Trump Brings a Stage Prop to Alaska
Behind the theatrics leading up to the summit is a pattern Putin knows so well: bluff, delay, surrender, declare victory, repeat.
My favorite scene in the British comedy “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” is when King Arthur faces off against the defiant Black Knight who refuses to grant Arthur passage across a bridge. A battle ensues, resulting in Arthur cutting off the arm of the obstinate knight. The wounded man doesn’t concede, claiming his injury “ ‘Tis but a scratch.”
Who among us hasn’t dealt with someone like this? Conceited, intolerant, blind to the obvious, and, when tested, inept but dangerous.
Sometimes I feel as if I am watching a version of that same scene when President Donald Trump faces a geopolitical security issue. But he doesn’t remind me of King Arthur.
Over the past several weeks, Trump has been flailing to draw attention away from the Jeffrey Epstein story. Whether proclaiming success on tariffs or suggesting President Barack Obama committed treason, none of it stuck.
Then on July 28 former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev posted on social media that Trump’s latest threat—to end the war in Ukraine through ultimatums—was itself “a step towards war.” In response, Trump said on Truth Social the comments were “highly provocative” and declared that he had ordered two U.S. nuclear submarines to be “positioned in the appropriate regions.”
John Bolton, the short-lived national security adviser for the first Trump administration, warned that this was reckless escalation. At the hands of past commanders in chief, such a declaration would be an appropriate concern.
But we’re being led by someone who applies news coverage as much as geopolitical reality to national security decisions. To Trump, warnings of miscalculation are meaningless. Or as the Black Knight reacts when King Arthur severs his other arm: “Just a flesh wound.”
To Russia and China, Trump’s braggadocio is less threat than parody. Who cares if he moved any submarines? The United States has about two dozen submarines on patrol at any one time, including those armed with submarine-launched cruise missiles that can strike from nearly 1,000 miles away and ballistic missile subs, or “boomers,” that can hit targets over 4,000 miles out.
Russian President Vladimir Putin knows this. His spokesman in response said as much, “In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty.” China knows it. So does NATO. So do America’s allies across the Pacific.
Trump’s announcement wasn’t about military leverage. It wasn’t even serious strategic signaling. It was a tired rhetorical tool now applied to a political-military confrontation—chest-pounding designed to look like action. And it came from someone who clearly does not know how the U.S. Navy operates.
Just as the Black Knight errs in the Monty Python movie, Trump mistakes bravado for deterrence, bluster for backbone. But Putin has seen this performance before. And in some cases, first hand—in Hamburg, Danang, Helsinki, Buenos Aires. He’s not alarmed. He might well be thinking what Arthur says out loud when the armless Black Knight claims to be invincible: “You’re a looney.”
Putin had a near-perfect record of calling the bluffs from Trump in his first term and from Joe Biden when it comes to Ukraine. Nothing Trump 48 has done as commander in chief has led Putin to take pause. Not his Truth Social pleas of “Vladimir, STOP!” Not the 50-day ultimatum threatening tariffs. Not when the ultimatum was dropped to a 10-day deadline.
Trump’s direct use of military force in his second term probably hasn’t bolstered his credibility as a bold warrior to give an adversary such as Russia or China pause. Trump’s air strikes in the spring against the Houthi targets in Yemen were briefly intense, quickly declared a success, and followed by a ceasefire with little strategic impact. The White House touted the strikes in June on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities as proof of resolve. But the operation was carried out after an Israeli air campaign of more than a week had left Iran with no air defense or escalatory leverage. It was low-risk. Medvedev has said so much. In the same social media post noted earlier, he was blunt: Russia isn’t Iran.
Trump’s pattern is clear: He punches down, never up. When escalation carries real consequences—when the target can respond in kind—he hesitates, blusters, or declares victory before the fight begins. For Beijing, watching how Trump calibrates risk offers clues about how he might react to a crisis over Taiwan. The signal isn’t strength. It’s selectivity.
So where are we now? Russia strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine have gone unabated. Instead of ordering punitive tariffs—set to take effect within days barring a ceasefire—to be imposed immediately, Trump ignored the economic threat. Instead, he sought out an audience with Putin, scheduled for today.
As I see it, Putin today is staring at a shamed opponent—much like King Arthur, who asks the limbless Black Knight, “What are you going to do, bleed on me?” For his part, Trump is now raving about having arranged another meeting—what the White House is now describing as a “listening exercise” but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says s a "personal victory" for Putin.
This is where Trump’s understanding of intimidation becomes a liability. He knows how to look dangerous. But in statecraft, looking dangerous isn’t enough. You have to be credible, and you have to be coherent. If your adversaries know you bluff compulsively, they stop believing your threats—even when you mean them.
And Putin has no reason to be wary of Trump. He knows Trump will arrive at the meeting in the same shape as the Black Knight, who at the end of the joust is reduced to just a head and torso and declares: “All right, we’ll call it a draw.”
Showmanship works until it doesn’t. And once it stops working, every future threat—even a legitimate one—gets discounted.
Like the Black Knight, Trump keeps taunting after the fight has moved on: “Running away, eh?... Come back here and take what’s coming to you!”
We’ve seen this movie before. So has Putin. But this isn’t Monty Python.
Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech. His Safehouse Briefing Substack looks at what’s ahead in global security, geopolitics, and national strategy.
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So true that Trump behaves like the Black Knight. He'll hate the comparison even more because he's called the "black" knight even though the knight's white. And was it a Freudian slip that you wrote Trump 48 instead of Trump 47? Lol. Please don't jinx us.
Brian, thank you for the excellent spot-on analysis of the negotiations between our Champion, The Black Knight, and King Arthur. I fear our Champion may fall asleep during the long Russian history lesson in Alaska. I also worry that he will continue to make the world a more dangerous place and diminish our role in it.