Like Putin, Trump would create his own global reality. Never mind that more Mexicans have returned to their country than have immigrated to the United States since 2009; in Trump’s world they flood across the border, mandating the construction of a wall. U.S. and Russian lies may well overlap — Trump and Putin concur that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine, even if they are still killing Ukrainians on a near-daily basis.
Who will defend truth? Maybe Sweden.
Trump would likely grant Putin’s most cherished wish, which is to sit as an equal with the U.S. president, dividing up the world into spheres of influence. The results would be catastrophic for a string of countries in Eurasia and the Middle East. Trump could be invited by Putin to surrender Ukraine and Georgia, and maybe Egypt and Jordan, and he may well agree. After all, the businessman may conclude, there is no money to be made in those places.
Trump pictures himself striking tough deals with a like-minded strongman. He surely underestimates Putin’s ruthlessness and is ignorant of his conception of U.S.-Russia relations as a zero-sum game. After 15 years in power, Putin is skilled at the arts of deception, betrayal, sabotage and tactical aggression. Trump, by comparison, is a dilettante. So the consequence of a Trump-Putin world would not just be the triumph of amoral statesmanship; it would be the rise of Russian influence at America’s expense.
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