16 August 2026
Luke Harding, Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest, Guardian Faber, London, 2026, vi + 354 pp., £20. ISBN 978-1-78335-337-8.
Goodness! Harding’s revealing earlier book on Trump (Collusion: How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House) came out back in 2017, and yet both Trump and Putin are still the Presidents of their respective countries today and apparently still on good terms with one another! How can this be? Which of the two is the even more dangerous one, or are they equally dangerous? And how much longer is the current situation likely to last? Will they both finally be succeeded by similar leaders with similar priorities?
Both Trump and Putin seem to believe that Big is Beautiful, and perhaps in this respect Putin is in much the weaker position, for more than one reason. Even so, Trump will probably not be able to pick up Greenland, and I rather doubt whether Putin will ever be able to occupy, pacify and retain much more of Ukraine for much longer than he has done already. (The author is reticent about the decade-long underground guerrilla/partisan warfare of Ukrainians against Russians and others after WW2.) Of course, neo-Soviet (not post-Soviet, as long as Putin is in charge) Russia is still facing problems with its former Soviet Empire, but it’s already having a bit more trouble with some parts of its traditional Russian Empire as well. A reader of my vintage finds himself thinking more and more often of Egypt, Suez and Sir Anthony Eden.
My reading of Harding’s new book made me wonder, for the first time, whether Trump might, in some respects, be a bit more stupid, though perhaps a little less devious, than Putin.
‘Nonetheless, the scene was historic. It was the first time since 1945 that the US had voted with Russia and against Europe at the UN on an issue of European security. […] Trump, by contrast, appeared to support Russia. He wanted Putin to win and Zelenskyy to lose. Or, in a more Trump-friendly interpretation, he was simply indifferent to the fate of Ukraine and its people, who were dying in nightly missile attacks, and more interested in the business opportunities a reset with Russia might bring.’ (p. 66)
‘The Trump administration had sided with its new companions, the Russians and the North Koreans, against its Western allies in the most in-your-face way. By voting no, the US had gone further than China and Iran, which had both abstained.’ (pp. 67-68)
Harding refers later to ‘a boundless capacity for self-delusion that you might call “Trumpian”.’ (pp. 74-5) Or, perhaps, “Putinian”? Both of them wanted and want to make their countries great, if only bigger, again. (p. 121) Are the two of them cunning rather than clever?
The author concludes that ‘It was hard to take issue with Zelenskyy’s assertion that Trump terrified everyone.’:
‘Governments tried various strategies to keep him onside, chief among them flattery and appeasement. […] Meanwhile, NATO secretary general Mark Rutte offered a masterclass in bootlicking. He praised Trump’s peace efforts, calling him “Daddy”, and sent cringing messages of congratulation.’ (p. 299)
Will this always work?
‘Just like Putin, Trump intimated that he was ready and willing to seize European territory by force. And to remove leaders and regimes he disliked, as part of a violent remaking of the world in general. If that meant demolishing the post-war global order, so what?’ (p. 300)
The last chapter, ‘Rupture’, suggests that the ‘wars in Ukraine and Iran had uncanny parallels’:
‘Trump echoed Putin. There was a shared pattern of folly and imperial hubris, overreach and magical thinking, arrogance and assumption. The White House had reportedly expected to wrap up hostilities against Tehran in three or four days, just as the Kremlin did in 2022, when its troops marched on Kyiv. The American and Russian leaders labelled their attacks ‘operations’ rather than wars – Operation Epic Fury, in the case of the US’s clumsy Iran campaign. Trump said it was a mini-war or skirmish. Both aggressor states found themselves quickly bogged down, fighting against an unexpectedly dogged adversary whom they had completely underestimated.’ (p. 320)
‘As one commentator put it, Ukraine had picked up the torch that America had dropped. It was Kyiv, not Washington, that was defending liberal democracy against the great-power ambitions of Trump, Putin, Xi and their ilk.’ (p. 333)
Perhaps the key question, addressed in chapter 9, ‘Making Kneeling Great Again’, is whether Putin still has a hold over Trump.
‘The US stance post-Alaska became identical to the Kremlin’s’. (p. 194)
‘Putin’s pitch during the Alaska summit fell into this shameless politics-as-money-making category.’ (p. 189)
‘The trail ended with a question in the subjunctive: if Trump were a Russian agent, what exactly would he do differently?’ (p. 210)
I can’t think of anything. Do read this book and try to answer this question yourself!
