He’s been shockingly good at management. His management of domestic politics has been masterful, his macroeconomic management during the oil slump has been spectacular, and Russia’s short, victorious little war in Crimea was breathtaking.

But his strategy has been incoherent. He titled to the United States in the early 2000s, then to Asia in the late 2000s, without a real security partnership with either superpower. He has pursued costly adventurism that has delivered few gains and alienated potential partners in Europe. 

His backing for populists in Europe and the United States has always been a risky strategy. By some measures, the program has exceeded expectations. A few years ago, would have thought that an American presidential candidate would have asked Russia for help? But even in the United States, the strategy has been a disappointment. Their man has not delivered the goods. 

Trump is better for Russia than Clinton would have been, but Russia is not in a better strategic position now than it was in 2009, and it is not more secure than it would have been if it had been a bit more accommodative. Notwithstanding the populist surge -- brought about, perversely, by the weakness of Russia’s only Arab client -- Russia has less influence and fewer friends in the world than it would have had played ball. 

Russia’s few friends and clients are basket cases. It has neglected the chance to forge a strategic partnership with either the rising or falling power. It has promoted European fantasies while ignoring European realities. After the debacle of Iraq, Russia was well-positioned to take advantage of American weakness and European fickleness. If failed to do so.

You want to reconcile the name of your Republic with the geographic expression of its territory? You think it looks nice when a whole island is painted the same color on the map? You don’t really think Irish Protestants should be there at all and you haven’t thought clearly about what to do with them?

That would be bad enough.

You don’t want parties and candidates to change their policy to benefit foreign powers. You don’t want parties and candidates coordinating with a covert active measures campaign. And you definitely don’t want parties and candidates beholden to blackmail by an active measures campaign.

That would be bad enough.

It would be even worse if the foreign power was an adversary, with hostile interests. It would be even worse if the corrupt bargain with the adversary was an agreement to end human rights sanctions against murderers. It would be even worse if the corrupt bargain was a promise to grant the adversary license to corrupt and dominate free nations.

That would be bad enough.

But worst of all would be an agreement to unwind alliances with nations that are only free because the alliance protects them. Worst of all would be an agreement to unwind commitments that are the only thing that save the world from a choice between death and domination.

That would be pretty bad.

That’s fair, but I believe the United States has advantages in procurement, development, and air support, larger reserves of manpower and materiel, and more military experience than the Europeans. 

In a non-nuclear confrontation with Russia, I believe only the Americans have the combined arms forces with the military superiority to roll back Russian positions in Poland and the Baltic states.

The United States has about 14,000 military aircraft, while Russia has 3,800. But the principal allies together have fewer aircraft than that: France has 1,300, Britain has 850, and Germany has 700. 

Even if qualitative and personnel superiority allow the smaller allied forces to fight Russia to a draw – and the Russians will have combat experience that allies lack – I’m skeptical that Europeans will have the air superiority they need to advance on the ground.

On the ground, the United States has about 5,900 tanks and 41,000 armored fighting vehicles. Russia has about 20,000 tanks and 31,000 AFVs. The Europeans have fewer than that: France has about 400 tanks and 6,900 AFVs, Britain has about 250 tanks and 6,000 AFVs, and Germany has about 550 tanks and 5,900 AFVs.

I don’t have the technical expertise to evaluate those military numbers, but the Europeans are not prepared to fight and win a ground war against Russia without air superiority, and I don’t know how long it would take the Europeans to procure the materiel and manpower to reverse Russian gains. 

They would need that, because Russia will have an enormous military advantage at the beginning of the war. NATO runs war games, and the outcome isn’t happy, even with US and European allies working together:

Acrossmultiple plays of the game, Russian forces eliminated orbypassed all resistance and were at the gates of or actuallyentering Riga, Tallinn, or both, between 36 and 60 hours after the start of hostilities. Four factors appeared to contribute mostsubstantially to this result.

First and obviously, the overall correlation of forces wasdramatically in Russia’s favor. Although the two sides’ rawnumbers of maneuver battalions—22 for Russia and 12 forNATO—are not badly disproportionate, seven of NATO’s arethose of Estonia and Latvia, which are extremely light, lacktactical mobility, and are poorly equipped for fighting againstan armored opponent. Indeed, the only armor in the NATOforce is the light armor in a single Stryker battalion, which iscredited with having deployed from Germany during the crisisbuildup prior to the conflict. NATO has no main battle tanksin the field.

Meanwhile, all Russia’s forces are motorized, mechanized,or tank units. Even their eight airborne battalions are equippedwith light armored vehicles, unlike their U.S. counterparts.

