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Trump and Putin: Their Failures in Regime Change

Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, 2025. (Screengrab from video posted to YouTube.)

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will go down in history for their respective failures in regime change.  Both Trump and Putin overestimated their military strengths and underestimated the military strengths of their adversaries.  They miscalculated the strategic challenges and economic costs of widespread use of their military arsenals.

Both Trump and Putin failed to anticipate the long-term chaos that would accompany their wars.  Their regimes used scare tactics in the initial stages of the war: Putin claimed he was denazifying a Ukrainian society that was devoid of nazism; Trump is warning that Iranian suicide teams are a threat to domestic stability at home in an effort to keep skeptical publics on edge.

Intelligence failures were abundant in these cases to go to war, which is the realm of uncertainty, according to Carl von Clausewitz.  Putin underestimated the ability of the Ukrainians to defend themselves as well as the willingness of the Western community, particularly the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to rally in Ukraine’s defense.  Putin is now facing two additional NATO members (Finland and Sweden) on his vulnerable western front as well as an Ukraine that is working closely with NATO states.  Trump failed to consult his Western allies for his unnecessary and illegal war, and in the process, weakened the Western alliance.

Neither Trump nor Putin expected long-term confrontations.  Putin was so confident of immediate success that he instructed Russian commanders to pack dress uniforms for the parade in Kyiv that would soon ensue.  Trump and his Pentagon made no plans for protecting or removing American civilians from the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, and appeared shocked by Iran’s sudden closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the economic chaos that accompanied the greatest oil supply shock in history.

The rising price of oil and the declining worth of U.S. stock markets could have more impact on the decision to end the war than any of the events on the battlefield.  There is no better indicator of Trump’s lack of strategic thinking than his blithe encouragement to oil tanker captains to “show some guts” and sail through the Strait of Hormuz.  Iranian targeting of Persian Gulf energy infrastructure apparently caught the United States military off guard.

At the same time, the adaptability and flexibility of the Ukrainian military has been shocking to a Russia military that had little battlefield experience and has encountered a huge number of casualties and fatalities.  Russian territorial gains have slowed remarkably during the past four months, and Ukraine has been regaining territory in the past month.

Both Trump and Putin have clearly stepped in the unknown of war, where no plan survives first contact with the enemy.   Both quickly found euphemisms for describing the war to avoid signaling the possible long-term consequences of the use of military force.  Putin settled on the term “special military operations” at the outset of the war, and threatened fines for those who used the term “war.”  Trump, avoiding the term “war,” settled on special operations or the more vague concept of “excursions” to avoid suggesting protracted conflict.

Meanwhile, Americans and Russians, who have nothing to gain from these wars, will bear the economic costs of the conflict.  Defense spending will increase in both countries; gas prices in the United States will rise steadily; and the price of key commodities will intensify.  The loss of blood and treasure is sure to intensify.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. and A Whistleblower at the CIA. His most recent books are “American Carnage: The Wars of Donald Trump” (Opus Publishing, 2019) and “Containing the National Security State” (Opus Publishing, 2021). Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

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