Russia’s Weakness Is Trump’s Opportunity
The president leveraged Netanyahu’s vulnerability to secure a cease-fire. He can similarly pressure Putin.
By Rahm Emanuel
Having just commemorated two years since Oct. 7, 2023, we’re now approaching another grim anniversary—Feb. 24, four years since Russia invaded Ukraine.
For all of President Trump’s shortcomings, he deserves credit for recognizing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was vulnerable after having overreached by bombing Qatar.
The president leveraged Bibi’s weakness to force a cease-fire.
Russia is in a similarly vulnerable position after the failure of its third offensive against Ukraine, yet Mr. Trump has failed to exploit this weakness.
This raises the question: Why is Mr. Trump reluctant to take advantage of Vladimir Putin’s helplessness?
In February, Mr. Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “You don’t have the cards.”
Yet from nearly every angle and measure, it’s Russia whose hand is weak.
Mr. Putin is more vulnerable today than at any point in his three decades on the global stage.
Either Mr. Trump’s sixth sense for using leverage is failing him, or some strange fondness for the Russian president’s strongman persona is preventing him from appreciating the strategic opportunity that lies before him.
Conventional wisdom would say that time is on Moscow’s side, but the evidence is to the contrary.
The former Red Army is in an enfeebled state.
About a million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the fighting.
The war has proved the military’s equipment—planes, ships, tanks, trucks and weapons—to be as ineffectual as its leadership.
Moscow depends on North Korean soldiers, Arab mercenaries and Iranian technology—not exactly the quality of a global superpower.
The conflict is likely to remain a slog, with progress measured in yards rather than miles.
Moreover, Russia’s intelligence apparatus over the past 3½ years has proved feckless and faulty.
The Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, failed to anticipate and prepare for Oct. 7, but the country has since re-established its fearsome reputation, with operations including the beepers in Lebanon, the killing of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and the bunker-destroying attack that killed Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah outside Beirut, to name a few remarkable successes.
By contrast, Mr. Putin’s intelligence services entirely misjudged Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.
Russia similarly miscalculated the strength and durability of the Assad regime in Syria—now a lost ally.
Moscow both overestimated the Wagner Group’s strength as a power in Africa, now in shambles, and underestimated its potential to threaten the Russian government, as it did with an aborted coup.
These weaknesses help explain Mr. Putin’s pathetic showing on the Ukrainian battlefront.
Nearly four years in, a nation many times its neighbor’s size has little to show for enormous blood and treasure lost.
Mr. Putin purportedly thought that his troops would parade through Kyiv only a few days after attacking Ukraine in February of 2022, which is why many Russian units were outfitted with only a few days’ of materiel and supplies.
Not only did that not happen, but subsequent efforts have been similarly catastrophic for Russia.
The geostrategic costs are piling up.
Much to Moscow’s embarrassment, Washington recently stepped in to resolve tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan in a region that was once within Russia’s sphere of influence.
Moldova last month voted in a decidedly pro-Western government.
For decades, more countries across the region, from Poland to Romania, have looked west to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization rather than East.
Former Soviet republics in Central Asia are displaying less fealty to Moscow, choosing to draw alliances instead with China and the European Union.
To add insult to injury, Mr. Putin recently canceled a summit with Arab heads of state after many declined his invitation.
The Russian president no longer commands fear or even respect.
Which brings us to Russia’s place in the global pecking order.
Mr. Putin’s impetus in invading Ukraine was to re-establish the “motherland” as a global superpower—to restore the honor of the old Soviet and Russian empires.
Instead the war has weakened him at home and abroad.
His erstwhile allies in Eastern Europe are rearming themselves to protect against any future Russian aggression.
One of the newest members of NATO, Finland, is fortifying a portion of its 800-mile border with Russia.
And for all he and Xi Jinping claimed publicly that they have a “no limits” alliance, Mr. Putin is Mr. Xi’s junior partner.
The shrinking role that Russian fossil fuels play in the global market further weakens Russia’s economy and position in the world.
Following World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was highly suspicious of Russian troops returning from the eastern front.
Conditions in parts of Russia were so grim that the communist leader worried his own military might turn against him.
If the Ukraine war were to end today, returning Russian troops, outraged by the sacrifices they have made, would pose a threat to Mr. Putin’s regime.
Say what you will about Mr. Putin, he’s not a fool.
He knows the history of failed Russian military endeavors.
Which brings us back to Mr. Trump.
The U.S. thus far has limited its use of sanctions, weapon transfers and other retaliations in ways that have allowed Ukraine not to lose the war while denying it the capacity to win.
Mr. Putin is on the short end of a bad bet—a reality that Mr. Trump should easily perceive and use to America’s ultimate advantage.
After his success in Gaza, Mr. Trump’s standing on the global stage has never been higher.
The question now is whether the president will use his political leverage and capital to take the bold action necessary to make himself truly deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize.
That anniversary of Feb. 24 is fast approaching.
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario