No. of Recommendations: 9
Set aside the "Trump caved into Putin" line because it's the lowest form of 1st order thinking: if you don't get Putin to the table you never have a chance to bargain with him to end the war.
You can negotiate with Putin without giving him a one-on-one summit with POTUS on American soil. That's why this is a huge win for Putin. He gets a very valuable breach of the upper diplomatic isolation and an enormously valuable propaganda tool for use back home. And he didn't have to meet a single pre-condition to have the meeting.
Want to end the bankrolling? Tell Xi and Modi they have a choice - they can do business with Putin or they can do business with us. You guys ready to take the economic hit for that? You want 10% inflation and supply shocks all over the economy?
The same is true for us, and they know it. Xi and Modi know that the U.S. can't go cold turkey on both China and India. And Modi's already made his choice in the "Putin or us" category - in response to Trump's punitive tariffs, his first response was to emphasize the close and important economic relationship India has with Russia. India doesn't want to take the economic hit of losing the U.S. market, but they also don't want to take the economic hit of losing access to Russian energy. Both are bad options....but they'll choose Russia and China over us, if we make them choose. Which only makes China stronger.
China's not dumb, nor are they impatient. They know that Trump can't impose punitive secondary tariffs on everyone that buys oil from Russia, because it would tank the U.S. economy and send the global economy into a recession. They also know that it's not likely that Trump will permanently force India into an "us or them" choice (because it will be "them" and we can't afford the consequences), so they just have to wait until there's a fig leaf that allows Trump to claim some victory but not really change the status quo. And Putin knows that all he needs to do is string Trump along for a while, because the secondary tariffs can't set up an impenetrable wall around Russian oil and Trump really wants something to come from his meddling.
