For nearly 18 months, the Trump administration and many analysts have thought of the US, Russia, and China as great powers deciding the fate of the world, unconstrained by lesser states. Today, the US is the losing party in a Versailles peace agreement and Moscow looks like this:
Ruth Deyermond
The idea that Trump and Putin are leaders of great powers, holding the fate of the world in their hands is central to their political identities. They've both just been publicly humiliated by states they thought they could crush. They and their countries are weaker as a result.
