Asymmetric Strategies of Trump and Putin: Undermining the Western Alliance

Summary: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have each pursued a slow-burning form of asymmetric warfare aimed at eroding the unity and strength of Western liberal democracies. Rather than direct military confrontation, they deploy misinformation, propaganda, economic disruptions, and engineered chaos to undermine the Western alliance from within.

The overall theory is that what often appears as chaos or incompetence – from erratic policy moves to brazen falsehoods – actually serves a strategic goal: to sow discord, confusion, and division among Western nations and societies. By exploiting the open information systems and economic interdependencies of democracies, Trump and Putin (often in coordination and often in parallel) create internal fractures that prevent a unified response to their agendas.

In short, this approach treats discord as a weapon – one that can, over time, weaken the fabric of Western alliances and institutions without ever needing to “conquer” them in a traditional sense.

TL;DR:

Divide and Confuse: Use disinformation (from fake news to AI deepfakes) as a modern “Byzantine Generals” tactic to prevent Western unity.
Propaganda War: Flood public discourse with propaganda and conspiracy, making it hard for democracies to coordinate responses as facts become muddled. (hstoday.us)
Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Gain: Endure surface-level damage (economic hits, low oil prices, sanctions) as acceptable sacrifices if they contribute to the long-term fragmentation of the Western order. (rand.org)
Leverage Energy Chaos: Weaponize energy markets – even damaged oil infrastructure – to manipulate global prices and pressure Western economies, all while shielding Russia from the worst price collapses. (rferl.org)
Economic Disruption: Impose tariffs or unpredictable policies that alienate allies and upend the global trading system, weakening the economic bonds of the Western alliance. (abc.net.au)
AI-Driven Misinformation: Exploit social media and AI-generated content to create confusion and infighting within Western societies, eroding trust and democratic coherence. (theguardian.com, hstoday.us)

The Byzantine Generals Problem and Modern Disinformation Warfare

One way to understand this strategy is through the Byzantine Generals Problem – a classic analogy from computer science and game theory. In that thought experiment, multiple generals must coordinate an attack, but some may be traitors sending false messages, making it hard to achieve consensus. The parallel to today’s information warfare is striking. Western democracies and allies, like those generals, rely on consistent, trustworthy communication to act in unison. Disinformation campaigns deliberately introduce “traitors” into the info stream – fake or misleading signals that sow doubt about what is true. (usmcu.edu)

If each Western nation or faction of society cannot trust what the others are saying (or even trust that their own media and officials have the facts right), coordinated action falls apart. Just as the generals might fail to synchronize their attack due to a few false messages, modern democracies can fail to synchronize their policies due to pervasive false narratives.

Putin’s Russia has mastered this tactic: flooding the infosphere with conflicting reports, conspiracy theories, and fake “leaks” to impede consensus. From annexing Crimea to meddling in elections, the Kremlin’s playbook has been to seed doubts and divisions – for example, spreading multiple theories about a given event so that people argue over what happened rather than respond collectively. Donald Trump’s communication style, meanwhile, often amplified this Byzantine breakdown from within. As a candidate and president, Trump showed a “rhetorical approach to politics [that] embraced sensationalism.” (usmcu.edu)

By promoting wild conspiracies (think of the birther lie, or QAnon-adjacent retweets) and labeling any inconvenient news as “fake,” he blurred the line between truth and falsehood. In effect, Trump became an “inside” actor sending Byzantine faulty messages – undermining Americans’ ability to reach a shared reality. This synergy was noted during the 2016 campaign: Russia’s Internet Research Agency spread false stories on social media, and Trump’s own messaging often echoed or legitimized those stories. The result is an information system failure by design – a democratic society facing a kind of Byzantine fault where it breaks down in arbitrary, unpredictable ways due to lost trust. (usmcu.edu)

In a healthy democracy (much like a Byzantine fault-tolerant system), institutions like a free press, independent experts, and political norms act as error-correcting mechanisms. They provide a consensus on facts or at least a way to filter out obvious falsehoods. But the combined onslaught of foreign and domestic disinformation strains these mechanisms to the breaking point. The Byzantine Generals analogy reminds us that even a few bad actors (or corrupted “nodes” in the network) can prevent the whole from acting coherently.

Trump and Putin, each in their way, have played the role of those bad actors – one from inside the Western camp, one from outside – to ensure the “generals” of the West cannot all agree on when or how to “attack” the threats they pose.

