure on Russia. He told journalists, “This isn’t my war. We got ourselves entangled in something we shouldn’t have been involved in.”
The Europeans got the message alright that it is now up to them to support Ukraine — something they know only too well is beyond their capability. In fact, NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte as much admitted as much in a press conference in Brussels on May 21: “We know that Russia is at an enormous pace reconstituting itself. They are producing at this moment, ammunition at a level which has not been seen in recent decades. They produce four times as much ammunition as the whole of NATO is producing as we speak. They’re reconstituting their armies. Their whole economy is on a war footing.”
Trump has refused to join the European Union’s sanctions pressure on Russia. But this is not defeatism. On the contrary, Trump also stated his intention to focus on economic cooperation with Moscow, which is of immense interest to American business and Wall Street. He wrote on Truth Social after the phone conversation with Putin in May 19: “Russia wants to do large scale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic “bloodbath” is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country.”
By the way, Rubio has declined to label Putin a war criminal during a hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives last week. And a Politico report says Trump administration had opposed a reference to the illegality of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in an upcoming G7 statement.
Make no mistake, this is not capitulation but a paradigm shift of epochal significance stemming out of a profound foreign-policy strategy rethink on Trump’s part, the credit for which also goes to Putin.
If Trump tactfully ensured through the past 3-month period that the shift in the tectonic plates got a soft landing at home, in Europe and internationally, Putin’s monumental patience contributed to that effort immeasurably by calibrating that Russia’s military victory in Ukraine will also see Trump holding his hand in a ‘win-win’ Entente Cordiale, which in the long term is very much in Russia’s interest — rather than create the triumphalist optic of a fait accompli that was indeed within his easy reach as well.
I’ve written previously also that Putin, an avaricious reader of history who lived and worked in Germany, must be an admirer of Bismarck, the ‘Iron Chancellor’, who, against a king and Prussian generals who wanted to march to Vienna in 1866, counselled moderation and urged a quick cessation of hostilities and focus on the unification of Germany, lest other European powers intervened if the war had continued. (Read a brilliant essay on this topic by an American professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, Brian Rathbun in a 2018 MIT publication, titled The Rarity of Realpolitik: What Bismarck’s Rationality Reveals about International Politics.