The Wall Street op-ed board, ridiculed for years for its flights of right-wing fantasy, has been shocked somewhat closer to reality by the second Trump term. In today's op-ed, they call for the Republican senate to buck Trump and pass sanctions against Putin. Via the WSJ today:
Mr. Trump may be the only person in the world still surprised by how Mr. Putin is behaving. The Russian is the same man he’s been for two decades, bent on reconstituting as much of the old Soviet empire as he can get away with. Ukraine is his obsession. He’s not going to modify his ambitions merely because Mr. Trump alternates between begging for peace and scolding outbursts on social media.
Mr. Trump and his advisers fancy themselves steely-eyed realists on foreign policy. No “neocon” idealism for them. But on Mr. Putin they are starry-eyed idealists, mouthing “peace” as if they can make it happen by wishing it were so. Mr. Trump’s naivete is helping Russia continue the killing as long as Mr. Putin wants.
The good news is that the U.S. Senate still has some genuine realists when it comes to Russia. As GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham writes in a letter nearby, he has 82 co-sponsors on a bill that would hit countries that buy Russian oil and gas with tariff sanctions. Energy sales are Mr. Putin’s financial lifeline. President Biden refused to apply these so-called secondary sanctions, and Mr. Trump can’t make up his mind.
If Mr. Trump signaled that he supports the Graham-Tom Cotton-Richard Blumenthal sanctions bill, it would sail through the Senate. Combined with the promise of more arms to Ukraine when the current supply runs out, these sanctions might change Mr. Putin’s calculations about the price of war. But GOP Senators can act whether or not Mr. Trump approves. They can vote on the sanctions bill, and force the President to face the hard reality of Mr. Putin’s ambitions that Mr. Trump would rather avoid.
Of course, the GOP finds themselves in the position of someone whose muscles have atrophied from years of being in a wheelchair. Will they even be able to stand up to Trump, or will their legs buckle, as seems likely?
And the Journal is under the impression that Trump is a free agent when it comes to Putin, when the past 10 years should have hammered home the reality that he is merely Putin's lapdog, and a Russian asset.