Propaganda: Muddying the Waters of Public Discourse

Continuous propaganda and misdirection are key asymmetric weapons in this long game. The goal is straightforward: confuse and polarize Western public discourse so deeply that decisive action becomes politically impossible. Vladimir Putin’s disinformation networks (state media like RT/Sputnik, troll farms, and a myriad of proxy websites) pump out narratives crafted to inflame divisions in Western societies. These range from outright fake news to subtler propaganda that exaggerates existing social fissures (race, immigration, vaccines, you name it). The effect is to leave populations arguing among themselves, distrusting their own institutions and allies, rather than uniting against the authoritarian threat.

We see this clearly in how propaganda has impeded responses to Russian aggression. For instance, Kremlin-backed outlets have falsely framed NATO as the aggressor in Eastern Europe or spread conspiracy theories about Ukraine to justify Russia’s war. Such messages found receptive audiences in many Western countries, fueling skeptic groups that protest against aiding Ukraine or against sanctions on Russia. When a significant segment of voters believes “maybe our own leaders are lying, maybe Russia has a point”, it undercuts any unified policy. The propaganda doesn’t need to convince a majority – it just needs to create enough confusion and noise that democracy’s consensus-building breaks down.

Donald Trump’s contribution here has been to supercharge the noise. His communication style – disparaging the free press as “the enemy of the people,” endorsing dubious information sources, and spreading false claims – has normalized a post-truth environment that Kremlin propagandists relish. American public discourse during his first tenure became a battlefield of alternative realities.

For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election, Trump’s messaging often conflicted with expert or official accounts, muddying the waters on critical issues (from virus remedies to voter fraud allegations).

This persistent state of informational chaos makes a coordinated Western response to anything much harder. It’s difficult to mobilize a society against an external adversary if half that society has been led to believe the adversary is not a threat, or that their real enemies are internal (political opponents, “deep state” bureaucrats, etc.).

Crucially, this propaganda barrage is not haphazard – it is strategic. The Kremlin, for one, has a whole ecosystem dedicated to it. A U.S. State Department analysis identified “five pillars” of Russia’s disinformation machinery that work in concert to multiply false narratives. The aim is often explicitly to confuse and overwhelm audiences about Russia’s real actions. (hstoday.us)

In other words, if people don’t know what’s true, they can’t unite against a common threat. Western unity – within nations and among them – is the target. As one Homeland Security analysis noted, adversaries deliberately target the “unity of the nation” to weaken democratic institutions and bolster their own position. (hstoday.us)

Every outrageous conspiracy theory that goes viral, every paid online commentator sowing discord, contributes to this fog. When public discourse is so muddied that citizens can’t even agree on basic facts (Was an election legitimate? Is an ally actually an enemy? Who’s to blame for high gas prices?), the Western alliance’s collective will to respond is paralyzed.

To appreciate how effective this can be, consider the scenario of an international crisis – say, a Russian provocation in the Baltics. In the Cold War past, the American public and its allies might quickly rally around a firm response. Today, thanks to years of propaganda, you’d immediately see social media awash with myriad narratives: “It’s NATO’s fault,” “this is a false flag,” “don’t trust the mainstream media’s version.” Political leaders would face a fractured public opinion. That hesitation and division is exactly the outcome Putin hopes for. It allows him to act aggressively without triggering the full cohesive power of the West.

In short, propaganda shields Putin by disarming his adversaries of their most important weapon: unity of purpose.

Short-Term Pain for Long-Term Gain

A hallmark of asymmetric strategy is the willingness to sustain short-term losses in exchange for long-term advantages. Both Putin and, to an extent, Trump have demonstrated a tolerance for short-term pain, betting that the other side’s pain will eventually be worse and cause them to falter first.

In Putin’s case, this has meant riding out economic downturns, sanctions, and even domestic hardship as the price for pursuing his strategic aims. Western analysts often marvel (or scoff) at the apparent self-sabotage of Putin’s policies – tanking his economy for the sake of foreign adventures. But from Putin’s perspective, these are calculated sacrifices. His goal isn’t to win quickly (he knows Russia can’t outright overpower the collective West); it’s to outlast the West’s will to resist. (rand.org)

Consider Russia’s economy since the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Sanctions hit hard, foreign investors fled, and Russia’s GDP took a sharp dip. In the short term, this looks like a serious blow to Putin – and indeed it caused real fiscal pain. But Putin’s bet was that Russia could weather the storm longer than Europe could maintain unity on sanctions or longer than the U.S. domestic consensus would sustain support for Ukraine.

He was, in effect, willing to accept a recession or austerity at home if it meant NATO and the EU might fracture under the strain. This long-game mindset is often voiced in his propaganda: the Kremlin loudly insists that Western sanctions have failed or even “made Russia stronger” (carnegieendowment.org), signaling to Russians that enduring hardship is patriotic and will pay off.

