Latest / The Morning Edition / Deep misjudgements and awful consequences: Peter Hartcher on Trump and Putin

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Deep misjudgements and awful consequences: Peter Hartcher on Trump and Putin · The Morning Edition

0:07
S1: They are wars on different fronts, but both are showcasing
0:10
S1: what international and political editor Peter Hartcher says are the
0:14
S1: deep misjudgments of leaders. Reporting this week revealed U.S. armaments
0:19
S1: are running low as war continues in the Middle East,
0:23
S1: and the ramifications of the unbelievable nuclear deal that U.S.
0:26
S1: President Donald Trump signed with Saudi Arabia are beginning to surface.
0:31
S1: As for the Russia Ukraine war, Hartcher says the decisions
0:35
S1: being made by Vladimir Putin aren't much better, with the
0:38
S1: Russian president poised to begin a widespread and desperate recruitment
0:42
S1: drive for more soldiers. Today, Peter Hartcher on what he
0:47
S1: calls the inglorious, disgraceful and counterproductive decisions of Trump and Putin. Peter,
0:56
S1: welcome back to the podcast.
0:58
S2: Pleasure to be with you, Samantha.
1:00
S1: Okay. I'm really hoping you can help us make sense
1:03
S1: of where things are at with the Us-iran war. Because
1:06
S1: on Tuesday, Australian time, Trump declared on Air Force One
1:10
S1: that the US was having good talks with Iran. And
1:13
S1: then around the same time, we saw news of Iranian
1:17
S1: strikes on Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq. Peter, what's happening?
1:22
S2: Well, you're asking me to make sense of what is
1:25
S2: essentially a pretty nonsensical set of circumstances. And straight after
1:31
S2: the events you've described, we then saw the US accusing
1:35
S2: the Iranians of attempting a surprise attack by firing ballistic
1:39
S2: missiles at a range of US bases in the region.
1:43
S2: So it makes no sense because primarily because I think
1:48
S2: of the geopolitical bipolar performance that Donald Trump puts on
1:55
S2: for the world every day, Where? On Monday it'll be.
2:00
S2: I'm going to bomb you to the Stone age. I'm
2:03
S2: going to destroy your civilization. Nothing will be left. And
2:07
S2: then the next day, they've agreed to all my terms.
2:11
S2: And then we're having, as you said, that you said
2:13
S2: they're having good negotiations. He called them very friendly talks.
2:19
S2: When the Iranians are busy targeting and firing ballistic missiles
2:24
S2: at US assets in the Gulf, I think the world
2:28
S2: has really grown a bit weary of this performance. It's
2:33
S2: like a high speed tennis match where you get whiplash,
2:36
S2: your head going from one side to the other. So
2:38
S2: that's why it's so difficult to make sense of it.
2:40
S2: The global oil market is having just as much trouble
2:43
S2: as traders and investors try to discern the signal through
2:48
S2: the noise. And ultimately, the only real way of gauging
2:54
S2: of finding the signal through all the noise is to
2:56
S2: watch the actions. The combat actions or lack of them
3:00
S2: on the ground. And if we look at that, we
3:03
S2: see that the Iranians have established a new form of leverage,
3:08
S2: a new great threat, a new source of power for
3:12
S2: their regime over the US and the world. And that's
3:15
S2: by closing the Strait of Hormuz, something they had not
3:18
S2: attempted before this war. And they've now discovered it's a
3:21
S2: tremendous source of power. And we see them continuing to
3:25
S2: enjoy that use, that resist all US efforts at either
3:30
S2: coercion or negotiation, and simply continuing with what they're doing
3:35
S2: while we see this bipolar performance from the US president.
3:40
S1: That's right. And, you know, the last time we spoke,
3:43
S1: or I think it was a couple of months ago,
3:44
S1: you reflected on how badly this war is going for
3:48
S1: Donald Trump. Obviously, it's a war of choice, he said.
3:50
S1: It'd be over very quickly. We're now in the fifth
3:52
S1: month And back then, a couple of months ago, you
3:55
S1: described him as dumb as a bag of hammers, reflecting
3:58
S1: on the choices he'd made, which, you know, were going
4:00
S1: badly on most fronts. And now you've said that he's
4:03
S1: running out of hammers, by which you mean that the
4:06
S1: US is running low on armaments. But, you know, that
4:09
S1: sounds that sounds not good, Peter. So how low are
4:11
S1: we talking?
