President Vladimir V. Putin is in his fifth year of trying to bomb a smaller country into submission. President Trump tried to pull the plug after six weeks, only to be drawn back in.
Neither man has come close to achieving his goals. But the contrast between the relentless killing by Mr. Putin’s Russia in Ukraine and Mr. Trump’s on-and-off bombing in Iran is the story of two leaders of major powers struggling to find their ways out of wars of choice.
Mr. Putin’s ground invasion of a neighboring democracy and Mr. Trump’s air war on a Middle East theocracy are difficult to compare, and each leader appears convinced that his war is just while the other’s is wrong. But the two conflicts intersect in numerous ways in global geopolitics, from energy markets and air-defense supplies to the diplomatic bandwidth of White House envoys.
Most broadly, they have both demonstrated the limits of military force in achieving political ends, while weakening the image of power that both the United States and Russia seek to project on the world stage. But they also underscore the differences between a dug-in Mr. Putin and a constantly shifting Mr. Trump.
To Mr. Trump’s hawkish critics, his difficulty negotiating with Iran on a long-term peace deal — as underlined by Iran’s attack on commercial ships last week, and U.S. retaliation — is evidence that he stopped his full-fledged bombing campaign too soon. Some even suggested after Mr. Trump’s initial cease-fire in April that Mr. Putin’s refusal to compromise could be something to learn from.
“I really think that we lost our leverage by stopping the campaign,” Jack Keane, a retired general, said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” back then. “I would have preferred to go into negotiations with the war continuing because we have leverage over them as the war is continuing. That’s kind of Putin’s playbook, isn’t it?”
In Russia, some commentators pointed to Mr. Trump’s preliminary memorandum of understanding with Iran as a sign of weakness, the latest signpost of American decline. But there were also whispers that Mr. Trump took a step some wished Mr. Putin would take, according to Tatiana Stanovaya, a specialist in Kremlin politics at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. Mr. Trump looked ready to cut his losses in a war effort that went way off course.
“They bombed a little bit and figured it out,” Ms. Stanovaya said, channeling the feelings of some of her contacts in the Russian elite. “Will Putin figure it out?”
Last year, Mr. Trump appeared to offer Mr. Putin an offramp. The White House dangled sanctions relief and business deals in exchange for a cease-fire in his war, despite widespread criticism that the offer was rewarding Russia for its aggression.
But it was not good enough for Mr. Putin, who insisted that the “root causes” of the war be addressed before he stopped fighting — Kremlin-speak for Mr. Putin’s wide-ranging territorial and political demands, like keeping Ukraine out of NATO. Two people close to the Kremlin said the Russian president saw his war as his main leverage over Ukraine and the West. If he stopped without getting concessions first, they said, he was unlikely to get them with the military pressure off.
From Mr. Putin’s perspective, one of the people said, Mr. Trump made a mistake in starting the war on Iran, but Mr. Trump’s cease-fire in April was also a mistake in that it ran counter to Mr. Putin’s doctrine of maintaining military pressure on an opponent for as long as it took to extract lasting concessions. The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal for talking candidly about Mr. Putin.
To some of the Iran hawks in Mr. Trump’s circle, the contrast between Mr. Putin’s stubbornness and Mr. Trump’s vacillation represents a misreading by both men of their capabilities. General Keane, who received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Mr. Trump in 2020, said the United States “made a choice to go to a cease-fire” in April when its military options against Iran far exceeded what Mr. Putin can do in Ukraine with conventional weapons.
“Putin, no matter what he does, is not going to achieve that kind of domination over Ukraine,” General Keane said in an interview. “That’s completely different from the U.S. situation where we really do have the capability to end this militarily if we desire to.”
Mr. Putin, of course, has sacrificed far more in lives and resources in Ukraine than Mr. Trump has fighting Iran. And he has staked the success of his war effort on specific goals — like controlling all of Ukraine’s Donbas region and preventing future NATO expansion — that have made it difficult for him to change course, even within Russia’s autocratic system.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, went from promising in February to “destroy their missiles” to asserting last month that it would be “a little bit unfair” for Iran not to have ballistic missiles if other countries also do.
Last month, Robert Malley, who served as President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s special envoy for Iran, praised Mr. Trump in an essay for pursuing diplomacy with Iran rather than simply continuing what Mr. Malley saw as a ruinous war effort that would fail to force Tehran to accept U.S. demands. He said in an interview in recent days that unlike Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump has the flexibility to assert that he has achieved his goals because his “stated goals have been all over the map.”
“It’s much harder, I think, politically and strategically for Putin to do the same,” Mr. Malley said.
For more than four years, Mr. Putin has been unwilling to pay the costs of walking away without an agreement giving him some of what he wanted at the outset of the war. That obstinacy has exacted a high cost for Russian society, including an estimated 350,000 to 450,000 dead Russian soldiers and a sputtering economy. For Mr. Putin, however, it amounts to follow-through, whatever the price.
Russians are increasingly fatigued by the war, but Mr. Putin has stood firm. He signaled his resolve in a recent state news interview, even as Ukraine stepped up strikes on Russia and prompted fuel shortages across the country, aimed at bringing the war home for more Russians.
“Given the catastrophic shortage of personnel, the Ukrainian Armed Forces apparently believe this could be their salvation,” Mr. Putin said on June 28. “But saving the Kyiv regime is not part of our plans.”
This past week, Mr. Trump renewed his own harsh language aimed at the regime in Tehran, calling it “scum,” “sick,” “evil” and “cuckoo.” He warned that he was ready to “just finish the job.”
But given the steep economic and political price that Mr. Trump has already paid to fight Iran, many analysts doubt that Iranian leaders are taking his threats seriously. In a stark contrast with Mr. Putin’s efforts to project resolve, Mr. Trump said last month that continuing the war on Iran could have meant “possibly going into a depression.”
Mr. Trump “seemed to have learned, for a while at least, one lesson from this war,” Mr. Malley said, “which is that he was better off ending it.”
