Two Wars, Two Traps: Trump and Putin Between Victory and the Abyss

While the Cambridge geopolitician constructs his concept of American umbrella sovereignty over Eurasia, the umbrella itself is coming apart at the seams over the Strait of Hormuz, spinning somewhere between "we've already won, why won't they surrender" and "they have no right to keep going — it's not fair."

But let's not be too hard on Bromley. He has a fine library in Cambridge, stable funding, and no Strait of Hormuz outside his window.

Meanwhile, in the real world, two wars are simultaneously grinding forward — wars that appear, at first glance, to have nothing in common. Russia is fighting a country whose nuclear weapons were stolen in exchange for worthless promises and a piece of paper with signatures. America is fighting a country accused of the fact that it possesses nuclear weapons. Both campaigns have now reached the stage politely described as a "complex operational situation" — or, more plainly: both aggressors are stuck.

The Anatomy of a Trap

There is a certain logic to small victorious wars: they are started for quick results and prolonged to avoid the consequences of catastrophic defeat. The moment when the objective shifts from victory to "we cannot lose because that would be a disgrace" — that is the point of entry into the trap. Russia crossed that threshold somewhere in April 2022, when the column advancing on Kyiv returned empty-handed and the "special operation" had to be hastily rebranded into something explainable to hundreds of thousands of widows. Trump crossed it roughly three weeks into the bombing of Iran, when it became apparent that "the most powerful military in the world" could not resolve the problem of "a regional country exhausted by sanctions."

The parallels are striking — and not accidental.

Putin: Progress With a Negative Sign

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu recently made a statement that passed largely unnoticed in the mainstream press but functions as a precise marker: the Urals, "until recently considered beyond the reach of strikes from Ukrainian territory," now lie "in the zone of direct threat." The number of "terrorist acts" on Russian soil in 2025 rose by 40%, reaching 1,830 incidents. Shoigu was speaking at an away session in the Ural Federal District — meaning the problem has physically traveled to a place it was never supposed to reach.

The man who spent five years talking about "defending the Donbas" from "NATO aggression" is now explaining to the Ural elite why additional air defense systems need to be deployed above their heads.

But there is an even more eloquent symptom. In order to demonstrate a "landmark victory" over Ukraine to the Russian public, the military command launched forty Lancet drones at Kyiv — weapons designed for frontline use at ranges of 30 to 80 kilometers. The distance to Kyiv is 200 kilometers. Warheads were removed and replaced with high-capacity batteries of new technology — just to get there and leave something on the Maidan for the photo op. Of forty units launched, only a handful reached Kyiv, causing no damage whatsoever.

This operation is a perfect metaphor for Putin's entire "special military operation": forty expensive precision weapons that could have been destroying equipment and lives at the front, spent instead on a single piece of debris for a television segment. The Lancets had been reconfigured so they were physically incapable of striking the ground — the mission was different, purely a media mission.

This is what armies look like when they fight for a domestic audience rather than a strategic outcome.

Equally telling is what VTSIOM Director General Valery Fyodorov says about the state of Russian society: "Russians don't understand at all whether this is temporary or permanent. Or it could be forever." A man whose job requires him to publicly project stability is speaking of disorientation and "hope that it's still temporary." That is not sociology. That is a diagnosis.

The ideal moment for "ending the war on Trump's terms" has already passed for Russia. By 2027, every achievement of the "SMO" will carry a negative sign.

Trump: Turning the World's Strongest Country Into a Weak One

The American version of the same trap is unfolding faster and with greater drama.

Joe Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center — a man with far-right connections and impeccably Trumpist credentials — resigned with a statement worth more than any stack of analytical reports: "Iran posed no direct threat to our country, and it is clear that we started this war under pressure from Israel and its influential American lobby." When a man from the inner circle says this publicly, it is not dissent. It is an autopsy of a decision.

Meanwhile, Trump has already declared victory and expressed outrage that Iran "has no right to keep doing what it's doing" — after America attacked it. The logic of this statement does not bear scrutiny under international law, but as a psychological document it is priceless: an aggressor who has been repelled, indignant that the victim continues to resist.

