Donald Trump has shown an almost pathological desire to advertise his “fantastic” relationship with Vladimir Putin, even as Putin has underestimated, ignored and challenged him.
By Nina L. KHRUSHCHEVA
What goes up comes down. You reap what you sow. Curses, like chickens, come home to roost. Such statements are both rebuke and comfort: bad actors, whether you or those who wrong you, will eventually get their ‘karmic’ revenge. In reality, however, bad actors often escape responsibility for their behavior, sometimes due to luck, and sometimes as a result of a successful tactic to advance a strategic goal. Russia falls into the latter category. President Vladimir Putin’s strategy to escape impunity by wreaking large-scale havoc in Ukraine and engaging in situational hybrid warfare across the West involves two Soviet-era tactics: recruiting “useful idiots” to the cause and using “sausage tactics” to achieve your goals.
The first tactic, often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, refers to the exploitation of unwitting allies – those who unwittingly advance the bad actor’s cause, perhaps even while vocally opposing it. For Putin today, no idiot is more useful than US President Donald Trump.
Putin identified Trump’s potential to fulfill this role before the 2016 presidential election, which he sought to tilt in Trump’s favor. The two leaders’ summit in Helsinki in 2018—when Trump publicly contradicted U.S. intelligence agencies by asserting that Russia had made no effort to influence the election—almost certainly confirmed Putin’s assessment. Since then, Trump has shown an almost pathological desire to tout his “fantastic” relationship with Putin, even as Putin has belittled, ignored, and challenged him.
After their recent summit in Alaska went nowhere, with Putin rejecting Trump’s demand for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Trump began to repeat the Kremlin’s call for an immediate peace deal. He later proudly showed reporters a photo of the two leaders that Putin had sent him. When Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace last week, Trump, always ready to excuse Putin, said that “it could have been a mistake.” You can’t help but think of a desperate child insisting that his bully is his friend.
To no one’s surprise, Trump has fallen prey to Putin’s “sausage tactics,” where a larger goal, which is likely to face strong resistance, is advanced through a series of smaller maneuvers, or “slices,” each of which potential adversaries are likely to ignore, minimize, or grudgingly accept. The recent drone strikes in Poland and Romania are a case in point: the goal was not to provoke war with NATO, but rather to test the Alliance’s capabilities and, perhaps more importantly, its resolve. And how did Putin’s useful idiot in the White House respond to these provocations? He confirmed, once again, that the United States is reluctant to lift a finger to protect its NATO allies.
Of course, Putin began using sausage tactics long before Trump came onto the political scene. Russia’s gradual invasion of Ukrainian territory, which began with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, also reflects this approach. Rather than countering, Trump tries to present the Kremlin’s actions as proof of its strength: if it weren’t for me, he claims, Putin would have taken over the whole country.
Putin’s hero, Joseph Stalin, used a similar approach to eliminate potential domestic rivals, such as Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and Nikolai Bukharin. Of course, slicing a sausage was a very small metaphor for a man who drew up grand plans for a state-wide planned economy. But Mátyás Rákosi, the hard-line leader of the postwar Hungarian Communist Party and a loyal disciple of Stalin (until the Hungarian Stalinists turned against him because he was Jewish), had no such qualms about using the term. Salami tactics are not limited to the Kremlin. Before World War II, Germany began its quest for European dominance with a series of small non-military and quasi-military steps, intended to be sufficiently limited that the European powers would not mount a military response. Today, Chinese President Xi Jinping uses sausage tactics – including the quiet construction of military outposts in disputed areas – to change the territorial status quo in the South China Sea and the Himalayas, without provoking any serious international backlash.
Since Xi effectively emulated Mao Zedong at a recent military parade in Beijing, one wonders whether the success of his strategy is encouraging him to adopt a more confrontational stance. Like Putin – who was present – Xi is probably not too concerned about Trump’s attempt to mount an effective response.
Trump is too naive, too easily manipulated, and not least because of his apparent desire to be part of their authoritarian club. Watching that parade in Tiananmen Square, Trump probably wanted to sit next to kindred spirits, leaders who rule by fear, value personal loyalty above all else, and despise democratic institutions and the rule of law. Perhaps karma will come one day for Putin or Xi. But Trump, the useful idiot, is unlikely to be their agent.
