If You Don’t Understand Malignant Narcissism, You Don’t Understand Vladimir Putin Any Better Than You Understood Donald Trump
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The invasion of Ukraine was not about NATO, nor about the failure of the West to make concessions easing Russian fears about its own security, or about the inadequacy of economic and diplomatic sanctions. It was about Russian president Vladimir Putin and his insatiable ego.
Robin Wright wrote in the New Yorker:
“Looking back, the central flaw in the West’s strategy was the fear that any preemptive actions — whether providing more high-powered weaponry to Ukraine or imposing economic sanctions on Russia’s power brokers sooner — would be used by Putin as justification to attack Ukraine . . . It’s now clear that the Russian leader intended to invade, whatever the West did.”
In fact, that always has been clear to those who understand Putin. The “central flaw” in the West’s strategy arose from the failure of its leaders to see Putin for what he is.
At times, he behaves like a shrewd rational, actor, but he is a megalomaniacal, malignant narcissist obsessed with restoring at least part of Russia’s past grandeur and power. Failure to understand that obsession led to a miscalculation by Western leaders.
His perception of reality is shaped primarily by his own aberrant personality, not by a dispassionate or objective view of the world. No concession or economic sanction was going to dissuade him from trying to reincorporate Ukraine into “greater Russia.”
Putin feared the eventual entry of Ukraine into NATO not because of the any threat to Russian security, but because it would have been an impediment to returning Ukraine to Russian control. Invading Ukraine when it is defended only by its own military is one thing. Invading it if defended by NATO would have been quite another.
The former KGB officer wears the pain from the dissolution of the Soviet Union on his sleeve. It is a pain that he feels personally, a blow to his self-esteem. Putin’s tough guy demeanor, like that of his admirer and fellow malignant narcissist Donald Trump, hides a fragile ego.
For malignant narcissists like Putin and Trump, the insatiable needs of their egos drive them to constantly assert dominance over others. The cycle never ends, as they must continue to reassure themselves of their own worth by preying on weakness and bending others to their will.
Nothing is more important than redressing perceived grievances. They magnify those grievances in their minds and become obsessed with getting even.
The irrational bitterness that he feels from having Ukraine “taken” from Russia is what drove Putin to invade Ukraine. Looking for other “triggers” demonstrates a misunderstanding of his psychopathology.
Putin’s megalomaniacal impulses cannot be cured. It is possible, however, that his actions can be contained by unambiguous limits established by the West.
Putin’s Ukrainian obsession
Other Russian officials moved on from the breakup of the Soviet Union. For Putin, it is a festering open wound. It takes only a passing knowledge of Russian and Ukrainian history to understand why Putin fixated on Ukraine as a symbol of Russian grievance.
Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire in the late 18th Century as a result of the partition of Poland. Ukraine enjoyed a brief period of independence from 1917 to 1922, when it became a member of the Soviet Union. It regained its independence in 1991. The neighboring countries have strong cultural as well as historical ties.
This is what Putin had to say during his speech announcing the invasion of Ukraine this week:
“Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood. There has never been a sustainable statehood in Ukraine . . . Let me emphasize once again that Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space.”
In other words, Ukraine is part of Russia, not a sovereign nation. Putin intends to return to Russia that which he believes is rightfully Russia’s. That has been his intention all along, and no concession or other meaningless gesture by NATO or the United States was going to change that.
To Putin, Ukraine’s separation from Russia was the greatest insult of all and symbolized the degradation of Russia. He was desperate to even the score with the West by taking it back.
Putin’s speech was a megalomaniacal rant. Hopefully, it will lead to less confusion about the nature of his actions. Pundits sometimes refer to the “tactical” Putin versus the “ideological” Putin. The distinction is more accurately described as the tactical Putin versus the irrational, megalomaniacal Putin.
The loss of Putin’s ally Donald Trump and the timing of the invasion
Putin always intended to reclaim Ukraine, although he would have preferred to do so in a less costly manner. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut succinctly and correctly explained how Putin backed himself into a corner in which invasion became the only option acceptable to him.
Trump’s defeat in 2020 made the path to reclaiming Ukraine more difficult for Putin. There actually is merit to the idea that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine while Trump was in office — but only because he may not have needed to do so.
Trump was openly antagonistic to the administration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and took every opportunity to undermine the evolution of Ukraine toward a sustainable democracy. There is absolutely no doubt — none — that Trump was doing Putin’s bidding by trying to foment the collapse of the legitimate government of Ukraine.
Moreover, the invasion and accompanying comments by Putin and other Russian officials cast Trump’s persistent disparagement of NATO in an even more ominous light. Whose interests was Trump serving by drawing down US troop strength in Europe?
Things were going well for Putin while Trump was in office. Trump was weakening both Ukraine and NATO while touting his relationship with Putin, all accomplished at no cost to Putin. Why would Putin risk upsetting the apple cart with an invasion that might be unnecessary?