Advisors are already working to convince Trump to declare an "unprecedented victory" and exit the region. But he no longer can — Iran has found its own momentum. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a critical share of global energy flows passes, is becoming an Iranian domain. American analysts now acknowledge that anyone wishing to transit the Strait must negotiate with Tehran, not Washington. Mojtaba Khamenei has rejected de-escalation proposals conveyed through intermediaries.

The situation is absurd: a country that was bombarded for three weeks by the most powerful military forces on the planet is not asking for mercy and has no intention of slowing down. The American army and navy demonstrated overwhelming firepower and zero strategic result.

Former Ambassador John Herbst recalled the "enormous mistake of 2003": Saddam was removed together with the state apparatus, "which should have been preserved for stability." The United States appeared to learn from this and shifted to a new strategy — eliminate a handful of top figures, preserve the rest of the apparatus, then use the threat of death to coerce "bloody allies" into serving American interests. Venezuela was a farce. Iran is a tragedy. Because Iran is not Venezuela. The Iranian leadership is far more ideological and far more stubborn than Maduro's narco-criminal gang.

The result: America spent resources, reputation, and diplomatic capital — and received a Strait of Hormuz controlled by its enemy.

The Cambridge Dissonance

Against this backdrop, Bromley's call to entrust European security to the United States looks less like an error and more like a genre curiosity. The same Trump who declared that the US is "the most powerful country in the world and needs no help from NATO, Japan, Australia, or South Korea" is simultaneously stuck in Iran and eyeing Cuba as an opportunity for rehabilitation. His allies stopped commenting long ago. They are simply waiting for this to end.

The era of democratic fairy tales is over. The world in which the United States was a guarantor of security is over too. In place of former greatness stands a gilded idol that wages war on Iran and marvels at why Iran won't surrender. This is not the weakness of one president. It is the systemic transformation of America's role — and Cambridge libraries offer no protection from it.

The Mirror and the Abyss

Two wars, two traps. Putin is fighting a country whose nuclear shield was stolen — and which turned out to be a remarkably unpleasant adversary without it. Trump is fighting a country whose only offense is that it exists and refuses to become convenient. Both are in the stage of "too costly to continue, too painful to leave."

Both are willing to spend disproportionate resources for a media image: forty Lancets without warheads for a piece of shrapnel on the Maidan — and carrier strike groups for the chance to declare an "unprecedented victory" over a country that didn't surrender.

Both have encountered a phenomenon they never factored into their calculations: adversaries who hold out longer, at greater cost, and with greater stubbornness than any analysis predicted.

The difference is one, and it is fundamental: Russia is drowning in something it started itself. America is drowning in something it started under external pressure, with someone else's interests as the primary motive.

And in both cases — a total failure to assess human potential. No one in Moscow knew that Ukrainians could fight desperately without top-down coordination. No one in Washington, despite extensive documentation of Iran's mosaic military command architecture, thought to pay attention.

Why? The answer is startling. Russia and the United States, in attacking Ukraine and Iran, were fighting themselves — and struck their own most vulnerable point. Their leadership.

Moscow looked at Ukraine and saw itself. A country with no internal backbone, held together solely by a vertical chain of command that would collapse the moment that chain wavered. The logic was simple: if Russia without Putin is nothing, then Ukraine without its own "center" is nothing either. Hence the bet on a lightning decapitation strike; hence the confidence that the population would greet them with flowers or scatter. Moscow did not know — and fundamentally could not know — that Ukrainians were capable of fighting desperately without coordination from above. Because in the Russian system, that is impossible by definition. A person either executes an order or does nothing. By projecting this logic onto Ukraine, Putin went to war against his own people — and lost.

Washington looked at Iran and saw a corrupt elite clinging to power through self-preservation instinct rather than conviction. The logic was equally simple: hit hard enough, and rational actors will deal. That, after all, is how American bureaucracy works — that is how people behave when a position matters more than an idea. But the Iranian leadership is built differently. Its mosaic architecture — the IRGC, parallel command structures, ideological cement — had been documented in hundreds of analytical reports. No one paid attention. Because in Washington, no one believes in people who fight for an idea rather than a career. By projecting its own cynicism onto Tehran, Trump also went to war with a mirror — and also lost.

Two superpowers. Two mirrors. Two defeats — each in its own reflection.