Timothy Snyder: The Era of the Superlosers: Trump, Putin, and the World [View all]

[Celerity]

Last edited Sat May 23, 2026, 04:10 PM - Edit history (1)

https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-era-of-the-superlosers

(Video at the link)

The United States and Russia are both losing wars. And they are losing wars that make no sense, in an uncanny folie à deux, to the benefit of China. This video, which I filmed after dozens of meetings and public discussions in Europe this month, supplies an explanatory concept: the superloser.

A superloser is a leader of a great power, or (onetime) superpower, whose disastrous choices lead to a crash. He possesses a combination of skills that allow for a rise to personal power and the collapse of state power. In the video I spell out the five C’s of the superloser phenomenon:

A conflict that is being lost, in the strong sense of a war: Iran for Trump, Ukraine for Putin. A concept of power that is betrayed, by the war and generally, such that it is not only defeat that is at hand, but the continuous undermining of structures. A corruption that makes national interests irrelevant; a shared example, one of many, is giving tax money to billionaires.

Cooperation with the other superloser, which somehow makes matters worse both for the other superloser and for the world; Trump’s nonsensical war, for example, funds Putin’s criminal war of aggression by raising oil prices, but Putin is still unable to win and now lacks excuses for failure. A special superloser charisma, a subjective sense in society or the media that the superloser is somehow a strong man, which makes it harder to describe losses as such, and allows the damage to continue.

snip