President Donald Trump has made clear that his top foreign policy priority is ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, and his motive seems to be a genuinely moral one. On Thursday, the president accurately described the World War I-style killing fields that now litter eastern Ukraine.
Much of the commentary surrounding Trump’s peace ambitions has focused on Ukraine. Trump has said he intends to reduce military aid to Ukraine and restrict Ukrainian strikes into Russia with U.S.-provided weapons. Trump and his Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, have also indicated that Ukraine will have to make territorial concessions, albeit in return for an internationally enforced demilitarized zone that deters any prospective Russian invasion five or 15 years down the road. France, the United Kingdom, and Eastern European allies have suggested they will provide troops for this DMZ.
Less focus, however, has fallen on Trump’s plan to leverage Russian President Vladimir Putin to enjoin compromise-minded sincerity at the peace table. The general commentariat expectation in Washington, one never shared by this writer, is that Trump would gift Putin with the deal of his dreams.
Trump is now strongly indicating that expectation was badly misplaced.
Russia had hoped that Trump would end the war simply by cutting off aid to Ukraine and pressuring European allies to do the same. This was the recommendation that Russia’s de facto proxy in the European Union, and Trump’s most duplicitous foreign friend, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, had been whispering into Trump’s ear. But Trump is taking a different path.
Consider what Trump has said since entering office on Monday. In a Wednesday social media post, he called on Putin to “STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.” While there are a few areas of the Russian economy yet to be sanctioned by the U.S., the most important line in Trump’s statement is the “and various other participating countries.”
That’s a clear reference to what are known as secondary sanctions. In this case, Trump is making an apparent threat to sanction nations such as China, India, and Turkey that continue to provide Russia with a crucial export market even as Western sanctions have greatly reduced its total exports. Until now, the U.S. has generally held off imposing those sanctions. But any change in that situation would greatly increase pressure on Russia’s already creaking economy. Contrary to claims that Russia has thrived amid Western sanctions, its currency is collapsing, its inflation rate is soaring, and its diversion of human and industrial capital to its war machine has greatly weakened a private sector that was already fragile before the February 2022 start of the war.
But that’s only half of the unpleasant message Trump has sent to Putin this week.
Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Trump also made clear that he wants to leverage global oil prices to pressure Putin. Trump did so by calling on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to cut oil prices, presumably by increasing output or using his influence to negotiate OPEC cartel price cuts. Trump explicitly outlined that this would help end the war in Ukraine. Bin Salman seems interested in bolstering relations with the U.S. under Trump, so it is not inconceivable that he would take the president’s recommendation. This would be a big deal. Putin is almost totally dependent on energy exports for his remaining export revenue generation.
In turn, we’re beginning to see the intersection of Trump’s domestic energy agenda and his foreign policy ambitions. Trump has promised to unleash U.S. domestic energy development and increase energy exports. That’s very welcome news to European nations which, having cut off Russian energy supplies in response to the invasion of Ukraine, face extremely high energy prices and associated domestic political pressures. Former President Joe Biden foolishly prioritized environmental lobby interests over energy support to these allies. But Trump now seems set to adopt the alternate approach, helping secure Europe with cheaper energy. And as U.S. energy exports increase, the U.S. can also undercut Russian exports to its existing markets.
Of crucial benefit to Trump, Russia simply cannot afford a long-term struggle with the U.S. in the energy-sanctions domain. Unlike the U.S., Russian exports basically begin and end with energy. But even here, Russia’s weakness isn’t rooted simply in U.S.-Russia divergences in energy output and market access. It’s also that Russia’s energy industry is increasingly unproductive, struggling with increased corruption and lost access to high-tech industrial parts it needs to keep running. In contrast, the U.S. energy industry is the world’s most productive, and it now has an ardent ally in the White House.
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We’re only in Trump’s first week, and, bearing in mind the president’s penchant for dramatic rhetorical and policy shifts, anything could happen next week.
Still, Trump is joining American nationalist interest in a strong economy with bold leadership that serves his interest in justly ending a brutal war. Putin isn’t liking it.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
