Putin’s recent actions, and Trump’s, fit the usual pattern: bad leaders nearly always get worse. They get worse in four phases, each more ominous and compounding than the one before. The progression usually starts slowly — perceptible, perhaps, but unremarkable. Then it picks up steam. Finally, if leaders are left to their own devices, their bad behaviors metamorphose from insignificant to significant, and finally to malignant and malevolent.
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Putin despised, and feared, his most personally conspicuous and politically dangerous opponent, and for over a decade had been tightening the noose around Navalny’s neck.
Donald Trump recently reiterated that if he wins a second presidential term, he will either abandon NATO or relegate it to an alliance of relative unimportance.
Given what the former president attempted the last time – from the end of November 2020 until Jan. 6, 2021, he escalated his efforts to overturn the presidential election, asking the governor of Georgia to call a special legislative session; veritably begging state officials to “find” votes; and shamelessly pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject electors — we can count on his doing as much or more to upend unfavorable electoral results.
The West, for example, did nothing as he bombed Chechnya’s capital city, Grozny, to smithereens in 2000, and nothing again as he imposed his will, militarily, on the independent state of Georgia in 2008.
If the United States fails to provide strong support to Ukraine during the third year of its war against Russia, and if the American people don’t vote decisively against Trump winning a second presidential term, it will all but guarantee a rather bleak future.
Barbara Kellerman is a fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she was previously founding executive director.
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