Meanwhile, Moscow reminds the West at every turn that high energy prices or lost Russian markets are their fault for opposing Russia – hoping to stoke political backlashes in democratic countries.

Trump, for his part, also embraces short-term economic pain when it suited his aims (though his calculus is often personal and political). During his past trade wars, for example, Trump imposed steep tariffs that hurt certain U.S. industries and raised consumer costs. Conventional wisdom said no rational leader would court a “trade war” and risk recession.

Yet Trump now forges ahead with more tariffs, insisting that any immediate pain (factories struggling, allies angered, markets rattled) was necessary for a greater long-term goal – ostensibly, a “better” deal for America, but in effect it disrupted the Western-led free trade order. In some cases, Trump even celebrated market tumbles as leverage, suggesting that short-term shocks proved his toughness. This willingness to upend stability for strategic (or self-serving) ends mirrors Putin’s approach of prioritizing strategic goals over economic well-being. Both men have shown an unusual comfort with chaos and volatility, seeing opportunity where others see only cost.

A vivid example from Putin’s side came in the energy domain. In early 2022, as war began, Russia drastically cut natural gas supplies to Europe, even though Russia badly needed the revenue. It was a self-inflicted wound in the short run (plunging gas exports sent Russia’s budget reeling) – but Putin calculated it would inflict even greater pain on Europe in the form of energy shortages and spiking prices.

Indeed, Europe faced a historic gas crisis, and while Europe adapted over time, the immediate turmoil tested European unity. Similarly, Russia at times has flooded the oil market or withheld oil to impact prices globally, hurting its own earnings for a period but aiming to knock out competitors or coerce other nations. These are classic asymmetric tactics: accept losses now to set the stage for opponent’s losses later. Putin’s strategic horizon has often been much longer than that of Western democratic leaders who must answer to impatient electorates and news cycles. He is betting that authoritarian endurance will outlast democratic impatience.

This “long-term erosion” strategy is summed up by the notion that time is one of Putin’s weapons. As one RAND analysis put it, Putin is actively hoping to outlast the West’s resolve, treating the conflict as a test of wills. (rand.org)

Even if Russia cannot win outright, if he can simply outlast liberal democracies’ willingness to continue a struggle – whether that struggle is supporting Ukraine, maintaining sanctions, or generally standing up to Russian aggression – then he will have achieved his aims. From this view, a temporary economic downturn or a few years of budget deficits are trivial costs if the ultimate prize is a weakened and divided West that retreats from the field.

Russia’s Damaged Oil Infrastructure: A Buffer Against Price Shocks

A curious aspect of this asymmetric economic warfare is how Russia’s own vulnerabilities can be turned into strategic buffers. A case in point is Russia’s oil infrastructure. Ukraine’s forces, fighting for survival, began striking back at Russia’s oil refineries and export facilities in 2023–2024 with drones and missiles. By 2025, these deep strikes had put a noticeable dent in Russia’s refining capacity – estimates say about 15% of capacity was knocked offline, reducing output by hundreds of thousands of barrels per day. (euromaidanpress.com)

On the surface, this is a blow to Russia: less ability to refine and export oil means less revenue. Yet, paradoxically, it also insulates Moscow from certain market pressures and can even manipulate global prices to Russia’s advantage.

Here’s how: With part of its infrastructure wrecked, Russia simply cannot export the same volumes of oil and fuel as before. This forced reduction acts like an involuntary production cut – not unlike an OPEC cut – which tightens global supply. In fact, the disruption became significant enough that the United States quietly asked Ukraine to limit strikes on Russian refineries to avoid spiking global oil prices. (rferl.org)

Russia had to impose a ban on gasoline exports in 2024 to protect its domestic market since it lost refining capacity needed to supply both domestic and export needs. (rferl.org)

That move took Russian fuel off the global market, which in turn threatened to raise international fuel prices. In other words, Russia’s inability to export as much oil acted as a shield against prices collapsing – if global oil demand weakened or supply elsewhere grew, Russia was already selling a limited volume, and the reduced Russian output helped prevent a glut that would drive prices down further.

From Putin’s perspective, this dynamic isn’t all bad. The Kremlin essentially weaponized even its war damages: “Our refineries are damaged? Oh well, we’ll stop exporting gasoline – enjoy your higher prices at the pump, West.” It’s a cynical calculus. Russia turned its weakness into leverage over the West’s economic comfort.

