My best guess is that Trump is suggesting aggressive U.S. sanctions on Russia are coming in the increasingly likely event that Putin walks away from a peace deal. Putin never should have offered concessions that he didn’t intend to honor. That’s less a show of disrespect to Ukraine than to President Trump.
Trump seems to be suggesting that, in response, he will start going on the offensive. I doubt that means direct military action from the U.S. but rather aggressive economic pressure. Besides an aggressive application of secondary sanctions, we apparently have the ability to significantly halt Russia’s international trade by shutting down their ability to receive payments through the SWIFT system, which is run jointly by the U.S. and Europe. There may be, and probably are, other sanctions he has in mind that I’m not aware of.
SWIFT isolation has been in place for years. It was evaded.
There are no sanctions that can do anything. Countries will always object to being coerced economically, bristle and consequences unfold much worse than before.
Iran has been sanctioned for decades. Impact on policy? None. Oil is rather more important than sanctions. In the final analysis, sanctions address that substance created whimsically from nothingness known as money.
Oil is joules. There is no whimsy about joules.
My best guess is that Trump is suggesting aggressive U.S. sanctions on Russia are coming in the increasingly likely event that Putin walks away from a peace deal. Putin never should have offered concessions that he didn’t intend to honor. That’s less a show of disrespect to Ukraine than to President Trump.
President Trump is still holding his cards. The biggest one of all: pressuring the EU to stop doing business entirely with Putin’s regime. The “modern” Russian economy will collapse without even limited access to the $30 trillion dollar EU economy that it borders.
Recall Iran recently. Some thought “TACO” Trump was behaving weakly. Then BAM. We know what happened there. Putin regime and its duped fellow travellers best be careful what they wish for.