It’s clear that Trump is an agent of Putin. All US allies should be alarmed

One of the reasons that the footage of US President Donald Trump’s clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was so compelling to Western audiences was the sheer unfamiliarity of such a scene.

Leaders routinely have arguments behind closed doors, but this one was very deliberately broadcast. The host not only inflamed US Vice President J.D. Vance’s provocations of the Ukrainian leader, but he made sure to keep the media in the room for the full 50-minute drama. As Trump said in the closing line: “This is going to be great television.”

Illustration by Joe Benke

But to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and anyone else familiar with Marxist-Leninist political management, it was instantly recognisable. This was a “struggle session”. That is, an orchestrated ritual humiliation of a political enemy, conducted in public, often with crowd participation. A common feature is that the target is denounced by people they thought were close to them.

The struggle session had its origins in the writings of Soviet leader Josef Stalin on the subject of criticism and self-criticism. It was later embraced by China’s Mao Zedong against suspected “class enemies”.

Mao’s youthful zealot Red Guards notoriously employed violence, torture and even murder in struggle sessions during the Cultural Revolution. The reformer Deng Xiaoping banned the struggle session.

But now Trump has introduced it to US foreign policy. Putin would have recognised and relished the performance in the Oval Office: the ritual, public humiliation of the man who has inspired millions in defying Putin and embarrassing his army. Conducted by Zelensky’s most important ally to date, the United States. But why would Trump do it? The world has long puzzled over his affinity for Putin, the former KGB colonel who seeks to neuter the US, dominate Europe and destroy the West. The attraction is inexplicable.

But the evidence now is incontrovertible: We should accept that Trump acts as an agent of Putin.

Trump clashes with Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday.Credit: Bloomberg

The struggle session in the Oval Office was one piece of evidence, but only one. Trump wants to end the war. Fine. So does everyone. But consider Trump’s template for a peace deal. Before any discussion with Zelensky, Trump ruled that: first, Ukraine must accept permanent Russian occupation of territory it has seized illegally; second, Ukraine must never be allowed to join NATO. These are long-standing Putin demands. Thanks for delivering, Donald.

Trump’s rhetoric in the Zelensky meeting was revealing. The professor of strategic studies at Scotland’s St Andrew’s University, Phillips O’Brien, put it this way: “Trump opens his mouth and Putin comes out.”

In his detailed breakdown of the exchange, O’Brien cites three key themes. One is that Trump hammers the line: “Your country is in big trouble”. Observes O’Brien: “Trump has adopted the Russian talking point that Ukraine is on the ropes and can’t win.”

Second is Trump’s emphasis on Ukraine’s dependence on the US and the implication that Ukraine is fighting a proxy war conducted by the West against Russia, a favourite Putin theme. Said Trump to Zelensky: “If you didn’t have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks.”

Third is Trump’s claim that Zelensky is unreasonable and hateful, implying that Putin is the more reasonable partner for peace. Said Trump to the crowd in the Oval Office: “You see the hatred he’s got for Putin. It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.”

Evidence continues to accumulate beyond the struggle session. Just one example from the past few days: On Saturday, it emerged that Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had “ordered US Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions”, as revealed by US cyber specialist publication The Record.

The administration justified the halt as a pause for the duration of peace negotiations with Russia. But The Guardian reported an unnamed source, familiar with the Hegseth memo, as saying: “People are saying Russia is winning. Putin is on the inside now.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has tried to portray Trump’s conduct as brilliant grand strategy. A flurry of commentators has suggested that, by courting Moscow, Trump is trying to break the Russian “no limits” relationship with China. Much as Nixon went to Beijing in 1972 to forge US ties with China to bring it into an alignment against Russia, is Trump doing a “reverse Nixon” by trying to ally Moscow with the US against China?

Rubio gave some credence to this last week: “I don’t know if we’ll ever be successful at peeling them completely off a relationship with the Chinese … But I do think we’re in a situation now where the Russians have become increasingly dependent on the Chinese, and that’s not a good outcome.”

The idea is fantasy. Nixon succeeded because Moscow and Beijing had already fallen out in a bitter split. Today, they are allies, implacably aligned against the US and its alliance system.

More likely, in the words of Lowy’s Richard McGregor writing in The Australian Financial Review, Trump is conducting an “‘inverse Nixon’ by helping Xi and Putin to drive a wedge into once powerful Western partnerships”.

The British and the Europeans have drawn the only logical conclusion. “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the US,” said Germany’s incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz. The EU is now writing a new, more independent, defence strategy.

All US allies should be worried, according to Trump critic, formerly his national security adviser, John Bolton. “The Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, the Australia-UK-US consortium to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, and the export-control rules designed to keep rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction – are all at risk,” he writes in The Wall Street Journal.

Can Australia snap out of the myopia of an election campaign to respond to the dramatic reshaping of the world around us while the People’s Liberation Army Navy task force literally runs a ring around Australia?

The Coalition on the weekend promised, if elected, to acquire more F-35A fighter jets from the US. This shows that they’re not entirely inert in the face of rising risk. But from the government, so far, we hear much defensiveness and nothing on defence.

It’s going to be a struggle.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.

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