We saw a similar pattern when Moscow orchestrated OPEC+ output decisions. Despite sanctions that cap the price of Russian crude, Russia coordinated with Saudi Arabia to cut global oil production in 2023, propping up prices for everyone. When oil prices started tumbling in early 2025 due to various factors, news of Ukrainian attacks knocking out a major Russian pipeline pumping station helped put a floor under prices. (reuters.com)

The threat, however, that Russia’s supply might further drop (whether by choice or by Ukrainian action) kept traders wary and prices from free-falling.

Thus, Russia is partly shielded from global price drops by a combination of its own actions and enforced limitations. It cannot easily flood the market even if it wanted to – and it doesn’t want to, preferring higher prices per barrel. Meanwhile, any significant drop in global prices can be countered by pointing to infrastructure “issues” and coordinating cuts with OPEC partners. In essence, Putin has ensured that Russia’s oil strategy prioritizes long-term revenue stability (and geopolitical leverage) over short-term market share.

Damaged infrastructure plays into that by capping volume. It’s an asymmetric trade-off: Russia forfeits some immediate oil income, but gains a degree of control over the market that can be used to pressure the West. For Western nations, this means that even victories like Ukraine’s successful strikes can have side effects – as Russia leverages the situation to argue for sanction relief (“If you want more oil, ease up on us”) or simply enjoys the higher prices on what oil it does manage to sell.

In summary, what looks like Russia hobbling itself (less ability to export oil) can double as strategic defense against one of the West’s tools – the tool of flooding markets or collapsing prices to hurt Moscow. By being partly insulated (since its exports are already curtailed and diversified towards willing buyers like China/India), Russia can better weather price volatility.

It’s a form of asymmetric resilience: the West can’t easily use oil abundance to crush Russia’s war chest, because Russia pre-emptively limited its exposure and indeed can threaten to further withhold supply. This dynamic will likely continue as long as the war and sanctions regime does – a cat-and-mouse where even sabotage becomes leverage in the global economic war.

Tariffs and Clumsy Policies: Fragmenting the Western Economic Order

Another prong of this slow-burn strategy is the deployment of economic nationalism and protectionism in ways that fracture alliances. Donald Trump’s trade and economic policies, often dismissed as erratic or self-defeating, can be reinterpreted as part of a deliberate (or at least conveniently aligned) attempt to dismantle the Western-led economic order to support Putin.

Traditionally, the Western alliance has been cemented not just by common values but by dense economic ties – free trade agreements, integrated supply chains, and institutions like the WTO that set common rules. Undermining those ties can weaken the alliance. Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs – even on close allies – and his unpredictable approach to economic agreements sent shockwaves through that 80-year-old order.

In Trump’s view, tariffs were a multipurpose weapon: a bargaining chip, a political statement, and a symbol of rejecting the old globalist consensus. Early in his presidency, he levied tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU, Canada, and Mexico, stunning partners who hadn’t seen such treatment from a U.S. leader in generations. Later, he launched a full-blown trade war with China and then, in a second term scenario, announced sweeping tariffs on virtually every country. This “America First” economic belligerence looked chaotic – markets plunged and foreign leaders voiced condemnation, noting that the U.S. had abandoned its traditional role as a champion of open trade. (reuters.com)

But from a certain angle, that chaos was the point. The tariff shock was so broad that it upended the global system of trade built since WWII. As one analysis put it, Trump’s administration appeared to be “consciously trying to blow up the globalized neoliberal financial and trading system” that had underpinned Western prosperity for decades. (abc.net.au)

In lieu of multilateral cooperation, Trump favored ad-hoc bilateral deals where he could maximize his leverage – an approach that inherently undermined collective economic frameworks.

The effect of these policies is to strain relations among Western allies. The EU, Canada, and others are forced retaliate with their own tariffs, triggering rifts. Longtime friends of the U.S. suddenly have to consider workarounds: Europe, for instance, has opened trade talks with China to hedge against U.S. unpredictability; Japan now pursues regional trade pacts without U.S. involvement.

In essence, Trump’s tariffs drive wedges into the Western economic alliance, aligning with Putin’s interests. (It is no coincidence that Russian officials cheered U.S.-EU trade spats or the weakening of the WTO’s authority.) What seemed clumsy – say, imposing tariffs on allies and adversaries simultaneously – actually served the long game of fragmentation.