Second, Russia also enjoys an overwhelming advantagein tactical and operational fires. The Russian order of battleincludes ten artillery battalions (three equipped with tube artillery and seven with multiple-rocket launchers), in addition tothe artillery that is organic to the maneuver units themselves.NATO has no independent fires units at all, and the light unitsinvolved in the fight are poorly endowed with organic artillery.

Third, NATO’s light forces were not only outgunned bythe much heavier Russian units, but their lack of maneuver ability meant that they could be pinned and bypassed if theRussian players so desired. By and large, NATO’s infantryfound themselves unable even to retreat successfully and weredestroyed in place.

Finally, while NATO airpower was generally able to take asubstantial toll on advancing Russian troops, without adequateNATO ground forces to slow the attack’s momentum, thereis simply not enough time to inflict sufficient attrition to haltthe assault. Airpower is rate limited, and against a moderatelycompetent adversary—which is how we portrayed the RussianAir Force—NATO’s air forces had multiple jobs to do,including suppressing Russia’s arsenal of modern surface-to-airdefenses and defending against possible air attacks on NATOforces and rear areas. This further limited NATO air’s abilityto affect the outcome of the war on the ground. Without heavyNATO ground forces to force the attackers to slow their rate ofadvance and assume postures that increased their vulnerabilityto air strikes, Russian players could meter their losses to air bychoosing how to array and move their forces.

Russia’s tactical advantages make victory in the Baltics a fait accompli. That means that Europeans can only make victory in a protracted campaign, and I am deeply skeptical that the Europeans are willing to go it alone. I’m not even sure they’d be willing to do it with American help. 

European electorates outside the Russian borderlands are also deeply skeptical of military action, even in defense. Only 18 percent of Germans, 27 percent of Britons, and 29 percent of the French are willing to fight for their country. The French and British establishments believe in the alliance, but I’m skeptical that the deeply pacifist German electorate is prepared for conflict.

If there were a political solution available – supposing the Russians install an amenable client government in the Baltic states, and offer a compromise peace with the Western Europeans – I am not certain that the Germans would hold out for something more.

Without Germany, without the United States, and with the Baltic states already under Russian occupation, I don’t think the Atlantic alliance has a leg to stand on, even if the Balts and Poles put up a heroic resistance. Even with the Americans and the Germans, the Russian fait accompli in the Baltics presents the allies with hard choices, as RAND points out:

A rapid Russian occupation of all or much of one or twoNATO member states would present the Alliance with threeoptions, all unappetizing.First, NATO could mobilize forces for a counteroffensive toeject Russian forces from Latvia and Estonia and restore the territorial integrity of the two countries. Under the best of circumstances,this would require a fairly prolonged buildup that couldstress the cohesion of the alliance and allow Russia opportunitiesto seek a political resolution that left it in possession of its conquests.Even a successful counteroffensive would almost certainlybe bloody and costly and would have political consequences thatare unforeseeable in advance but could prove dramatic.

Any counteroffensive would also be fraught with severeescalatory risks. If the Crimea experience can be taken as aprecedent, Moscow could move rapidly to formally annex theoccupied territories to Russia. NATO clearly would not recognizethe legitimacy of such a gambit, but from Russia’s perspectiveit would at least nominally bring them under Moscow’snuclear umbrella. By turning a NATO counterattack aimed atliberating the Baltic republics into an “invasion” of “Russia,”Moscow could generate unpredictable but clearly dangerousescalatory dynamics. 

On a tactical level, a counteroffensive campaign into theBaltics would likely entail the desire, and perhaps even the necessity,of striking targets, such as long-range surface-to-air defensesand surface-to-surface fires systems, in territory that even NATOwould agree constitutes “Russia.” Under Russian doctrine, it isunclear what kinds or magnitudes of conventional attacks intoRussian territory might trigger a response in kind (or worse),but there would certainly be concern in Washington and otherNATO capitals about possible escalatory implications.

Finally, it is also unclear how Russia would react to a successfulNATO counteroffensive that threatened to decimatethe bulk of its armed forces along its western frontier; at whatpoint would tactical defeat in the theater begin to appear like astrategic threat to Russia herself? 

The second option would be for NATO to turn the escalatorytables, taking a page from its Cold War doctrine of “massiveretaliation,” and threaten Moscow with a nuclear responseif it did not withdraw from the territory it had occupied. Thisoption was a core element of the Alliance’s strategy against theWarsaw Pact for the duration of the latter’s existence and couldcertainly be called on once again in these circumstances. 

