Splitting a Nuclear Pin: Defeat Trump by First Defeating Putin
- john raymond
- Sep 21
- 3 min read
Orientation: game theory as the frame
What we are seeing with Trump-Putin is a two-king game on a nuclear chessboard. The first king (Putin) is the autocrat whose regime security drives every move. The second king (President Trump) is not independent but a dependent piece whose survival and leverage depend on the first king’s throne.
To ask whether the two can be “peeled apart” is to ask whether a stable equilibrium exists in which the second king defects from the first. My claim is simple: no obvious equilibrium currently exists.
Therefore, the only way to end the bond is to collapse the power base of the first king, thereby eliminating the structural support for the second.
Step One: Identify the payoff structures
Game theory asks: what are the payoffs, and how are they distributed?
First king’s payoff (Putin): survival of the regime, retention of rents, control of elites, and freedom to project asymmetric harm.
Second king’s payoff (Trump): access to patronage, kompromat protection, alignment with a stronger sovereign that validates his domestic role.
Shared strategy: coordinate to fracture Western alliances, stall aid to Ukraine, and normalize authoritarian rule.
The payoffs are not independent. Trump’s payoff function is monotonic in Putin’s survival: the stronger the Kremlin, the stronger Trump’s leverage in the West. That defines the alignment as a positive-sum collusion game for the two kings.
Step Two: Examine incentives under minimax
A stable split would require the second king to defect from the first. Game theory teaches: defection occurs only when the expected payoff of defection exceeds loyalty. But here:
Defection penalty: without Putin, Trump loses protection, narrative support, and the perception of inevitability.
Loyalty bonus: alignment gives him asymmetric advantages inside U.S. politics—narratives, networks, and kompromat-based control of elites.
Thus, from Trump’s perspective, loyalty dominates defection. The minimax equilibrium is alignment. The “split” outcome has no obvious Nash equilibrium under current payoffs.
Step Three: Recognize the role of intermediaries
Pillar Three reframed: the Byzantine traitor-generals are the intermediaries—lawyers, donors, media outlets, financiers—who synchronize their moves to help Trump. (For example, see how execs are working to silence Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.)
In repeated games, intermediaries reduce the transaction cost of collusion. If they are not disrupted, the coordination between Trump and Putin remains stable. Cutting intermediaries only weakens the alignment if the first king—Putin—is already collapsing; otherwise, new intermediaries can easily regenerate.
Step Four: Model the only viable path—collapse of the first king
If loyalty dominates and intermediaries regenerate, then the only way to force a new equilibrium is to change the first king’s payoff dramatically. In game-theoretic terms: destroy the strategy set that sustains Putin’s survival, so that his probability of continued rule tends toward zero.
Mechanics of collapse (translated into strategic cuts):
Revenue stream reduction: sanctions, strikes, and enforcement that cut rents faster than they can be replaced.
Tech and repair lag: deny precision imports so the cost to repair exceeds the cost to destroy.
Maritime and insurance friction: make shadow-fleet evasion prohibitively expensive.
Battlefield tempo: maintain Ukrainian strike cadence so that regime harm rates accelerate.
As the first king’s expected payoff collapses, the second king’s alignment becomes worthless. The dependent Nash equilibrium disintegrates—not because Trump defects from Putin, but because Putin’s throne disappears.
Step Five: Define the observable indicators
Game theory demands measurable signals that prove a strategy has shifted the equilibrium. Therefore watch:
Sustained decline in Russian oil export volume despite attempts to reroute.
Rising time-to-repair for refinery and logistics infrastructure.
Shrinking share of opaque vessels, insurers, and classers in Russian trade.
Reduction in cadence of Russian long-range strikes as component scarcity sets in.
If these trendlines hold, the first king’s survival function degrades. As it degrades, the second king’s expected payoff for loyalty collapses, and the collusion game ends.
Coda
In Kotkinian terms: elites defect only when loyalty becomes more dangerous than betrayal. In the special case of two colluding kings, the second might never peel from the first voluntarily, because loyalty dominates in every round.
The structural answer, in game-theory language, is therefore stark: change the board, not the player. Collapse the first king’s payoff function, and the second king ceases to be a king at all.
The open question for the reader: what concrete, lawful levers—financial, technological, logistical, informational—can accelerate the first king’s collapse rate faster than his repair rate? That is the real game.
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