A Putin critic found the method in Trump’s madness. Then he blamed it on oil

I monitor Russian-language media. Most of what it says about President Donald Trump comes in two flavors: worship and contempt. Rarely does anyone do the work.This month, Mikhail Krutikhin did the work. He is a veteran Russian oil analyst whom the Kremlin has branded a “foreign agent,” and he is no admirer of Trump. “Trump’s manners, tastes, and statements are repugnant,” he wrote in the Moscow Times on Oct. 13.Then he did something unusual. He set morality aside. “Good, evil, all of that has to be thrown out when we are dealing with Trump,” he said in a video broadcast. We fixate on form, he wrote, on “that same Trumpian clownery,” instead of content. Strip away the decoration, and America’s global behavior comes down to one relationship: China. PUTIN DIDN’T GET A BIRTHDAY CARD FROM TRUMP. HE GOT A DILEMMAHe is right. And he got there from the other side of the argument, which is worth something.He cites Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who told his ruling party’s congress on Oct. 2 that the United States and China “are the world’s two superpowers; there is no third.” Everything else, Krutikhin argues, is their contest for markets, resources, and influence.Critics say America lost the war on Iran. The regime still stands, and British maritime warnings logged a dozen attacks on commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz in one week this month. He keeps a different scoreboard. In his telling, China lost Gulf oil and gas while the strait was closed, a trade artery when the Houthis choked the Bab el Mandeb, and the argument in Riyadh, where the Arab monarchies learned that China will not defend them against Iran.Then there is Venezuela. Before this year, about 70% of Venezuela’s crude went to China. After Washington removed Nicolas Maduro in January, that flow collapsed. American refiners now take half to three-quarters of its exports. Beijing spent billions buying an ally. The oil now sails north.I call this method controlled chaos. Nobody scripts every event from one desk. Washington steers what others start. He arrived at its logic on his own, and his rule for reading it is sound: whenever the administration looks illogical, ask how the move serves America’s long-term contest with China.Then he got to oil, and the method fell apart.On air, he went further. The war on Iran, he believes, was launched, not entirely, but “not least,” to keep oil prices from collapsing and to protect American drillers. The danger, in his theory, is 2027 and 2028, when a glut will crush prices. So, he expects another escalation in an oil-producing region, perhaps Iran again, to take Gulf barrels off the market. His evidence: an Energy Department forecast in which world supply reaches 112 million barrels a day in 2028 against demand of 105, and prewar forecasts of $33 oil in 2027. He names Morgan Stanley.The Energy Information Administration’s monthly outlook stops at 2027. Its July edition did forecast a glut: about 5 million barrels a day in 2027, with supply near 110 million against demand near 105. Even with that glut, it put Brent at an average of $65 for 2027. Its October edition, released Oct. 6, puts it at $84. In June, Morgan Stanley also forecast a 2027 surplus, 4.8 million barrels a day, with Brent around $70 by the end of that year. Neither said $33. The drilling rigs he says multiplied almost one and a half times are up 56 from a year ago, about 10%.Last month, I wrote in these pages that Trump’s foreign defenders were sabotaging their own case with invented facts. The rule cuts both ways. A critic who finds the right logic and props it up with the wrong numbers sabotages his own discovery.The numbers matter. A glut is not a collapse. His motive needs a collapse worth a war to prevent, and the forecasts show none. Behavior points the other way, too.If expensive oil were the goal, the war delivered it, and the president has spent October trying to undo the delivery. On Oct. 2, under American pressure, the Group of Seven agreed to release 100 million barrels of crude and diesel from emergency reserves. On Oct. 9, Trump announced that Russia would supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel at once, with millions more to follow, and the Trump Treasury Department licensed Russian diesel loaded through April. His stated priority was lower prices for farmers, ranchers, and truckers. Seven senators from both parties wrote that the deal “runs directly counter” to the 2022 law banning Russian energy imports.Krutikhin has an answer. Trump’s efforts to add supply, he writes, are “temporary and relatively short-term: the electorate has to be placated before the elections.” On the calendar, we agree. Earlier this month, I argued that until the vote, every lever Trump pulls lowers the price of fuel. That leaves his case for after the vote resting on one piece of evidence: the chart. It does not say what he says.In the same column, he writes that Washington does not want “this slaughter” to end either. Its main motive is fear that Putin’s defeat would bring chaos to Russia and “turn it into a Chinese colony — if not territorially, then politically and economically.” Holding Ukraine back, he said in the broadcast, is a tactical task serving the contest with China.I have heard this argument before. In 1991, Washington feared that the Soviet collapse would bring chaos and loose nuclear weapons, and it chose stability. I wrote in these pages in July what that stability cost my country.The record this fall does not look like a shield. In September, Trump signed a sanctions law that targets Russian banks and shadow-fleet tankers and directs tariffs of up to 100% on the five biggest importers of Russian oil or gas. That month, by Finance Ministry figures, Russia’s oil and gas revenue fell 22% from a year earlier, and 418.5 billion rubles, about 48% of its oil and gas taxes, went back to oil companies to hold down prices at Russian pumps. The International Energy Agency says Russian diesel output is down nearly 30% from a year earlier. Russia, as I wrote here in September, can still sell oil. It just can’t make enough gasoline. A license that expires in April is a pause, not a pardon.By his own account, Russia is already China’s economic appendage. The war made it one. A Moscow kept fighting is a Moscow kept dependent on Chinese buyers.We both expect another round against Iran. Trump told Time this month that it is “possible” he will ramp up bombing after the midterm elections. A third carrier strike group is due in the region by the end of November. If the bombs fall, oil will jump, and Krutikhin will call it proof.EUROPE SENT PUTIN $1 TRILLION, OBAMA BLINKED, AND BIDEN TIED UKRAINE’S HANDS. WHY IS TRUMP THE ONLY TRAITOR?But a price is not a motive. He wrote himself that Iran’s “Khomeinist radicals” ultimately work in America’s long-term interests, and that Putin “objectively” does too. That is the method in one sentence. The force is theirs. The direction is Washington’s.“We forget Hegelian dialectics!” he wrote. “Behind the phenomenon, we do not see the essence.” He saw the essence. Then he traded it for a chart.Emzari Gelashvili is a San Francisco–based geopolitical analyst and columnist who monitors Russian-language media. From 1996 to 2008, he held senior positions in Georgia’s Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Defense, and Ministry of Internal Affairs, with a counterintelligence career focused on Russian and Iranian intelligence operations, and he was a member of the Georgian Parliament from 2008 to 2012. His work appears in Newsweek, the Hill, the Washington Examiner, RealClearDefense, and RealClearWorld, and at emzargelashvili.substack.com.