The deterrent impact of such a threat draws power from theimplicit risk of igniting an escalatory spiral that swiftly reachesthe level of nuclear exchanges between the Russian and U.S.homelands. Unfortunately, once deterrence has failed—whichwould clearly be the case once Russia had crossed the Rubiconof attacking NATO member states—that same risk would tendto greatly undermine its credibility, since it may seem highlyunlikely to Moscow that the United States would be willing toexchange New York for Riga. Coupled with the general directionof U.S. defense policy, which has been to de-emphasizethe value of nuclear weapons, and the likely unwillingness ofNATO’s European members, especially the Baltic states themselves,to see their continent or countries turned into a nuclearbattlefield, this lack of believability makes this alternative bothunlikely and unpalatable.

The third possibility would be to concede, at least for thenear to medium term, Russian control of the territory they hadoccupied. Under this scenario, the best outcome would likelybe a new cold war, with the 21st century’s version of the old“inner German border” drawn somewhere across Lithuania orLatvia. The worst be would be the collapse of NATO itself andthe crumbling of the cornerstone of Western security for almost70 years. 

If the Americans believe they must “trade New York for Tallinn,” or Rostock for Riga, or Calais for Kaunas, or Hampstead for Helsinki, I’m not sure they’d be willing to make the trade. So I’m a bit concerned. Yes, I’m a bit concerned about this, that, and the other thing, about events that might precipitate this eventuality, or perhaps something worse.

Americans and Europeans both might decide to “respect Russia’s interests in its traditional sphere of influence,” whatever that might mean for their six million Baltic allies. 

I’m not a Leftist or a Latin America specialist, so I don’t know as much about this subject as I should, but for understanding US foreign policy during the contest with the USSR, I think it’s enough to understand that the US believed that the USSR was an existential threat to the US, and anything that helped the USSR increased that threat.

The US was especially anxious about communism. The USSR might have influence in non-communist states, but those states would always be less threatening than communist states, whether or not those communists happened to be Soviet clients. They were far less likely to directly threaten the US or its allies. They made far fewer credible or lasting commitments to the USSR. And they did not spread international communism.

That was mostly true, but the emphasis on ‘communism’ biased US threat perceptions. The US had false negatives (Cuba), false positives (Iran, Guatemala), true negatives that nonetheless threatened US interests (Egypt), and true positives that many US policymakers were convinced were false positives (China, Vietnam). It was all a big headache.

I think that helps explain Latin America – the US helped some sanguinary men because they promised to suppress communists, and when the USSR disappeared, the US just didn’t care all that much, which is why Daniel Ortega has been President of Nicaragua for a decade now, with nary a peep from Washington  – but Latin America’s a bit different because the US had been overthrowing Latin American governments for decades before the USSR showed up.

So what was all that about? I’m not as familiar with classic American Imperialism as I should be, but I suppose it was driven by an alliance between concentrated economic interests and American nationalists – the former to do the plotting, the later to do the voting and the shooting – with a different balance between the two according to the situation.

I know that some folks still think that individual capitalist interests still drive US foreign policy, but I’m unconvinced. That was all before America built up a real security state – the pack of suits that make up America’s ruling mind – when concentrated economic interests had more pull. Washington didn’t have the same Establishment back then. It didn’t even have a Pentagon. Now it’s Washington that does the plotting – America’s military-political Establishment – not the capitalists. No, they aren’t very good at it.

So if Washington isn’t doing the anti-communist thing, and it isn’t doing the capital-I Imperialist thing, what is it doing? 

Washington has a few perennial obsessions. Preventing Islamist terrorism; containing Russia, Iran, and China; preventing nuclear proliferation; managing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; supporting democracy movements. Those are all big projects. Washington picked them because it thought they were good fits for American values, interests, and capabilities.

Latin America is smaller than that. As best I can tell, US policy towards Latin America just doesn’t have the centrality it did in the Age of Imperialism or the Cold War. America’s Latin America problems are mundane. Controlling migration. Suppressing the drug trade. Preventing state failure. It’s not redemptive. It’s not heroic. It’s just a problem, and not an especially important one.

I’m sure the US is still ticking along doing sanguinary things in Latin America, but there are fewer people around convinced that those sanguinary things are actually heroic, there are fewer people to push for them and fewer people to sign up for the, and so Washington has fewer bold and stupid plots to work on. Fewer Oliver Norths, fewer Iran-Contras.

Now, that might change. The Establishment is opportunistic. If the situation on the ground is right, and Washington thinks it can do something – something redemptive, something heroic – it will jump. It’s wary, it’s chastened, but everyone wants redemption. Everyone wants to be the hero. We’re all just waiting for the right moment.