Putin wanted Trump back in office — now he’s paying the price

During former U.S. President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, he warned that if Donald Trump became president again, it would threaten the wellbeing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And during his speech at the 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney lamented that under Trump, there has been a "rupture" in relations between the United States and its longtime NATO allies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a longtime critic of NATO and the North America/Europe alliance it represents. And Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told Politico that U.S./Russia relations reached "an unprecedented historic low" during Biden's presidency.

In an article published by The Atlantic on February 13, Thomas Graham (a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) and Alan Cullison (a former Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal) noted that Putin got what he wanted: a Trump victory in the United States' 2024 presidential election, followed by weakening of U.S./Europe relations in 2025 and 2026. But they emphasize that this shift is exposing Putin's weaknesses.

"For decades, Russian President Vladimir Putin railed against the world that the United States built after the Cold War," Graham and Cullison explain. "In his account, an international order run by a single power would hinder Russia and produce needless conflict, especially when that power was as self-serving and duplicitous as America. Now, Donald Trump is dismantling the order that Putin had so long abhorred, and a new multipolar world is emerging in its place. Putin had thought he could rise to the top of such a system, in which raw economic and military might outweigh diplomacy and alliances. But he was mistaken: The norms and institutions of the post-War order actually masked Russia's vulnerabilities. Putin has gotten the world he wished for — and it's threatening to crush him."

Graham and Cullison note that Putin "touted a wide-ranging strategic partnership with China" that has "fallen short of his expectations."

"Trump's disdain for international alliances and norms has also begun to reshape Europe in a way that may exacerbate Russia's weakness," the foreign policy specialists note. "As U.S. security assurances wane, European countries are developing their hard-power capabilities. Germany has committed 100 billion euros to modernize its military, and Poland is building up its armed forces with a goal of amassing 300,000 troops. Putin has long wanted to split the U.S. and Europe. But he might soon find that the continent — which collectively dwarfs Russia in population and wealth — poses a significant challenge even if it doesn't belong to a U.S.-dominated alliance."

Graham and Cullison continue, "Shortly before becoming president in 2000, Putin issued a manifesto explaining how Russia could keep from falling into the second or third rank of world powers. He insisted that America's global leadership was holding Moscow back. In reality, he didn't know how good he had it."