Drones have rapidly transformed modern war. The U.S. military, supposedly the most sophisticated, best supplied force in history, has been humiliated by Iran, largely thanks to Iran’s effective use of inexpensive drones to menace shipping, energy production, and even U.S. bases.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s growing superiority in drone warfare is increasingly giving it the upper hand over Russia. Given this radical turn of events surely, like various Gulf states, the United States should be eager to make a drone deal with Ukraine, so benefiting from its technology and expertise? But no. Donald Trump has been unwilling to take that path.

U.S. military analysts say that they don’t understand the delay - that they are “mystified.” But is Trump’s unwillingness to make a deal in America’s national interest really a mystery?

It may seem unlikely, but the same underlying reason for inaction can be seen in the administration’s hostility to renewable energy and its desperate, doomed and wasteful effort to revive the coal industry. As usual, we start with the money.

There was a time when “drill, baby, drill” could be portrayed as the best solution. However, in the past few years, major declines in the cost of solar power, wind power, and batteries – for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow - have made renewables the most cost-effective way to generate electricity, at least for America. By contrast, coal is completely unviable.

Yet Trump is trying to block renewable energy projects in any way he can. He has agreed vast compensation payments to schemes in course of development. He has invoked wartime authority to spend $700 million subsidising new power plants using “clean, beautiful” coal. Why?

Part of the answer is big money. Fossil fuel interests were huge supporters of Trump in 2024. It went even further, with various billionaires spending vast amounts promoting boundary change legislation. Anti-renewable, pro-fossil fuel policy is their reward.

So what’s the other part? Machismo: clean energy has become a bogeyman in the culture wars: mining and burning coal are considered “manly” activities, while renewable energy is portrayed as woke and effeminate. Real men don’t worry about silicosis, let alone climate change. So a combination of big money and fragile male egos drives this deranged set of views.

And the same is true for both the Iran debacle and the refusal to learn from the catastrophe by turning to Ukraine. Why was the United States so unprepared for the Iranian drone threat, despite the obvious successes of Ukrainian drones against Russia?

America has a huge, highly profitable defence industry, dedicated to a suite of technologies that are rapidly being rendered obsolete: $4 million for each Patriot missile, that take years to build, are being used to shoot down $35,000 Shahed drones that can be manufactured in months.

In the same way that fossil fuel companies have campaigned against the new realities of energy technology or the tobacco industry persuaded many that its product was not harmful to health, so defence-industry interests are playing a significant role in the Trump administration’s refusal to admit that the rules of war have changed.

After all, a deal with drone-savvy Ukrainians would mean less money going to US defence contractors. And Trump himself is in love with big, expensive weapons as symbols of virility and power.

The Ukrainians have used missiles and naval drones to force Russia’s once-vaunted Black Sea Fleet to cower in a fortified refuge. Trump though is still pushing for giant “Trump-class” battleships, even though they would be sitting ducks in a modern war.

But Trump doesn’t want to give up his fantasy of macho military power - drones don’t really give the right impression. Major cognitive dissonance would be involved in the recognition of the drone revolution in warfare by Trump and his inner circle.

Pete Hegseth has been in the forefront of the attack on capable military officers he considers insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump and his agenda. Beyond those loyalty tests, he has exalted the importance of “warrior ethos” and physical fitness, as if he were leading the Spartans into battle, rather than a high-tech military.

It’s true that Hegseth recently admitted that the U.S. has learned from Ukraine. But an admission that his entire conception of military might was wrong is obviously  a step too far.

And Trump is especially unwilling to learn from Ukraine. After all, he cut off aid to Ukraine following his assertion that Zelensky held none of the cards. He has now been humiliated by Ukraine’s demonstration that it does indeed hold very valuable cards, and is refusing to lose the war. Admitting that he needs Ukrainian help would be a further humiliation.

And Donald Jr and Eric are in the drone business. So he can't turn to Ukraine for drones when there's grift to be had. In military strategy as in energy policy, Trump is at the service of money and machismo.

When Trump took office, he issued executive orders supposedly putting an end to wokeness and Diversity, Equality and Inclusion programmes.

But the worship of machismo is more widespread than in the circle containing Trump and his coterie of acolytes. Machismo features heavily in the propaganda of the far right. Commentators say that the online ecosystems frequented by this movement are rife with rhetoric and visual content explicitly rooted in misogyny.

The far right is fixated on the idea of “natural” gender roles, with men cast as the protectors of white (Christian) identity in their countries and their women as fragile victims needing to be defended and returned to their ‘traditional’ roles.

This runs alongside anti-democratic narratives – including the promotion of the need for a strongman as a ruler. All this reinforces the violent world-view of far-right extremism and white supremacy.

It makes a big deal of the need to defend borders against the inflow of immigrants, those accused of being responsible for the dilution of the natural ethos of ‘white’ countries.

A very popular falsehood among the far right has been that security is defined by masculinity, and that Russia is the apex of this ideal. Senator Ted Cruz equated diversity to a U.S. military filled with “pansies.” And in Congress Matt Gaetz admonished the U.S. military for falling behind in capabilities and strategy because of “mandatory pronoun training” and other “woke-ism” causes. It was claimed that he would be proven right should the “ranks of wokeness” have to meet Russia on the battlefield.

Events in Ukraine have exposed how hollow this thinking always was. Women make up an estimated 15 percent of Ukraine’s armed forces and contribute heavily to non-combatant support roles. Ukrainian LGBT soldiers are participating in combat operations and fighting for their country. In reforming its military, Ukraine did not look eastward to Russia and a bare-chested Putin on his horse, but instead looked West toward NATO.

Embracing NATO’s values and rules has paid dividends for Ukraine, in contrast to Russia’s ever-mounting death toll and low morale. In Ukraine, the world can see on display the weakness of Russia’s antiquated concept of the power of machismo.

The far right assured their followers of the primacy of hyper-masculine military supremacy, but with Russia’s poor military performance this looks ever more fanciful.

The military balance of power at the outset of the war was obviously in Russia’s favour, so making the Kremlin’s military losses even more shocking to observers all over the world. Shocking, that is, to everyone apart from Mr Trump who has decided to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence by staging the ultimate in machismo, a cage fight on the White House lawn.

10 June 2026

Paul Buckingham