Trump Russia Capitulation: Stupid, Corrupt, or Vindictive? Why Not All of the Above?
Are you struggling to make sense of President Trump's series of moves to lift sanctions on and import diesel fuel from Russia? The reported reason for the diesel move is that Americans, including key Republican constituencies, are very unhappy with the price of diesel fuel, but every analysis I've seen indicates that adding Russian diesel to the supply will have at most a small marginal impact on price. And indeed, the price of diesel in the U.S. dropped by only about $0.02 per gallon on Trump's announcement, which is hardly surprising given that diesel fuel is sold on a global market. Russia will divert to the U.S. market some diesel fuel it otherwise would have sold to China and other countries that were not applying sanctions, but that doesn't eliminate the demand from those countries, so the net effect on global prices and thus U.S. prices is very small.
In light of the very limited impact on diesel prices, one might wonder what Trump is doing. Why give Putin sanctions relief and get essentially nothing in return--not even an empty promise to stop sharing intelligence with the Iranians attacking U.S. bases, U.S. allies, and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz or to stop attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure (much less the ongoing war crime of bombing apartment buildings)?
A headline in Saturday's New York Times read "Trump Offers Putin Economic Relief in Hopes That Russia Will Return the Favor," but one reads the story in vain for any suggestion that Trump asked Putin for anything. Indeed, the story does not even refer to what "favor" Trump is "hop[ing]" for. It seems that the hoped-for favor is simply that Russia will sell fuel to the U.S., which isn't a favor at all. It's what Russia wanted all along. Trump is not and has never been the great negotiator his ghost-writers claim he is, but this sellout isn't even a bad deal. It's not a deal at all, just a giveaway.
That leads to the suspicion that perhaps the lifting of sanctions isn't actually about lowering diesel prices to help Republican candidates in the midterms but something else. One obvious candidate is corrupt business opportunities for Trump, his family members, and friends, starting with his badly conflicted negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. The NY Times story that revealed the business angle to the oil deal making with Russia states that "[t]here is no indication that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit," but it also includes a crime-family-style graphic indicating how people with close financial ties to Kushner, Witkoff, Trump, and their family members would benefit. The corruption and self-dealing are not hidden.
The fact that Trump's sellout to Russia is corrupt should not rule out other possibilities, which could be complementary. Set aside the possibility that Putin has kompromat on Trump. With this administration, one should never discount stupidity as an explanation for anything. Trump believes tariffs are magical. He discounted the warnings from professional military advisers that attacking Iran would lead to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. His Secretary of Health and Human Services appears to hold at-best medieval views about how diseases function. Thus, it is entirely possible that Trump thought importing a relatively small amount of Russian diesel would very substantially reduce its price for U.S. farmers and truckers, which would in turn help Republican candidates in the midterms. There's no reason why Trump's approach to Russia can't be both corrupt and stupid.
Nor should we rule out a third and also complementary explanation that is characteristic of Trump: vindictiveness. Although Trump has occasionally expressed frustration with Putin, he is more often unhappy with Volodomyr Zelensky and Ukraine for their failure to surrender territory so that Trump, his family members, and cronies can get down to business. He recently said that Zelensky "could have made many deals and for some reason, he never does." Apparently not wishing to give in to a war criminal with no guarantee against further aggression is, to Trump, a mysterious unknown motivation.
One might think that Trump's wish for Zelensky and Ukraine to surrender to Russia is simply an extension of the corruption explanation, and it may well be partly that, but it is also increasingly apparent that Trump harbors personal animosity towards Zelensky. Trump wants Russian oil, so the fact that Zelensky won't agree to stop attacking Russian energy sites without a reciprocal promise from Russia to stop attacking Ukrainian ones is irrelevant to Trump. Because for Trump everything is about domination and subordination, he treats any resistance to him as personal. He cannot fathom that people like Jack Smith, Letitia James, James Comey, or anyone else on his enemies list for opposing him in one way or another might have acted for a reason of principle rather than personal animosity because, lacking a theory of mind, Trump assumes that everyone else takes everything personally in the way that he does. And so for Trump, the fact that a deal with Putin is harmful to Ukraine and thus Zelensky is a feature, not a bug, of the policy.
-- Michael C. Dorf
That may sound like Trump has repeatedly claimed that Zelensky could have ended the war.
Could be about lowering prices but just stupid. Like the Iran war.
Could be pique at Zelensky.