4:13
S2: Well, we're talking low enough that last Friday when Trump
4:19
S2: had threatened more strikes on Iran, that a meeting between
4:26
S2: Trump and his military chiefs, specifically Dan Kane, the general
4:31
S2: who was the chair of the chiefs of the Joint
4:35
S2: Chiefs of Staff in the US military, advised Trump at
4:39
S2: this meeting that although they could continue to target Iran
4:46
S2: with missiles and more fire that it would send their
4:50
S2: stocks of a range of munitions, but most crucially, Patriot
4:56
S2: interceptor missiles to dangerously low levels where they might not
5:01
S2: be able fully to protect their their own bases, their
5:05
S2: own assets, and the bases and assets of the Gulf
5:09
S2: allies of the US. If Iran were to retaliate, which
5:13
S2: of course, Iran would do. Now that news was brought
5:17
S2: to us by the New York Times, Eric Schmidt and
5:20
S2: Jonathan Swan, and since confirmed by multiple other credible US
5:26
S2: outlets The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and so on, we
5:31
S2: look to be fair to Trump, Samantha, I should point
5:33
S2: out that going back to the Biden administration in the
5:38
S2: last few years of the Biden administration, I was in
5:42
S2: briefings where senior officials, senior security officials from the US
5:47
S2: were saying. But then they were deeply concerned about the
5:51
S2: low stockpiles of US missiles and other munitions, and they
5:55
S2: were deeply concerned because they could see the possibility of
6:01
S2: a war, um, breaking out with China, which has done
6:05
S2: nothing but increase its stockpiles of every type of weapon system, ammunition, uh,
6:11
S2: for the last certainly for the last 13 years since
6:14
S2: XI Jinping has been president. They were deeply worried then,
6:18
S2: and they had requested that the prime contractors in the
6:21
S2: defense industry in the US increased their level of production.
6:26
S2: Since then, we've seen the Trump and Israeli war against Iran.
6:32
S2: Last year, that was a brief 12 day exchange, but
6:35
S2: it still uses large numbers of munitions. And now we
6:39
S2: see this war, which Trump confidently forecast would last 2
6:42
S2: to 4 weeks and is now in its fifth month
6:46
S2: using up the ammunitions at a furious rate. So the
6:51
S2: white House has declined to update specific numbers of munition
6:55
S2: stockpiles for very good reason that you don't want to
6:59
S2: tip off your enemy about what your possible limits or
7:01
S2: vulnerabilities might be. So that's one very clear indicator that
7:06
S2: they're in deep trouble. And we will find out ultimately
7:10
S2: the exact numbers. But we can assume that there are
7:13
S2: numbers of interceptors for the Patriot system, which is essential
7:17
S2: to intercepting incoming ballistic missiles. Is is in that range
7:23
S2: of hundreds of missiles, not thousands.
7:27
S1: And so you wonder if that's the Iranians almost trolling
7:30
S1: the United States, knowing that its stocks are running low
7:33
S1: with its recent drone attacks on Saudi Arabia and Iraq
7:38
S1: and Jordan, I believe it was. And then you and
7:41
S1: I were speaking just before recording. And you reminded me,
7:44
S1: of course, that Trump is also sort of enraging the
7:47
S1: Iranians in a roundabout way. Around the same time. So
7:50
S1: can you just remind us about Trump's decision to ink
7:53
S1: a nuclear deal with the Saudi Arabians, and then how
7:57
S1: the Iranians would be sort of looking upon that decision?
8:00
S2: Well, this is another case. I mean, talk about dumb.
8:05
S2: This is an extraordinarily willful, erratic, ill considered decision like
8:11
S2: this war on Iran itself from the US point of view.
8:15
S2: So aimless a war that when I asked the doyen
8:18
S2: of Australian strategic commentators, Paul Dibb, a couple of months ago,
8:22
S2: when was the last time we'd seen such an aimless war,
8:25
S2: he had to reach back to the Crimean War 170
8:29
S2: years ago. It's just unbelievably amateur, ill considered and counterproductive.
