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.
