I have written several columns about Donald Trump’s over-rated business prowess, but keep watching with amazement as he violates time-honored business practices over and over again. The latest is his inability to collaborate with partners to bring about success in high-level affairs of state.
Let’s examine his fractured relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He belittled Zelenskyy in front of the world in an Oval Office meeting, saying, “You have to be thankful; you don’t have the cards. Without us, you don’t have any cards.”
Instead of bullying the heroic Ukrainian leader, instead of going fully adversarial with an old ally, Trump should have been in a collaborative ally. In general, businesses get way further ahead with collaborative models than with adversarial models. Most breakthroughs in business are accomplished by teams of smart people from different disciplines.
Companies work with vendors, customers, researchers from both the for-profit and non-profit world, with professionals from different disciplines and whomever can help them go to market with innovative solutions for pressing needs in society.
Unfortunately, that’s not President Trump’s modus operandi. His MO is almost always adversarial. He likes making enemies. He likes being a winner at the expense of the other party, whom he needs to see as losers.
The latest example is turning Elon Musk from a “buddy” into an outspoken adversary. It has always been predictable that the bromance between two certifiable psychopaths with bloated egos would come to blows.
Back to Zelenskyy: while he was being berated by Trump, he knew something that Trump didn’t know. He knew that his military strategists had developed their drone warfare capability to new levels. He knew that Ukraine was about to launch drone raids deep into Russian territory to destroy Russian bombers that had been attacking Ukraine. Those raids were audacious “cards.”
The Ukrainians and Russians have changed the face of warfare with their unmanned and relatively inexpensive drones. We could learn a lot from a collaborative partnership with Ukraine that built more than two million drones last year and is on pace for more than four million this year.
Further, drone attack tactics and anti-drone defenses are very tricky. We need to learn what they’ve learned.
U.S. drone production and tactical knowledge are miniscule compared to what Ukraine is using to neutralize Putin’s outdated war machines.
With very little American funding, Trump could be collaborating with the big brains in the Ukrainian military and civilian population to prepare our country for potential conflicts with China and with terrorists that are cropping up across the planet.
There is an old adage in business: “If you are the smartest guy in the room, you are in big trouble.” Trump is guilty of such arrogance. He is not a learner.
Put simply, we better be working with advanced thinkers wherever they are to prepare our military, our manufacturers and our citizens to the threats that face us in today’s bellicose world.
The adversaries that President Trump unnecessarily keeps making won’t be there to help us with breakthrough thinking. Conversely, we need to develop as many allies as we can, so collaborative thinking can help us remain the leading military power in the world.
Our nuclear forces make us a super power, but there are a lot of wars and conflicts that will never see nuclear face-offs.
Instead of pushing Zelenskyy away, President Trump should be using his self-proclaimed business prowess to cut additional deals with Ukraine and other allies. He did cut a deal with Ukraine for rare earth metals. That’s the type of business win that we need all day, every day.
We don’t need more made for TV hissy fits.