You “can’t practically negotiate with nearly 200 countries at once,” as one observer noted of Trump’s approach, which suggests the real aim isn’t negotiation at all but disruption. (abc.net.au)

Indeed, despite internal White House contradictions on whether tariffs are just a negotiating ploy, Trump’s consistent refrain is that “tariffs give us great power”, indicating he relishes using that blunt instrument beyond any immediate deal-making. (reuters.com)

From Putin’s perspective, Trump’s trade wars and the broader U.S. retreat from global economic leadership are a geopolitical gift. The Western economic order – already stressed by the 2008 financial crisis and rising populism – is beginning to fissure. European leaders openly question America’s reliability, talking of “strategic autonomy” separate from the U.S. Meanwhile, some countries hit by U.S. tariffs are finding common cause with traditional rivals, complicating the united front that the West might present on other issues (like confronting Russia or China).

We can view Trump’s tariff regime as an asymmetric economic attack on alliance cohesion: instead of reinforcing the idea that “the West hangs together or hangs separately,” it sends the message that it is now “every nation for itself.” Such division is exactly what authoritarian strategists hope for. It’s much easier for Moscow or Beijing to deal with a collection of squabbling nations, each looking out for their narrow interests, than with a bonded alliance acting in unison.

It’s worth noting that Trump’s assault on the economic order isn’t only through tariffs. He also undermined institutions and agreements – pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), undermining the G7 and G20 with combative rhetoric, and even holding NATO funding hostage at times. Each of these moves, intentionally or not, further chips away at Western solidarity.

Tariffs are just the battering ram. The long-term plan (as articulated by ideologues around Trump) seemed to be a return to a 19th-century style of great-power competition and deal-making, discarding the multilateral institutions the U.S. itself helped build.

In that sense, what looks like a policy mess is actually philosophically coherent: it is neo-isolationism and economic nationalism unbound. The collateral damage – trust among allies and credibility of the U.S.-led system – is not collateral at all to Trump or Putin, but rather the desired outcome for them as they seek to remake the world order.

For Putin in particular, a fractured Western economic order opens avenues to exploit. He can attempt to lure individual European countries into separate energy deals, play them off each other, or deepen ties with non-Western economies in ways that undermine Western sanctions. Already we see Russia strengthening economic links with China, India, and others to circumvent Western pressure.

If the U.S. and EU are at odds or if the U.S. is internally divided over trade, their attention and unity against Russia wane. In summary, tariffs and erratic economic policies function as a slow poison to Western alliance cohesion – precisely the kind of long-run weakening that an asymmetric strategist would seek to achieve.

AI-Generated Misinformation and Social Media Chaos

Perhaps the most insidious tool in this asymmetric toolkit is the use of AI-driven misinformation and the chaos of social media to weaken Western democracies from within. In the digital age, controlling the narrative is a form of power, and both Putin and Trump have leveraged the wild west of online information – now turbocharged by artificial intelligence – to erode the West’s internal coherence.

Putin’s Russia has long employed armies of online trolls and bots to meddle in Western discourse. Now, with generative AI, those capabilities are supercharged. Fake personas can be spun up with realistic profile pictures, “deepfake” videos can portray leaders saying words they never said, and AI can generate propaganda posts en masse.

The volume and quality of misinformation are increasing exponentially. Experts warn that advances in AI are “breathing new life” into disinformation tactics, making it cheap and easy to flood the internet with highly believable fakes. (theguardian.com)

This means that Western citizens are facing an unprecedented onslaught of false or manipulative content. The aim is to overwhelm the information ecosystem – a firehose of falsehood that drowns out facts and trusted voices.

We’ve already seen glimpses of this future: For example, in 2023 an AI-generated image of an “explosion” near the Pentagon went viral and briefly sent stock markets tumbling before it was debunked. (theguardian.com)

Imagine similar techniques applied deliberately to politics – fake videos of officials declaring martial law, or audio clones of candidates conceding an election they actually won. The confusion such incidents could sow is immense. “Degrees of trust will go down,” noted one privacy researcher, and the job of journalists and truth-tellers “will become harder.” (theguardian.com)

That is exactly the point: to make it so that citizens no longer know what to believe, retreating into cynical apathy or partisan camps that only trust their own narratives.

Trump, too, has weaponized social media chaos – not with AI per se (though he has shared doctored videos and images on several occasion) – but through the sheer force of his online presence. His Twitter account (when active) was like a strategic misinformation outlet unto itself. By blasting out false claims (e.g. that millions of illegal votes cost him the 2016 popular vote, or that COVID was “going to disappear like a miracle,” or that the 2020 election was stolen), Trump mainstreamed misinformation from the Oval Office.

This all of course did immeasurable damage to Americans’ shared sense of reality. A significant portion of the population came to believe the 2020 election was illegitimate – a crisis of democratic legitimacy that culminated in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack. That event, fueled by conspiracy theories and blatant lies, showed how far the erosion of internal coherence had gone.

