When Putin Outsmarted Trump: The Art of War, the Art of the Deal, and the Price of Falling for a KGB Hustle

A Lesson in Negotiation Rule #1? “He who controls the tempo controls the deal.” Putin knows this. He sets the pace, slows the talks, and keeps everyone dancing to Moscow’s clock, not ours. Trump’s style, all swagger and impulse, works in boardrooms, not battlefields. You can’t charm a KGB colonel with golf course bravado. Putin sees that coming a mile away, then feeds it back to him as flattery. Trump doesn’t need another rally; he needs a mirror to see he’s being played in real time. Three Things Trump’s Team Should Do to Force Putin’s Hand 1. Flip the Psychological Script Putin thrives on unpredictability. Beat him at his own game. Use disinformation, cyber-shadowing, and diplomatic misdirection. Make him guess what comes next. No more open-mic strategy leaks on Fox or Truth Social, this is the chess match, not a campaign rally. 2. Make Third-Party Fence-Sitters Pay, Not Just Russia Forget polite threats and vague ultimatums. If you want to keep selling Moscow oxygen through back channels, you’ll pay a price that makes you think twice. Tie every promise of sanctions relief to concrete Russian withdrawals, and then extend the pain to any country, company, or bank that props up Moscow while pretending neutrality. India, Vietnam, Turkey, and more… 3. Take the Gloves Off: Give Ukraine the Teeth — Not Another Press Release If we want peace, we have to make the cost of war unbearable for the guarantor, and that means giving Ukraine real, credible strike capability and the systems to use it. Actual long-range precision munitions and the training to turn targets into bargaining chips. If Putin wakes up to the fact that Kyiv can seriously threaten the operational depth of his logistics and command nodes — and that those threats aren’t one-off stunts but repeatable, accurate, and sustainable,  he’ll stop treating negotiations like a public relations exercise. The Final Word Putin’s bait-and-switch isn’t new; it’s just refined. He sells peace while stockpiling power. Trump’s fatal flaw? He keeps thinking he’s the alpha in a room full of predators. But the world’s most dangerous man doesn’t bark, he smiles. If Trump wants to end this war and walk away with something resembling peace, he’ll have to do the one thing he’s never done before: stop selling and start listening. Because Putin’s not negotiating, he’s conditioning. And if America doesn’t wise up soon, the next “deal” might just be the one that costs us our credibility for good.