8:35
S2: But this lays a whole extra layer of misjudgment and
8:40
S2: miscalculation and ultimately counterproductive outcomes. On top of all that by, well,
8:47
S2: first of all, agreeing to give Saudi Arabia civilian nuclear capability,
8:52
S2: which in turn would give them the ability to generate
8:56
S2: a fuel supply for a nuclear armament should they choose it. Now,
9:02
S2: first of all, that violates all the principles of non-proliferation,
9:07
S2: of nuclear weapons. But second, it then enrages Israel. Israel
9:14
S2: then complains. Trump then changes course, and after having signed
9:19
S2: the deal already with the Saudis, changes the terms and says, okay,
9:22
S2: we'll only give the Saudis this, these systems, these reactors
9:26
S2: and other nuclear systems, if they agree to diplomatic recognition
9:30
S2: of Israel, which means the Saudis, the Saudis have now
9:32
S2: objected and said, no way, we can't do that with
9:35
S2: this war on the Palestinians and all the rest of it.
9:38
S2: So now the Israelis are upset. The Saudis are upset, It,
9:41
S2: but even more counterproductive. Samantha, is that Trump went into this,
9:47
S2: and he has used multiple justifications for the war on Iran.
9:52
S2: But if there's one that he keeps coming back to
9:54
S2: above all the others, it's that he wants to deny
9:57
S2: Iran the ability to have nuclear weapons. Well, what greater
10:01
S2: incentive could he have? What greater incentive could Trump give
10:05
S2: the Iranians to want to develop nuclear weapons than arming
10:09
S2: the Saudis with a civilian nuclear system, which could be
10:13
S2: used to produce nuclear weaponry? Because, of course, the Saudis
10:19
S2: and the Iranians are enemies, have been for many years,
10:22
S2: and now they're literally at war with each other. So
10:25
S2: now Trump has said that he will give the Saudis
10:30
S2: one of the enemies of Iran, this nuclear capability. So
10:33
S2: it's directly counterproductive and counter to the aim that he's
10:38
S2: trying to achieve of a The denuclearized Iran by giving
10:41
S2: Iran potentially a strong new incentive to go ahead and
10:45
S2: resume its nuclear weapons program. Unbelievable on every level.
10:53
S1: After the break.
10:54
S2: This is what we are seeing as this war grinds
10:57
S2: through its fifth year grinds through an estimated total injured
11:02
S2: and killed Russians of 1.2 million men.
11:17
S3: That would be unbelievable.
11:18
S1: Enough, right? That would be enough for one column and
11:20
S1: enough unbelievable military. Uh, I guess poor decisions or counterproductive
11:26
S1: decisions that would be marveling at for months, let alone
11:29
S1: a week. But your last column didn't discover that. It
11:32
S1: also covered another leader who is faring extremely badly in
11:37
S1: his war against a much tinier nation. And that, of course,
11:39
S1: is Vladimir Putin. So tell us about Putin's now desperate
11:43
S1: recruitment drive for soldiers.
11:46
S2: Well, yes, I was so generous, Samantha, in my column
11:49
S2: as to call them Dumb and Dumber.
11:51
S1: Yeah. That's right.
11:52
S2: Um.
11:53
S1: Which would be funny if it wasn't so potentially catastrophic. Right.
11:56
S2: It would be funny if people were dying. Uh, yes.
