Foreign Affairs
The Origin—and Limits—of Trump’s Ukraine Pivot
Reform does not occur in a political vacuum.
About a month ago, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took a trip to Ukraine to advocate for greater pressure against Russia.
“President Trump said Ukraine doesn’t have good cards…but the world has a lot of cards against Russia,” Graham said. “And one of those cards we have is about to be played in the United States Senate.”
He continued the analogy: “In America you have more than one person at the card table. We have three branches of government, and the House and the Senate are poised to act.”
In other words, the Senator saw himself as working against President Donald Trump’s stated foreign policy agenda regarding Russia and Ukraine. But after the president’s recent announcement that the U.S. will now be sending more weapons to the latter and potentially imposing additional sanctions on the former, both Trump and Graham now appear to be playing for the same team. What changed?
As so often tends to be the case in foreign policy, the answer is almost certainly tied to domestic political considerations.
In March, Graham proposed the Sanctioning Russia Act with the Democratic senator from Connecticut Richard Blumenthal. That legislation would have not only imposed yet another tranche of primary sanctions on Russia primarily focused on its energy export industry, but it would have also levied secondary sanctions on countries such as India, China, and even certain EU states like Slovakia and Hungary that receive Russian energy products; those secondary sanctions include a minimum 500 percent tariff on imports to the United States of products coming from those same countries.
That provocative bill was sidelined while the president attempted to pass his signature budget legislation, the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act. Now Trump seems to be taking a different path to the same end. The president has set a 50-day deadline, before which Russia must renege on its strategic objectives, cede its ability to secure those objectives on the battlefield, and effectively accept political defeat. If those demands are not met, the United States will allegedly impose up to 100 percent tariffs on goods exported to the United States from countries in the Middle East, Asia, and South America who do business with Russia. Most notably, that would include India and China. In a departure from the Senate bill, primary sanctions have not as of yet been threatened by Trump as a possible repercussion.
It is very unlikely Russia will accede to those demands. It is also hard to believe that the president does not recognize that reality, not only due to his instinctive grasp of the war’s dynamics but also the geopolitical wherewithal of many within the administration (many, who also happen to be those who are most loyal to Trump’s reform agenda). So again: What has changed?
For one, avoiding the passage of the Senate bill provides much more flexibility for the president to deal with the war. Maximalist threats followed by moderate compromise are part and parcel of Trump’s approach. Even if one disagrees with the effectiveness of that approach, it is hard to deny that there is a clearly discernable, systematic quality to it. Retaining as much discretionary power in the hands of the executive will allow Trump to haggle his way down from the 100 percent tariff initially proposed—which, considering precedent, will almost certainly happen.
But, as mentioned, domestic political considerations were probably the definitive factor in the recent change in course.
The president’s political agenda first and foremost required the passage of the OBBBA; thus, priority number one was ensuring the necessary votes in a shaky and uncertain Senate. The Graham and Blumenthal sanctions bill has gathered the support of 84 cosponsors in the Senate (51 at the time of its initial introduction in April, growing to 84 this month), including 41 Republicans—many of whom needed to be won over for the landmark bill.
Importantly for many of those Republicans, Trump’s recent announcement that the weapons supplies will increase to Ukraine means an increase in U.S. defense production. While European countries send their own stocks of weapons systems to Ukraine, the United States will sell additional products to those countries in order to restock their inventories. This is certainly a concern for Graham himself. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric all maintain production facilities in South Carolina.
The support of men like Graham—and Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell, whose state also has important ties to the defense industry—was absolutely essential in passing Trump’s OBBBA. Notably, Senator Tom Cotton’s Arkansas maintains one of the primary facilities for the production of the interceptor portion of Patriot missile systems, which is set to be one of the primary systems being sent to Ukraine via Europe.
As such, the apparent change in policy course is not hard to imagine as being the result of backroom dealmaking that won the support of Senate hawks. This is unfortunate for the president’s immediate foreign policy agenda, not to mention for the many losing their lives because of the war’s prolongation. Sanctions and the delivery of additional weapons systems will not change the strategic dynamics. While the increased aerial defense capabilities in the form of Patriot missile batteries specifically will aid Kiev, they will still do nothing to counter the primary factors that compose Russia’s strategic advantage (namely, manpower and industrial capacity).
But such is the world of politics: Reform must take place within the system, and that means prioritization and dealmaking, especially when one is attempting to progress an agenda that goes against the status quo. Reclaiming our national sovereignty begins with securing the border and addressing the immigration crisis, and the OBBBA was an unprecedented step towards that end.
At the same time, bombastic rhetoric aside, Trump does not want a war with Russia—nor does Russia want war with the U.S. One would therefore expect that there are back-channel communications with Moscow ensuring certain red lines will not be crossed. Additional limitations will also be inherent to U.S. provisions, not least due to the fact that significant support is likely needed in the operation and especially targeting of those weapons.
The recent change in tack may very well have been the most realistic option for an executive operating within a hostile system. But it still remains unlikely that Trump will allow his hand to be forced into open hostilities against Russia. Just like with the strikes on Iran, the intention will be to retain a certain image while finding a path to deescalation. This “new” course will therefore likely do little to significantly change the situation on the ground or the general U.S. posture towards the conflict.
This is nonetheless a risky state of affairs. It also raises important questions about sovereignty and political control of American policy, considering that Trump was elected on a platform of reducing U.S. involvement in the Russo–Ukrainian War. Nor should anyone discount unforeseen developments, or cease championing the substantive meaning of a truly sovereign America First agenda.
The post The Origin—and Limits—of Trump’s Ukraine Pivot appeared first on The American Conservative.