America’s political fabric frayed, not just from external attacks but from within, via his misinformation. The chaos on social media – much of it stoked by Trump’s own words and amplified by algorithms – has real-world consequences for the stability of the republic.

Now layer AI on top of this already volatile mix. Going forward, the misinformation that Trump and others spread can be manufactured and amplified by AI with minimal human oversight. Fake grassroots campaigns, bogus “news” sites entirely populated by AI-written articles, swarms of bot accounts that interact convincingly with real users – all these are becoming reality. In fact, studies show that a huge portion of social media traffic is not human at all: by 2023 bots accounted for nearly half of all internet traffic globally, with malicious “bad bots” making up about one-third. (hstoday.us)

This creates an environment ripe for manipulation. If half the people you argue with online about politics aren’t real people – and some are AI agents pushing Kremlin talking points or echoing a demagogue’s narrative – the result is an ever more divided and paranoid society.

For Western liberal democracies, this is deeply corrosive. Democracy depends on an informed electorate and a basic level of trust – trust that elections are fair, trust that we can debate using the same facts, trust that our fellow citizens are, well, fellow citizens and not fake personas. AI-generated misinformation directly attacks all of these pillars. It weakens internal coherence by fragmenting reality into echo chambers.

Each group sees its own curated “truth,” and common ground evaporates. That, in turn, makes a nation less able to effectively govern, let alone to project power or unity abroad. A country mired in internal information warfare – where every issue becomes a toxic feud fueled by bots and trolls – will struggle to mount a consistent foreign policy or to unite with allies against common threats.

Putin is undoubtedly pleased to see this chaos in his adversaries. It levels the playing field: the open societies of the West become less resilient and focused, more like the disarray he might expect to find in weaker states. The Russian state has even invested in AI and cyber capabilities to keep this pressure on.

Meanwhile, Trump’s legacy in the GOP has entrenched a pattern of distrusting institutions and embracing conspiracies, which continues to generate social discord. Even out of office, Trump-inspired election denialism and misinformation campaigns persist, often bolstered by bots and online echo chambers.

It’s a one-two punch on Western democracy: external adversaries like Russia flood the channels with falsehoods, and internal actors either unwittingly or willfully spread those falsehoods further. The net effect is a West that can’t think straight, like a boxer punch-drunk and swinging wildly at shadows.

Not Just Chaos, But Calculated Chaos: A Slow-Burning Assault

Taken together, all these threads – disinformation, propaganda, economic sabotage, energy manipulation, and social-media-fueled confusion – reveal a grand strategy that is often dismissed as mere chaos or incompetence, but is in fact calculated.

It is asymmetric in that it avoids direct conventional conflict, instead attacking the West’s strengths (open information, open markets, open societies) by turning them into weaknesses. Putin and Trump (each in his context) have mastered the art of appearing erratic and bombastic, all the while executing moves that steadily erode the foundations of Western unity.

To many observers, Trump’s presidency seemed haphazard – lurching from one controversy to the next, breaking norms without a clear plan. But in hindsight, there was a through-line: “Make America Great Again” in practice means undermining the post-war liberal order.

Whether intentionally guided by Kremlin agents and strategists or simply through gut instinct, Trump’s actions weakened alliances (NATO was shaken, the EU alienated), questioned the value of democracy (praising authoritarian leaders, casting doubt on U.S. elections), and disrupted the global economy that undergirds Western power.

Similarly, Putin’s Russia might appear to make blunders (underestimating Ukraine’s resistance, for example), but those apparent failures have not deterred him from his longer project of revanchism. He is willing to wage a long war, suffer setbacks, and double down, because his endgame isn’t a quick victory – it’s the exhaustion and demoralization of the West.

In this view, the bumbling is part of the strategy. A clownish tweet or a flagrantly false statement grabs headlines, yes – but it also frames the news cycle around the leader’s narrative, crowds out nuanced discussion, and forces institutions to react (often clumsily).

The constant turmoil is exhausting to the defenders of the status quo, which is exactly what an attacker in a protracted war wants. It’s the concept of the “death by a thousand cuts.” No single tweet, no single tariff, no single propaganda video will destroy the Western alliance.

But cumulative, relentless pressure over years can – if not destroy, then seriously debilitate. By the time people realize there was a directed strategy, the damage is done: trust eroded, alliances frayed, systems broken.

It is crucial to recognize that none of these tactics aim at immediate conquest. Putin does not expect NATO to dissolve overnight or the EU to implode in a week. Trump did not seek to outlaw opposition (though he stretched norms to the limit). Instead, the objective is long-term erosion.

