Has it struck you just how much Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump seem to have in common? It begins with this: despite costly reversals on the battlefield in Ukraine and the angry voices of world leaders telling him to stop— even China’s support seems to be fading— apparently Putin has the pomposity to think he can just win the war, as if he’s channeling Trump, by thinking about it.
That’s because what Putin can’t think about is defeat. It’s a reckless characteristic he has in common with Trump. As columnist Maureen Dowd puts it, both men are “driven by their dread of being called losers.”
But it goes beyond that.
Putin, like Trump, evidently believes he knows more than the experts. The New York Times reported this weekend that Putin is either ignoring sound advice from military commanders, or overruling them. Quoting U.S. intelligence sources, The Times says he is telling them that strategic decisions about the battlefield now will be made in the Kremlin.
That might make sense if his army— the world’s second biggest— were winning. But for now anyway, it’s not. The latest estimates are that at least 80,000 Russian troops have died or been injured in Ukraine, maybe more, and that half the Russian military’s tanks and maybe ten-percent of its fighter aircraft have met their end.
But like Donald Trump, Putin doesn’t try to correct course when he’s in trouble. He doesn’t look for a way out. Instead, he doubles down. Like Trump, Putin’s only response if you punch him is to try to punch you harder. It is a low quality of both men that in pursuit of their goals, neither cares who or what gets hurt.
Even when they threaten to throw those punches with nukes.
Last week, unable to win the old-fashioned way, Putin upped the ante in the war, as if someone else bore guilt and Russia is the innocent victim. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened,” he said in a nationally televised speech, “we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff.” Again, shades of Donald Trump. Remember how, before his bromance with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Trump warned Kim that his belligerence could be met “with fire and fury, and frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” A month later he went to the United Nations and threatened that “if (the United States) is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.”
For decades, the pulverizing power of a nuclear arsenal was implicitly understood. From my own coverage of arms talks and the Cold War, I’m convinced that that’s what kept the peace. But that was before Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Both these men would rather wave their nuclear weapons like national flags.
The two even share a penchant for bogus ballots. With Putin, it’s the fabricated “referendums” underway right now in four provinces of Ukraine, where citizens are being asked if they want to secede from their sovereign nation and become a part of Russia. Given that ballots have been delivered by Russian riflemen and that people are voting under penalty of potential punishment and reportedly, in some cases, even at gunpoint, the outcome is preordained. With Trump, it’s his unethical and underhanded efforts to falsify the results of the 2020 presidential election everywhere from Arizona to Georgia to Michigan… not to mention inside the halls of the United States Congress.
If these guys don’t like the honest outcome of an election, they’ll do their best to engineer a different one.
Putin’s and Trump’s double-dealing personal qualities mirror their double-dealing politics. Both are untethered to moral principle. Both lie as easily as they breathe. Each says one thing and does another. Putin’s excuses for invading Ukraine have become a moving target, just like Trump’s excuses for keeping top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago. If one story is discredited, each man just moves on to the next.
Both are pig-headed. Each is driven by recalcitrance, ego, and imperial dreams. It wouldn’t much matter if major institutions weren’t at stake. But it does matter, because they are. Putin has put Russia’s military, its economy, and its once-powerful place on the world stage on the line. Trump has trampled on our rights, our democracy, our rule of law.
Both men are bullies. Trump bullies weaker people. Putin bullies weaker nations.
And neither tolerates dissent. When Trump’s own loyalists begin to push back on his crazier ideas, they become “losers.” When Putin’s do, they become “suicides.”
Both men have an authoritarian streak. The only thing that separates one from another are checks and balances that have stood in the way of Donald Trump’s most egregious excesses. Vladimir Putin doesn’t have those constraints.
The harm each of these men has done to his nation, the harm each of these men has done to the world, is huge. They have that in common. But Putin’s is on an even bigger scale than Trump’s. If it is the American people’s will— beginning with the November elections— we shall survive Trump’s assaults on what we hold dear. The Russian people who want no part of this war, and tragically, the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their lives, don’t have that peaceable choice.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
They cannot accept facts.
A review of the book “Young Hitler: The Making of the Fuhrer”talks about a recurring type of demagogue who will do and say anything to seize power, who thrives on chaos and dark prejudices.
Hitler couldn’t accept Germany’s loss of WWI. Putin was angered by the breakup of the USSR. And Trump cannot accept his election loss.
Well drawn and to my mind fair comparison. Thanks Greg.