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Methods Matter: Why NATO Cannot Treat Trump’s Capture as Mere Narcissism

  • Writer: john raymond
    john raymond
  • Sep 24, 2025
  • 3 min read

Vlad Vexler and I reach the same conclusion about President Trump’s latest posture on Ukraine: it is nothing to celebrate, because it signals withdrawal rather than support.


But how we arrive there matters.


Vexler’s method is grounded in Bayesian priors—unbiased updating across observed metrics. My method is grounded in minimax—the warfighting assumption that when facing an enemy or a compromised actor, you begin with the worst-case harm they can do to you, and you demand they break patterns irreversibly before you ever treat them as reliable.


The difference is not academic. It defines how NATO, the EU, and Ukraine should plan for survival.


I. Shared Conclusion, Divergent Pathways

  • Shared conclusion: Trump’s words are not policy; they offer no coercive instruments, shift burdens to Europe, and preserve Kremlin breathing room.


  • Vexler’s pathway: Trump is flailing—his narcissistic dependence on Putin drives dispositional swings. He may return to the issue, but only as an episodic correction of mood, not a deliberate plan.


  • Raymond’s pathway: Trump is compromised structurally. His ambiguous rhetoric is deliberate credibility-rebuilding, designed to betray Europe if it lowers its guard again.


Both of us call Trump captured. The divergence is in the mechanism of that capture.


II. Analytic Machinery

Vexler: Bayesian Priors and Hypothesis Testing

  • Treats Trump’s words as new data points in a probability distribution.


  • Sees mood swings as evidence for narcissistic volatility.


  • Produces careful, balanced posterior beliefs about likelihoods—Bayesian updating that fits academic analysis.


Raymond: Minimax and Warfighting Analysis

  • Begins from the assumption that captured, traitorous actors will harm you if they can.


  • Asks: What harm does this enable? not What do they say?


  • Demands pattern-breaking, irreversible actions before considering trust.


  • Designed for survival in war, not merely for correct hypothesis-testing in reports.


Key contrast: A false positive in Bayesian inference means a report overstates risk. A false negative in minimax means a war is lost. In war, you cannot afford to misdiagnose a traitor.


III. Why Misdiagnosis Is Dangerous

  • If Vexler is right but we act on minimax: We over-prepare against a flailing narcissist. That costs resources but preserves survival.


  • If I am right but NATO acts on Vexler’s priors: Europe will assume Trump’s betrayal is unplanned flailing, and attempt to split him from Putin with “narcissist handling.” That mistake invites catastrophic betrayal at scale.


The asymmetric danger is obvious. In war, planning for the worst is not paranoia—it is prudence.


IV. Structural Capture vs Psychological Capture

  • Vexler’s account: Ongoing narcissism explains why Trump drifts back to Putin.


  • My account: Narcissism is only one layer. The core is structural compromise—decades of financial, political, and informational ties cultivated by the Kremlin. This is intelligence tradecraft, not just psychology.


Thus, I treat Trump as the “second king” in a two-king game: Putin as senior partner, Trump as junior, both bound in a structural alignment that cannot be undone by understanding narcissism. The compromise runs deeper than personality.


V. Prescriptions for NATO, EU, and Ukraine

  1. Do not think you can split Trump from Putin by “knowing narcissists.” The compromise is structural, not merely psychological.

  2. Plan for betrayal as ongoing. Every ambiguity is preparation for a future trap.

  3. Demand irreversible pattern-breaking. Words are cheap. Only verifiable instruments—secondary sanctions, air defense deliveries, enforced embargoes—count.

  4. Use minimax planning. Assume Trump will harm you if he can. Structure policy on that assumption, not on the chance he might drift back to reason.

  5. Keep unity by metrics, not moods. Publicly track sanctions enforcement, delivery flows, and interdictions. Metrics collapse ambiguity; moods amplify it.

VI. A Request to Vexler

This is a request for Vexler himself: update your falsification criteria. A Bayesian model that treats each statement as a neutral prior update risks misclassifying deliberate betrayal as mere dispositional drift. In war, that error is lethal.


Please adopt falsification criteria that test not just whether Trump swings moods, but whether he ever breaks patterns in irreversible ways. If he does not, treat him as a structural traitor, not an unreliable narcissist.


VII. The Bottom Line

Both our methods arrive at the same topline for this moment: Trump’s latest statement is not to be trusted.


But methods matter. Vexler’s Bayesian priors suit academic inference; my minimax analysis suits warfighting.


NATO, the EU, and Ukraine are at war. That means planning for the worst, assuming betrayal is deliberate, and demanding irreversible proof before granting trust.


Anything less is gambling with the future of the alliance.




 
 
 

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