Trump-Putin: How Much Harmony Remains?

Vladimir Putin's profile since his expansionist drive – starting with the annexation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 – He was presented as a calculating, devious, and unpredictable autocrat who never gives any clues about his plans, and if he's a woman, they're false. A dictator, yes, as some media outlets are beginning to point out, he has demonstrated how he uses confusion and falsehoods in the attack on Iran. Surprise. Seeing and experiencing what has happened, I'm tempted to ask: to what extent does the improvised calculation of the American autocratic businessman surpass the systematic rigidity of calculation of the old Russian kagebist? Ukraine. But beware: Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz – thanks, let's not forget, to Trump's attack – could raise the price of oil, And this would benefit Russia. It's a possibility that must be maintained. Let's go back to 2004, when Putin's regime consolidated thanks precisely to the rise in crude oil prices. It should not be forgotten that the Russian dictator wrote a doctoral thesis on the use of oil as a geostrategic tool necessary for Russia's imperial rise. Between 2000 and 2004, the Kremlin took advantage of the rise in crude oil prices and nationalized companies that had been privatized. The result was a production of between 9 and 11 million barrels per day, of which 4 million are exported.

Putin would be very happy if the Iranian crisis caused a sharp rise in oil prices, Because it would be a shot in the arm for an economy that has been reeling from the international sanctions imposed on the Kremlin for the attack on Ukraine, and which is generating all sorts of worrying forecasts. Economist Torbjörn Becker, director of the Stockholm Institute of Economics, does not hesitate to point out that the lack of foreign investment threatens the Russian economy in the long term. The crux of the matter would be how long a militarized economy can last. And whether it can last longer than Ukraine and its European allies.

Either Trump or Iran

Putin could end up facing a dilemma: be a good ally of the ayatollahs, who are, after all, "morally" their friends, or intensify the good harmony with Trump, who, as it turns out, would have made possible with his attack on Iran the rise in oil prices that would have brought so many benefits to Russia. Would a policy of equidistance between Putin and Trump be possible, with the ayatollahs in the middle? For the moment, the Kremlin is not willing to formally express outrage over the attack, and has gone to the UN Security Council hand in hand with China. But we must not rush, because knowing what Trump is like and how he acts, it is not out of the question that everything could end before it begins. Or, the more Washington tries to negotiate peace with Iran, the more the conflict worsens. And meanwhile, crude oil prices could begin to fluctuate, rising and falling day in and day out, and reach –or not– at the point Putin longs for.