Imagine the Western liberal order as a mighty tree. Instead of trying to chop it down outright (which would be foolhardy and provoke a strong defense), the termites are set loose inside it. Little by little, hollow it out, weaken it from within, until one day it simply keels over. That is the image of what’s happening: a deliberate, patient hollowing-out of Western cohesion, so that eventually, authoritarian powers can assert themselves globally without facing a robust, united democratic front.

We should also note the synergy in Trump and Putin’s effects. Whether or not one believes in collusion or direct coordination which is clearly happening, it is evident that Trump’s actions often align with Putin’s interests internationally.

For example, Trump’s denigration of NATO and wavering commitment to defend allies no doubt delighted Putin, whose foremost goal has been to undermine NATO’s credibility.

Trump’s skepticism of the EU (even vocally supporting Brexit) served Putin’s aim of a divided Europe.

Meanwhile, Putin’s interference in U.S. social debates – from stoking polarization on race to spreading anti-vaccine myths – create an environment of discord that plays into Trump’s political style of division.

It’s a feedback loop of chaos. Each man provides cover and support to the other: Putin can point to the disorder in American politics as proof of Western hypocrisy and weakness, while Trump can leverage narratives (many Russian-planted) that bolstered his “us vs. them” messaging inside the U.S.

The deliberateness of this slow-burn approach can be seen in how consistent it has been.

This is not a case of one-off aberrations; it’s a sustained pattern. Years after leaving office the first time, Trump continued to claim U.S. elections are rigged, eroding faith in democracy.

Likewise, years into a costly war, Putin continues to invest in propaganda and influence operations abroad even as bullets and shells fly – indicating he highly values the long-term info war. These are leaders who never turned off the campaign of asymmetric assault, even when facing other crises.

That constancy is a perfect sign that we are dealing with a strategy, not accidents.

Conclusion: Recognizing and Resisting the Strategic Assault

How can the Western alliance resist and recognize this kind of strategic slow-burning assault? The first step is to acknowledge what’s happening – to see the pattern.

It is vital for citizens and leaders alike to understand that the turmoil of recent years is not just random or self-inflicted angst, but in part the result of calculated moves by adversarial actors. When we recognize that, we can start to respond with the necessary resolve and coordination. Just as one would respond to a military campaign, the response to this asymmetric campaign must be multifaceted and sustained.

1. Rebuild Trust and Truth: Western democracies need to shore up their “information space.” This means governments, responsible media, and civil society must work together to expose disinformation campaigns and educate the public on how to spot and resist falsehoods. (hstoday.us)

We have to inoculate the populace against propaganda – through media literacy programs, transparency initiatives (e.g., labeling state-sponsored content), and perhaps regulation on social media algorithms that promote misinformation.

It’s also about reaffirming the value of truth. Leaders should consistently call out lies (whether foreign or domestic in origin) and present a coherent counternarrative based on facts. By dragging disinformation into the light, we diminish its power. This is not easy in free societies – we cherish free speech, which bad actors exploit by crying “censorship” when their trolls are banned. (hstoday.us)

But drawing the line between free expression and malicious deception is part of the challenge we must meet. Democracies might consider whole-of-government strategies to combat foreign influence – coordinating among intelligence, law enforcement, tech companies, and international allies to uproot disinformation networks.

2. Unity is the Antidote: The Western alliance must tend to its unity like a garden that’s under attack by weeds. That means actively countering the fragmenting effects of tariffs, trade disputes, and diplomatic spats.

Allies should communicate frankly and often to resolve grievances rather than letting them fester into wedges. Recommit to the institutions that have served as pillars of unity – NATO, the EU, G7, etc. – and reform them as needed to address current economic and security issues so that populists can’t easily dismiss them as “obsolete.”

Economic policy should also be treated as part of national security: coordination on supply chains, trade standards, and technology norms can prevent adversarial powers from exploiting rifts. In practical terms, this could mean crafting new trade agreements among democracies to replace those that were abandoned, or forming joint responses to economic coercion by the likes of Russia,China, and now the U.S.A.

The key is to deny Trump and Putin the easy wins of divide-and-conquer. When the U.S. and EU present a united front, when democracies band together (for example, a coalition of nations imposing synchronized sanctions on Russia’s aggression), the asymmetric assault is blunted.

Unity deprives propaganda of its effect (since a unified populace won’t be so easily split by lies) and deprives economic coercion of its bite (since alternative supplies or mutual support can cushion any one country from being isolated).

3. Strengthen Democratic Resilience: Internally, each democracy must renew its commitment to its core values and institutions. This means protecting the integrity of elections (against both cyber meddling and internal attempts to subvert outcomes), reinforcing checks and balances so that no leader can single-handedly steer a country toward autocracy or isolation, and engaging in good governance that proves democracy can deliver.