Because of his friendliness with Putin, Trump would have paid a political price in the 2020 election had there been a bloody, unprovoked attack on Ukraine by Russia during his first term. Trump promoted the illusion that it was his positive relationship with Putin that maintained peace; there was nothing in it for Putin to shatter that illusion.
Do you believe that it is possible that Trump asked Putin to defer any invasion until his second term, in exchange for promising to withhold military assistance from Ukraine and to oppose economic sanctions if one occurred? I believe that it not only is possible, but probable.
Putin and Trump talked about something during their unprecedented, private two-hour meeting in Helsinki in 2018. Given Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, why would anyone assume that it was not a topic of discussion? Given what we know about Trump, why would anyone assume that he was above cutting such a deal with Putin?
Putin lost a kindred spirit and irreplaceable ally when Trump was defeated. It meant that it was only a matter of time before Putin invaded Ukraine.
As Murphy pointed out, Putin would have preferred to orchestrate an “internal” coup or pursue some other lower-cost option. He was willing to play the long game in the hope that Trump would make a full-fledged invasion unnecessary.
But there was always going to be an invasion of Ukraine if it became the only option. The idea that President Biden could have prevented the invasion by doing anything short of capitulating to Putin’s demands that Ukraine again become part of Russia — as Trump undoubtedly had done — reflects an extraordinary ignorance of what drives Putin.
Hard limits sometimes work where other measures fail
Handwringing over past failures to arm Ukraine more heavily or impose economic sanctions on Russia misses the point. Neither measure was going to prevent an invasion.
A central feature of malignant narcissists is their sadism and lack of empathy. Putin could not have cared less if a better-armed Ukrainian army inflicted killed more Russian soldiers or if harsher sanctions caused more ordinary Russians to suffer.
I suppose it is possible that Putin may have thought twice about invading if he was certain that sanctions of the severity now being imposed would be a consequence. Could anyone, including Putin, have predicted the swift, unified, and powerful response by the West? Besides, anyone who believes that all of countries necessary to support such a response would have committed to it before there were Russian tanks on the outskirts of Kyiv lives in a fantasy world.
Malignant narcissists sometimes can be restrained by imposing hard limits on their megalomaniacal behavior — boundaries that they dare not cross without risking self-destruction. Even malignant narcissists tend to have self-preservation instincts.
Article 5 of the NATO charter is such a boundary; it commits NATO members to come to the defense of each other. Putin invaded Ukraine to prevent it from becoming a member of NATO, which would have made his ambition to reabsorb it into Russia unachievable.
It is unlikely that Putin would have invaded Ukraine if it had been a member of NATO, although Putin would have seen the admission of Ukraine to NATO as a personal humiliation and that always involves risks. For malignant narcissists, personal humiliations are threats to their psychic survival, and they can become especially erratic and dangerous. Our own recent history is instructive.
The perils ahead
Psychiatrists and psychologists predicted Trump’s response to his 2020 electoral defeat. Here is what Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired professor of psychiatry at Harvard, had to say:
“[Trump’s] capacity to sink into paranoid rage is another aspect of his disorder. We should expect that he will try to turn America into a police state or declare martial law and suspend the Constitution. He will likely try to prevent or overturn the 2020 election if he loses.”
Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale psychiatrist and co-author of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, warned that Trump “would be equally inclined to destroy the nation or the world …if he were to feel humiliated from the loss of an election.” What will Putin do if he feels humiliated by the outcome in Ukraine or the unexpectedly punitive response to the invasion by the West?
He will rage and bluster like Trump, of course. But he won’t respond by initiating nuclear war with NATO, although he may threaten it to try to shake the West’s resolve, secure in the knowledge that NATO will not make a preemptive nuclear strike against Russia. I am not minimizing the risks of brinksmanship and catastrophic miscalculations, but there is no reason to believe that Putin is suicidal.
Another malignant narcissist, Adolph Hitler, issued the Nero Decree when it became clear that Germany had lost the war. The decree would have destroyed what was left of Germany. Only the intervention of Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, prevented its implementation.
Hitler’s personal fate was sealed when he issued the Nero Decree in March 1945, however. He knew that he would be hanged as a war criminal if captured. The situation facing Putin is not as dire, at least not yet. Putin will seek to survive.
It is impossible to know exactly what the future holds. Reports of Putin’s deteriorating mental condition and increasing irrationality are disturbing and introduce another element of unpredictability. There is one thing that is certain: Putin’s megalomania must be contained.
The West must identify and establish unambiguous limits on Russian actions that it will not tolerate. Stop listening to what Putin says is acceptable to Russia and start telling Putin what is acceptable to the Western alliance. Putin probes for weaknesses and exploits ambiguities.
Strengthen and expand NATO to include Sweden and Finland. Hard limits are the only thing that Putin respects, and are the best hope of preventing an escalation of Putin’s aggression in Europe. I believe that once Putin realizes that there actually are hard limits, he will live within them.