11:59
S2: And if the if all of the other consequences are
12:03
S2: to flow weren't flowing, but they are. Uh, and this
12:06
S2: is just a shocking series of misjudgments by both these powers,
12:10
S2: which of course were the superpowers of the last century
12:13
S2: now reduced to these wars of hubris, which are producing, uh,
12:18
S2: these deep, uh, misjudgments, producing these awful consequences. So, yes,
12:24
S2: Vladimir Putin is running out of troops to put in
12:27
S2: the front line because they are being killed and maimed
12:30
S2: at such a high rate. You will recall that at
12:33
S2: the outset of his invasion, uh, his full scale invasion
12:38
S2: of Ukraine four years ago, four and a bit years
12:39
S2: ago now, he made a general mobilization of 300,000. All
12:45
S2: the reservists in Russia, deeply unpopular. Tens of thousands, maybe
12:51
S2: hundreds of thousands of Russian men of military service age, uh,
12:56
S2: rushed to the borders and left the country. And he's
12:59
S2: been trying to avoid Putin has been trying to avoid
13:01
S2: repeating a general call up or a widespread mobilization. They've
13:05
S2: had trouble recruiting soldiers for years now. They've had programs
13:10
S2: in Russian jails to offer release and, uh, payment to
13:15
S2: criminals who would like to serve in the Russian military
13:18
S2: against Ukraine. They've run campaigns among homeless people, very poor,
13:23
S2: the impoverished. Now they're targeting they've got a campaign going
13:27
S2: among university students. They're paying unheard of wages. They're offering
13:32
S2: for a 12 month contract, to serve in the front
13:35
S2: line against Ukraine. Up to $100,000. In a country where
13:43
S2: the median income is 14,000. We're talking US dollars. So
13:49
S2: these are the measures that have been going to. And
13:50
S2: yet it's still not enough. So in the last couple
13:53
S2: of days, we've seen the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, say
13:58
S2: that according to their intelligence, Russia is now asking North
14:02
S2: Korea to supply 30,000 new North Korean fighters to go
14:07
S2: to the front line and fight for Russia. Last year,
14:10
S2: you'll remember, the North Koreans sent an estimate of 14,000 troops,
14:15
S2: of whom some 2000 were killed in the war. Another
14:19
S2: 5000 approximately injured. And now and then they, after having served,
14:25
S2: they returned home. Now Putin's asking for 30,000 more, which
14:29
S2: will not get him out of trouble, because at the
14:30
S2: current rates of attrition, that will only do him for
14:34
S2: about a month. That's only a month's worth of replenishment
14:38
S2: of his army. That's the rate at which the Ukrainians
14:40
S2: have been either killing or maiming Russian soldiers. So further
14:46
S2: to that, Zelensky tells us that he. The Ukrainian intelligence system,
14:51
S2: which generally, I should say from the beginning of this war,
14:54
S2: has been accurate in its intelligence, insofar as we've heard
14:57
S2: about it. He is hearing that the Russians are preparing
15:01
S2: for a general mobilization. They've got parliamentary elections coming in September.
15:06
S2: So perhaps after those elections, and we do see some signs. Uh,
15:11
S2: for example, just in the last few days, the Russians
15:14
S2: have closed rail crossings into three neighboring countries, perhaps closing
15:19
S2: escape routes for service age men. So this is what
15:24
S2: we are seeing as this war grinds through its fifth year,
15:27
S2: grinds through an estimated total injured and killed Russians of
15:33
S2: 1.2 million men.
15:37
S1: I mean, it's just astonishing. I think it's sort of
15:40
S1: easy to lose sight of it in and amongst the
15:42
S1: Daily News. But also, like you say, this full scale
15:44
S1: war has been going for so many years now. And
15:47
S1: I was I have to admit, I was left a
15:48
S1: bit gape mouthed by something that you included in your
15:51
S1: latest column about this. And this is that according to
15:54
S1: Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, the authors wrote, quote,
15:58
S1: no major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of
16:01
S1: casualties or fatalities in any war since World War Two.
16:05
S1: The talking there about the Russian casualties and fatalities. So,
16:10
S1: I mean, I guess how much longer does this perhaps
16:13
S1: suggest that Putin can keep going? You know, he has
16:16
S1: so far, of course, racked up so many losses, only
16:19
S1: tiny gains. And in that study, those report authors Seth
16:22
S1: Jones and Riley McCabe said that at the current rates combined,
16:26
S1: Russian and Ukrainian casualties could reach 2 million by a
16:30
S1: few months from now, essentially. So that's terrifying.
16:34
S2: It is. And, uh, you have to feel for the
16:39
S2: Russian citizens, the civilians who are being called up, bribed, misled.
16:44
S2: They've got a whole a recruitment program running, by the way,
16:47
S2: in Africa trying to mislead African men, offering them various
16:52
S2: employment contracts, getting them to Russia and then giving them
16:54
S2: a gun and pushing them onto the front line. So
16:57
S2: he's been desperate for a long time. He's getting increasingly desperate,
17:01
S2: but he obviously feels that his own political survival is
17:06
S2: more important than the lives pointlessly lost, because he's making
17:11
S2: no real progress and hasn't been for months. If anything,
17:15
S2: the tide has turned in Ukraine's favour. The sheer pointlessness
17:19
S2: of this exercise, the pointlessness of the injury and death
17:23
S2: to this whole generation of Russian men I shouldn't say
17:27
S2: generation because they're now recruiting. They have been recruiting and
17:30
S2: snaffling and press ganging old guys as well. Anybody, basically
17:36
S2: even men who are being medically discharged with a leg
17:38
S2: blown off are being sent back on crutches into the
17:40
S2: front lines. So this level of desperation is only increasing.