Part of Putin’s and other autocrats’ narrative is that Western democracy is in decline, crippled by dysfunction. We counter that not just with words but with deeds – by making our democracies more functional and responsive, thereby robbing the propagandists of their favorite talking point.

This could involve reforms like reducing hyper-partisanship (e.g., through electoral reforms or civic education that emphasizes common ground), addressing inequality (so populist anger cannot be as easily weaponized), and ensuring that social media platforms are not left to chase profit at the cost of societal health.

Democratic resilience also has a psychological dimension: fostering a sense of shared identity and purpose. If citizens feel a stronger common bond, they are less susceptible to narratives that pit them violently against each other.

4. Leverage Alliances for Counterstrategy: Just as the adversaries coordinate (explicitly or tacitly) their efforts, so too should the Western alliance coordinate a counterstrategy. A good example is the recent cooperation on combating disinformation – NATO and EU task forces now regularly share intel on fake news operations, and platforms coordinate with governments to take down influence campaigns.

This should be scaled up. Economically, allies can coordinate policies to reduce vulnerabilities: for instance, Europe learned to diversify energy sources away from Russia, lessening Putin’s leverage.

Similarly, democratic nations can collaborate on AI governance to mitigate the malicious uses of AI-generated content, setting norms and possibly sanctions for those who deploy “deepfake” attacks.

The Western alliance can also go on a values-based offensive: support independent media in authoritarian countries, sanction corrupt actors, and promote transparency (so the kleptocratic underpinnings of regimes like Putin’s are exposed to their own people).

In short, make it a two-way fight – not only playing defense on our turf, but also challenging the autocrats on their turf (ideologically and informationally).

5. Maintain Strategic Patience: Finally, resisting a slow-burning assault requires patience and stamina. Democracies are often impatient – electorates demand quick results, whereas autocrats can play the long game.

To counter that, Western leaders need to communicate clearly to their people that this is a protracted struggle and why it matters. The struggle is nothing less than the defense of liberal democracy and the international rule-based order against a concerted attempt to undermine them.

By framing it in those terms, leaders can ask their citizens for the kind of resolve and sacrifice (if needed) that will be required. This might mean tolerating some economic pain (e.g. higher energy prices or costs of decoupling from risky trade) in order to deprive adversaries of leverage – but with the understanding that it’s for the sake of long-term stability and security.

In essence, we must match Putin’s and other adversaries’ willingness to absorb short-term pain for long-term gain, but for the cause of preserving our democratic way of life.

Western nations have started showing this resolve – for example, European publics endured a tough winter without Russian gas and did not break, and the U.S. public (despite divisions) rallied at least in the short term against the January 6 insurrection attempt.

These are hopeful signs that democracy’s immune system is kicking in.

In conclusion, recognizing the asymmetric strategy at play – the deliberate use of misinformation, propaganda, superficial chaos, and economic tactics to weaken the West – is a critical step in defeating it. This recognition is spreading. Multiple think tanks and experts across the political spectrum have identified the problem and called for unified action. (hstoday.us)

The Western alliance must heed those calls. By uniting our capabilities across public and private sectors, reinforcing the bonds between allies, and staying true to our democratic principles, we can withstand this slow-burning assault.

Liberal democracies have faced grave threats before and prevailed – but only when they acknowledged the threat and stood together. Today’s struggle is more subtle than open war on our territories, but its stakes are high: the resilience of truth, the strength of our alliances, and the future of an international order based on rules and rights rather than might makes right.

Resisting this strategic assault means standing up for those ideals every day, and not letting the fog of asymmetric warfare blind us to what’s at stake. With clarity, unity, and endurance, the Western alliance can not only survive this challenge but emerge stronger – having proven that even the most cunning slow-burn schemes of division can be overcome by a free world that refuses to be broken.

Sources:

Marine Corps University Press – on democracies as information systems and “Byzantine failures” (usmcu.edu)
Homeland Security Today – on disinformation targeting national unity and Western stability. (hstoday.us)
Carnegie Endowment & RAND – on Russia’s economy under sanctions and Putin’s long-game strategy to outlast the West. (carnegieendowment.org, rand.org)
RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) – on Ukrainian strikes reducing Russian oil capacity and global price implications. (rferl.org)
Reuters & ABC News (Australia) – on Trump’s tariffs shattering the global trade order and allies’ reactions. (reuters.com, abc.net.au)
The Guardian & Homeland Security data – on AI-driven disinformation amplifying chaos and the prevalence of bots online. (theguardian.com, hstoday.us)