Putin Cuckolds Trump with MbS Over Oil -The iPINIONS Journal

I wrote “Putin and MbS Used COVID-19 to Shutdown US Oil Producers. And Trump Was All Too Happy to Collude” a month ago today. In it I argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) were playing chess with American President Donald Trump – who seemed incapable even of playing checkers.

More to the point, I explained that Putin and MbS had a strategic interest in sustaining the Covid-19 oil glut, primarily because they

are drowning oil frackers – who drilled the United States to energy independence – out of business; and
have no problem storing oil to sell at a far more profitable price when this worldwide lockdown ends and demand rises.

Alas, Trump is too dumb to realize that there’s nothing strategic or profitable in spilling over America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve with surpluses private oil producers can’t sell.

But a surprising number of critics took pains to point out purported flaws in my analysis. For the most part, they dismissed the notion of collusion between Putin and MbS as laughable because, as one self-described expert put it, everyone knows Putin controls Trump and Trump controls MbS.

I have written many commentaries on geopolitical puppetry during Trump’s presidency. But that is a little too off topic for this one. Instead I shall suffice to refer you to “Trump Indicts Maduro. Putin Says, ‘Go Ahead, Puppet, Make My Day!’” (May 27). It comes complete with related commentaries that promise to exhaust that topic.

As for the geopolitics of oil in this time of corona, I readily admit that I am not an oil industry analyst. And I don’t play one on this weblog. But, as any regular reader would attest, I do more than enough research to always know what I’m writing about.

This is why I am constrained on occasions like these to highlight points of vindication. I am often tempted to name names as I kick ass, but that would disappoint my mummy very much indeed.

So here, without further ado, is what no less an authority than The Associated Press reported on May 7, making clear that Trump does not control MbS any more than he controls Kim Jong-un:

The U.S. is pulling two Patriot missile batteries and some fighter aircraft out of Saudi Arabia, an American official said Thursday, amid tensions between the kingdom and the Trump administration over oil production. …

The decision scales back the American presence in Saudi Arabia just months after the Pentagon began a military buildup there to counter threats from Iran.

Of course, in typical, erratic fashion, Trump sought on Friday to reassure MbS that everything was still cool between them. But one need only look to President Erdogan of Turkey to see how this kind of trifling with strongmen among Western allies plays out. Because Erdogan has been showing lately that he sees Putin as a far more dependable ally than Trump.

The point is that, no matter what reassuring words Trump says henceforth, MbS will see Putin the same way too. And one can hardly blame him. But only “fire and fury” Trump could be so stupid as to think he could threaten to leave MbS’s Saudi Arabia defenseless against the wolves of Iran one day, and then say, don’t worry, just kidding the next.

Meanwhile, apropos of controlling Kim, Trump had already given up on his pipe dream of denuclearizing North Korea. Now, in one rash but significant gesture, he is giving up on the other two prongs in his axis of foreign-policy delusions, namely:

using his friendship with MbS to anchor his grand plan for peace in the Middle East; and
using military bases in Saudi Arabia as stalking horses to halt Iran’s nuclear program and its support for regional terrorism.

No doubt Putin and MbS have their own geopolitical differences. But it did not take much analysis to figure out that they were tag-teaming to play Trump for a fool in this case. And all this cuckold could do was make an idle threat to cut off his nose to spite his face (i.e., by taking his marbles and going home with his tail between his legs).

To be fair, though, playing Trump for a fool is all any world leader worth his salt has been trying to do since day one of his presidency. I duly lamented this unprecedented and untenable spectacle in commentaries like “Every Dictator Believes He Can Play Trump Like a Puppet on a String…,” October 11, 2019. Indeed, it shall redound to our eternal shame that this president of the United States has been all too willing to play along.

Mind you, this is not to say everything is coming up roses for Putin. Because, having wooed away Bashir of Syria, Erdogan of Turkey, and MbS of Saudi Arabia, he might think he has won the Holy Grail as the (super)power broker in the Middle East.