Trump’s clumsy nuclear rhetoric shows he still has no strategy to deal with Putin

Whatever Trump’s latest verbal salvo at Moscow may be, there’s one thing it isn’t: a strategy for dealing with Russia, let alone a sensible or coherent one, says Keir Giles

US president Donald Trump claims to have ordered a redeployment of nuclear submarines in response to threatening language from Moscow. Predictably, the US and global media have reacted excitedly, without always stopping to consider what, if anything, has happened – and why.

As with Trump’s other comments on Russia, the vague statement raised more questions than answers. Trump claimed he ordered two nuclear submarines (without specifying whether that meant nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered) to be positioned “in the appropriate regions” (without explaining why they would have been somewhere inappropriate to start with).

All of which came in response to a taunt containing a reference to The Walking Dead and a laughing emoji on social media from Dmitry Medvedev, once president of Russia but now enjoying a public persona more akin to a court jester.

Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, seems confident that Medvedev is “not a relevant player in Russian politics”, and yet his trolling has supposedly triggered a change in American nuclear posture. As with so much else in Trumpworld, the explanation probably lies elsewhere.

It’s true that Trump’s verbal outbursts criticising Moscow have become more frequent recently – and that this marks a startling turnaround from his earlier inclination to blame Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia having invaded his country.

But despite the latest claims, there’s still no indication that Trump is willing to follow words with meaningful action.

The latest arbitrary deadline for Vladimir Putin to take unspecified action towards ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, followed by an equally arbitrary bringing forward of the deadline, suggests there is no coherent plan for putting pressure on Moscow. Instead, when setting dates, Trump appears to be plucking random numbers from the air and then changing them without warning, in the same manner as when setting the United States’s global trade policy.

With the submarine comment, Trump has discovered another means of appearing “tough on Russia” without actually doing anything that would be of any concern to Moscow – and there are plenty of other reasons why he might be seeking headlines that suggest he is taking a firmer line with Putin.

Namely, that Trump needs distractions at the moment. His best efforts to keep his relationship with sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell out of the headlines, and prevent the release of any material from their criminal case that may implicate Trump personally, have been counterproductive.

Trump pictured in the Roosevelt Room in the White House last Wednesday (AP)

And the effects of his economic policies are starting to dawn on even those sections of the American public that still believe he has their best interests at heart.

With prices rising rapidly amid uncertainty triggered by Trump’s chaotic tariff policy, it is becoming harder to maintain upbeat messaging on the economy – and last week also saw the release of employment statistics so bad that Trump felt compelled to shoot the messenger who delivered them, by firing the head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

This, and moving submarines in response to an insult from a Russian politician who throws them for a living, unfortunately fits Trump’s style of governing through outbursts and rants in response to perceived slights more than through clear and considered policy.

But whatever the reasons for that, the net effect is that once again, Trump has taken every possible step to pressure Russia short of actually doing something.

The USS Minnesota sails in waters off the coast of western Australia in March 2025 (AFP/Getty)

In fact, he has succeeded in preventing action that Russia would dislike: Trump’s notional deadline for Putin to do something successfully headed off an initiative by Senate Republicans to push through a package of secondary sanctions that would have caused genuine headaches for Moscow, not to mention a proposal for sanctions on China for supporting Russia’s war.

That’s one reason among many why Russia felt the Trump submarine claim, which, if made by any other US president, would have been a significant and dramatic move, could be calmly ignored.

Whatever Trump’s latest verbal salvo at Moscow may be, there’s one thing it isn’t: a strategy for dealing with Russia, let alone a sensible or coherent one. Vladimir Putin and those around him will no doubt continue to watch Trump’s moves closely – but perhaps as much out of curiosity as out of concern as to what he will do next.