As Russia grows bolder with its acts of aggression, the American president continues to react like a detached observer with limited agency instead of the leader of a global superpower.
The incursion of Russian military drones into Polish airspace during an assault on neighboring Ukraine last week has all the signs of another escalation of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist activity. Poland, with the assistance of multiple allied nations, shot down the drones and invoked Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty in order to prompt consultation with allies. The North Atlantic Council met to discuss the situation last week, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has said the allies “will closely monitor the situation along our eastern flank, our air defences continually at the ready.”
Yet President Donald Trump, leader of the most powerful NATO country, seems to be watching developments unfold much like the rest of the public. “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Trump posted Wednesday morning on his Truth Social account.
In a significant way, the NATO response to this escalation is a vindication of Trump’s insistence that our European allies invest more in their own militaries to counter and contain threats to the alliance. It’s also a sign that the “restraint” camp within the Trump administration holds sway in pointing foreign policy toward shifting the burden of European problems onto Europe.
Trump’s apparent detachment is at odds, however, with two of his own impulses. The first is to get personally involved in dealing with strongmen like Putin—see last month’s Alaska summit. The second is to appear unpredictable and threatening on the world stage, leaving adversaries and allies alike unsure of what he might do next.
Trump’s Saturday post on Truth Social embodies this contradiction. In what he called a “letter” to the leaders of other nations, Trump offered a renewed threat to Russia while nevertheless placing the burden on our European allies: “I am ready to do major Sanctions on Russia when all NATO Nations have agreed, and started, to do the same thing, and when all NATO Nations STOP BUYING OIL FROM RUSSIA.”
There’s a limit to the effectiveness of Trump’s crazy-like-a-fox posturing toward Russia, and Putin’s continued truculence in Ukraine and Eastern Europe is testing it. The Russian president has nearly a decade of history that might lead him to be optimistic that Trump won’t follow through on this latest sanctions threat even if the other NATO countries step up themselves. From the Syrian civil war in his first term to the Ukraine war in his second, Trump has demonstrated a consistent discomfort in taking on Russia directly, following up countless ultimata with inaction or half-measures.
Consider Trump’s confused approach to challenging Russia in his first term, particularly in the chief proxy theater of Syria. Trump’s policy on that country’s long and bloody civil war was as messy as that of his predecessor, Barack Obama. There were moments of action in Syria, including two missile strikes, one in 2017 and one in 2018, on forces loyal to Russian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after Assad launched chemical weapons attacks on his own citizens. But by the end of 2018, Trump announced a plan to withdraw American troops, which had been on the ground in Syria since the Obama administration to fight against the Islamic State’s expansion in the country. That decision prompted the departure of Trump’s first defense secretary, James Mattis, who had urged the president to reconsider even as he tendered his resignation.
The drawdown of U.S. troops allowed Syrian and Russian forces to move into and reestablish Assad’s control of much of the northern part of the country. Trump’s partial reversal of the withdrawal in the fall of 2019, which kept roughly 1,000 American troops in the country to counter the Islamic State, did little to challenge Russia’s position in Syria, and the final year of Trump’s first term consisted of increasing tensions between American and Russian forces there.
And on the diplomatic side, Trump talked a bigger game than he played with respect to Russia. In April 2018, following the second of Assad’s major chemical attacks, Trump himself (along with members of his administration) indicated tough economic sanctions on Russia were forthcoming. A day later, however, Trump appeared to change his mind. “We’ll do sanctions as soon as they very much deserve it,” he later said.
The first Trump administration did periodically enforce sanctions on Russian individuals and entities over everything from election interference to its aggression toward Ukraine. But the president often resisted following through, even defying Congress at times. Trump sometimes publicly expressed his concerns about Congress tying his hands on “negotiations” with Russia by imposing such sanctions, and in 2018, Trump declined to implement new sanctions on countries that purchased weapons from Russia.
The situation with Russia changed in between Trump’s terms with the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but Trump’s refusal to follow through on threats has been remarkably consistent.
Days after he was inaugurated in January, Trump threatened Russia specifically with “Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions” if an end to the war could not be reached. In April, Trump made a new threat of sanctions against Russia and those who buy Russian oil. He followed that with more threats in July. This time, Trump offered Putin “50 days” to reach a ceasefire in Ukraine or face economic penalties. Days later, Trump shortened that window to “10 to 12 days.” And in August, shortly before the summit with Putin in Alaska, Trump once again threatened “very severe consequences” for Putin if there was no end to the fighting.
However, the administration has imposed almost none of these threatened sanctions and tariffs, ostensibly to preserve the opportunity for negotiations. In the interim, there’s been no lasting cessation of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, and after the fruitless Alaska meeting, no further negotiations. So even if Trump gets what he says he wants—more pressure on Russia from our European NATO allies—nothing in this fact pattern suggests Trump will execute his umpteenth sanctions threat.
Again, inducing those allies to act may be part of the plan to leave the Russia-Ukraine conflict for the Europeans to sort out. But if that’s the case, why make the threats at all? Trump appears to want all of the glory of brokering a conclusion to the war without doing any of the work to place pressure on the aggressor. Good luck with that.
