Timothy Snyder
The Globe and Mail
October 15, 2026
Earlier this year, when I first described the guiding principle of Donald Trump’s foreign policy as superpower suicide, it was already obvious that the U.S. President’s war of whimsy against Iran was a strategic catastrophe.
Iran knew from the beginning that Mr. Trump would never commit to an invasion, ensuring that it could escalate at will. The United States has been forced to shrink its footprint in the Middle East and even to withdraw strategic bombers from Britain– until recently an unthinkable prospect.
Meanwhile, Iran’s allies can strike American allies with impunity throughout the region: the Houthis attack the Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital, and there is not much anyone can do about it. At home, the war is extremely unpopular, not least because it has raised fuel prices. Ahead of the midterm elections, this vulnerability has dovetailed with Mr. Trump’s other main weakness: his long-held desire to submit to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Trump, on whom the Kremlin pinned its hopes for victory in Ukraine, has largely done Mr. Putin’s bidding, mostly ending American weapons transfers and sales to Ukraine and, just last week, agreeing to buy Russian diesel, before blaming high fuel prices on Ukraine. The injustice of these accusations is palpable in Ukraine, where Russia has been destroying energy infrastructure with ballistic missiles and gas stations with drones.
The apparent motivation behind this deal with the Kremlin – a quick fix for lower diesel prices before the midterms – makes no sense. It is unclear that Russia can actually deliver the fuel, given its domestic shortages.
Let us imagine, however, that Russian ships dock in American ports with diesel. This would most likely mean that Russia had stiffed its other partners to make Mr. Trump feel grateful. The supply of diesel on the global market would not change, nor would its price.
But the symbolism is unambiguous: Mr. Trump is visibly aligning the U.S. with Russia. The only effect of easing sanctions is to help Mr. Putin. Of course, given that Russia has offered lucrative oil deals to Mr. Trump’s “negotiators,” who happen to be the U.S. President’s son-in-law and friend, one cannot rule out that it results in personal payoffs.
This commingling of weakness and corruption is another hallmark of superpower suicide. U.S. strength is based on the rule of law. Buying diesel from Russia is effectively illegal, given that a 2022 law prohibits it unless Russia withdraws from Ukraine. Mr. Trump also just signed a law that provides for tougher sanctions against Russia and punitive tariffs on countries that import Russian fuel.
Even if one attempts to enter the MAGA mental world and imagine that Mr. Trump’s foreign-policy priorities are exactly as he says, his wildly contradictory actions toward Iran and Russia generate a self-reinforcing cycle of weakness. As everyone knows, Iran and Russia are close allies that supply each other with weapons and intelligence. Iran supplies Russia with drones and even sent drone trainers to occupied Ukraine early in the war. Russia is openly backing Iran in its war with the U.S., while its nuclear specialists are hard at work in the country. By sending dollars to Russia, Mr. Trump is helping Iran, courting a leader who is supporting his enemy.
Mr. Trump’s openly pro-Russian foreign policy has created a more dangerous world. If Russia wins its full-scale war against Ukraine, aggressors everywhere will be emboldened. And Mr. Trump’s calls (parroting Russian propaganda) for Ukraine to elect a new president endorse the notion that invaders, not voters, should choose governments.
The reason why Mr. Putin has no intention of negotiating is Mr. Trump’s pliability. Mr. Trump decided that the U.S. should buy Russian diesel after a phone call with Mr. Putin to discuss a plague scare at a Siberian laboratory. Such an extraordinary change of subject suggests that Mr. Trump turns to putty before Mr. Putin. The irony is that Mr. Putin is playing a very weak hand in the war against Ukraine; he is strong thanks only to Mr. Trump’s feebleness.
Mr. Trump, unable to win his foolish war against Iran, blames its consequences on Ukraine, and uses the lie to justify ending sanctions against Russia, thereby extending that war as well. This is war through weakness, not only as a fact, but almost as a doctrine. America must lose, lose and lose again, and wars must be started, prolonged or promoted, so that Mr. Trump and his cronies can make money. To pretend that Mr. Trump can be trusted with power of any sort is to participate in America’s continuing superpower suicide.
Timothy David Snyder is an American historian specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. He holds the inaugural Temerty Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto and is a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He has written several books, including Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, The Road to Unfreedom, and Our Malady. Several of them have been described as best-sellers. Snyder serves on the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is completing a short book about the history of Ukraine and its current crisis, is working on a history of Eastern Europe as well as a family history of nationalism, serves as Series Editor for the Rochester Studies in East and Central Europe, and is on the Editorial Board of New Studies in European History (a series at Cambridge University Press), of the Journal of Modern European History, and of East European Politics and Societies.
