14-05-2025
Trump isn't the first president Putin has played
Donald Trump says he wants peace in Ukraine. The problem is that Mr. Trump sees Vladimir Putin for who he wishes Mr. Putin to be, a hardened but practical interlocutor, rather than for who he is, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who revels in the dark art of ruthless manipulation. Mr. Trump was shaped by the wheeler-dealer New York City real-estate scene. Mr. Putin was shaped by the brutal maximalism of the KGB's Red Banner Institute.
But Mr. Trump isn't the first U.S. president to take an unrealistic view of his Russian counterpart. Consider his predecessors' experiences.
The first American president to deal with Mr. Putin, Bill Clinton, chose to remain largely silent on human-rights concerns in Russia, including Mr. Putin's wanton disregard for civilian casualties during the Second Chechen War. Mr. Clinton instead focused on wooing Mr. Putin to join the post-Cold War democratic international order.
Mr. Putin did nothing of the sort. He intimidated the Russian media, cultivated an inner circle of oligarchs who traded vast wealth for political loyalty, and embedded politically vested corruption into the Russian economy—all while Mr. Clinton stood idly by.
Next came George W. Bush. Meeting Mr. Putin in June 2001, Mr. Bush said he 'looked the man in the eye" and 'found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy," adding that he gained 'a sense of his soul." Mr. Bush had been duped by Mr. Putin's KGB mind games. Mr Putin appealed to Mr. Bush, a born-again Christian, with a story about his mother's Orthodox cross being rescued from a fire in her dacha. Mr. Putin adopted a similar tactic with Mr. Trump's chief foreign-affairs negotiator, Steve Witkoff, telling Mr. Witkoff that he had prayed for Mr. Trump when he learned of the assassination attempt against him last July.
Mr. Putin was never the pro-modernization leader Mr. Bush hoped he might be. By the end of the Bush presidency, Mr. Putin had launched a vicious cyberattack on North Atlantic Treaty Organization member Estonia, heavily supported Iran's nuclear program, and invaded Georgia.
Then there was Barack Obama. Soon after taking office in 2009, Mr. Obama essentially excused Russia's invasion of Georgia five months prior, publicly seeking a 'reset" in relations. That July Mr. Obama traveled to Moscow to meet with Mr. Putin. Obama adviser Michael McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia from 2012 through 2014, recounts in his 2018 book how Mr. Putin quickly asserted dominance over the American president:
'Putin spoke uninterrupted for nearly the entire time scheduled for the meeting, documenting the injustices of the Bush administration. This was a guy with a chip on his shoulder. Obama listened patiently, maybe too patiently. . . . It was my assignment to read out this meeting to our press corps later that day. I couldn't tell them that Obama had merely listened the entire time!"
Mr. Putin reveled in Mr. Obama's policy of appeasement. Beginning around 2008, Russia persistently breached the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (The U.S. didn't withdraw from the treaty until 2019, under Mr. Trump.) In 2016 members of Russia's Federal Security Service attacked and harassed U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers in Moscow. During the intervening years, Russia seized Crimea and southeastern Ukraine, militarily intervened to save Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from defeat in his country's civil war, and downed a civilian passenger plane flying over eastern Ukraine.
Mr. Obama was so fearful of standing against Mr. Putin's aggression that he refused to provide Ukraine with lethal military support. Even when Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and leaked its emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, all Mr. Obama did was unsuccessfully request that Mr. Putin 'cut it out."
Finally there was Joe Biden. In June 2021 Mr. Biden met with Mr. Putin in Geneva. At the end of the summit, Mr. Biden said, 'All foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships. It's the way human nature functions. The tone of the entire meeting was good, positive." Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine eight months later.
Mr. Biden helped facilitate robust international sanctions on Russia after the invasion. But he repeatedly hesitated before providing Ukraine with antitank weapons, long-range artillery rockets and F-16 fighter jets. He also limited the paths that U.S. drones could take over the Black Sea to avoid confrontations with Russia. By contrast, even after Russia fired a missile near a British spy plane in 2022, Britain continued to send planes into the region with fighter escorts.
Mr. Biden gave too much credence to Mr. Putin's nuclear threats and didn't do enough to help Ukraine defend itself. Mr. Trump may be doing even worse in this regard—though he has returned manned U.S. spy planes to the Black Sea—but Mr. Biden set the tone for excessive deference toward Mr. Putin's rhetoric.
Perhaps the best example of the consequences of tolerating Mr. Putin's manipulation games comes not from an American president but from Britain's Tony Blair. During a 2001 trip to Moscow that included a celebration of Mr. Putin's birthday, Prime Minister Blair said, 'From my very first meeting I recognized that President Putin is a man who had the imagination and courage to set relations on a new course." In return, Mr. Putin had his oligarchs buy up assets in London and use this financial power to influence the media, intimidate and silence British journalists, and provide political cover for Mr. Putin's nerve-agent-wielding assassination squads—who have poisoned several Russian dissidents in Britain.
Mr. Trump should consider Mr. Putin's history. The American president may like deals, but Mr. Putin is more cutthroat even than the New York real-estate market.
Mr. Rogan is a national-security writer for the Washington Examiner.