17:45
S2: He's putting his own political survival above the survival of
17:48
S2: his own people. And he judges, presumably, that the cost
17:53
S2: to him of surrender politically would be greater than the costs,
17:57
S2: the risks to him politically of continuing. So he presumably
18:01
S2: thinks he can get away with continued political domination at home,
18:06
S2: so long as he keeps this nationalist, triumphalist narrative running
18:10
S2: and the deceit of his people, that this is a
18:13
S2: glorious war being fought in a great and glorious cause,
18:18
S2: when in fact, it's, uh, it's entirely inglorious, disgraceful, and counterproductive.
18:25
S1: Okay. Well, Peter, just to wrap up, you know, at
18:27
S1: the very beginning, we've spoken about how you were referring
18:30
S1: to Trump and Putin as dumb and dumber in terms
18:32
S1: of their, you know, massive geopolitical blunders. So you've sort
18:36
S1: of walked us through all of all of Trump's. How
18:39
S1: would you rate Putin in return?
18:43
S2: Well, quite apart from the domestic price that the Russian
18:46
S2: people and economy are paying for this. If you take
18:50
S2: a step back. Well, let me refer to the president
18:53
S2: of Finland, Alex Sturm, who told me in an interview
18:56
S2: last year that he thinks this is at that time,
19:00
S2: the greatest geopolitical blunder in modern history. It'd be interesting
19:05
S2: to ask him to rate that now against Trump's as well.
19:09
S2: But the reason he made that case was he said
19:12
S2: going into this war, Putin wanted to dismantle NATO, divide
19:17
S2: the EU and therefore dominate Europe. Instead, what he's achieved
19:23
S2: is Sweden joined NATO. Finland joined NATO. NATO has been enlarged,
19:28
S2: not contracted at all. Russia's border with NATO countries has
19:33
S2: more than doubled. Although Donald Trump has been doing great
19:38
S2: damage to NATO in his own right, NATO still remains
19:42
S2: a functional entity, as far as we can tell. The
19:46
S2: EU has never been more united and Europe, generally led
19:52
S2: by the Germans, despite their pacifist post-war policies, are now
19:57
S2: leading a rearmament of Europe to defend against Putin in
20:02
S2: a way that is only counterproductive to his aims and
20:07
S2: strengthens Europe in the medium term. So there you have it.
20:11
S2: Exactly which of these leaders is guilty? Trump and Putin
20:15
S2: of the greatest, grandest strategic blunder in modern history. We
20:21
S2: can only really judge when they finished these operations and
20:26
S2: we can see the consequences. But I think it's very
20:29
S2: clear that both of them are counter to their own
20:32
S2: initial intentions and being compounded by their political vanity in
20:39
S2: continuing without conducting good faith negotiations in either case.
20:48
S1: Well, thank you so much, Peter, as always, for your time.
20:52
S2: Tough subject, but good to chat with you, Samantha.
21:01
S1: In other news, today, the number of first home buyers
21:04
S1: looking to take out a home loan has fallen in
21:07
S1: a year, even as property prices soften in some parts
21:10
S1: of the country and investors move out of the market.
21:14
S1: Australia's largest oil and gas producer, Woodside Energy, has emerged
21:18
S1: as one of the nation's biggest corporate beneficiaries of the
21:22
S1: Iran war, reporting nearly a 30% revenue jump to $6
21:26
S1: billion over the past three months. And Melbourne Fashion Festival
21:31
S1: today announces that its rebranding to be called Australian Fashion Festival.
21:35
S1: The change is part of a suite of updates that
21:37
S1: seek to deepen the organisation's commitment to being a consumer
21:40
S1: led program and strengthen designer relationships. You can read more
21:45
S1: at the age.com.au or smh.com.au. Today's episode was produced by
21:52
S1: Kai Wang. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and our
21:56
S1: podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If
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