Trump is the best chance Putin has to bring this fiasco to a close and re-integrate his economy with the Western world. He’d be an absolute fool to try Trump’s patience too far.
“Trump is the best chance Putin has to bring this fiasco to a close and re-integrate his economy with the Western world.”
Trump hasn’t offered that. And as for trying Trump’s patience too much, there are limits to what we can do. We have done the “nuclear option” sanctions. We are at the limit of attacks we can do inside Russia without getting nuked.
We can try sanctions against anyone who does business with Russia...and then we will have sanctions against Singapore, India, Brazil, Turkey, China, Mexico, etc.
And then there is that sticky problem. Whatever they agree to now is what they will have forever and the president and a future Congress will probably want the neocon thing on again. Last, all of the EU is braying to throw gasoline on the war.
There are some hard realities as to why Putin is not simply obeying.