Change the Menu, Mr. President: No More Tacos

Last night, Russia launched its largest drone attack yet in its war against Ukraine. Vladimir Putin does not want peace, he wants victory. And, as China’s ceremonial flexing this week emphasized, he’s not the only one. If President Trump wants to be the peace president, time is running out.

A lot of people enjoy seeing the president strike out in attempts at a Nobel Peace Prize as much as I love it when the Cubs strike out. That’s not me. We will all be better off if someday even the deepest skeptic sees him as a “peace president.”

So, my point here isn’t to gloat or mock, but to think of what needs to happen if what is good for all of us is actually going to happen.

Let’s review where we’ve been.

I am not going to waste ink on the president’s promise to end the Russia-Ukraine war on day one. It was foolish, unhelpful campaign rhetoric, but no sane person actually believed it, whether we supported the president or not.

I don’t think President Trump did, either. He simply believed the end of the war could be reached quickly. He believed the only issue was that Ukraine wasn’t ready to compromise. Like a board to “a mule” — their words, not mine — the administration sought to bend the embattled country to eagerness for compromise rather than justice. Kyiv was punished for not immediately bending in complete submission.

I’ve previously condemned Trump’s infamous Oval Office maneuver, but at a coldly calculating level, Trump got what he wanted. In the American president’s dressing down of his Ukrainian counterpart, his outrage was over Zelenskyy insisting on protections for his country before seeking a ceasefire.

Time and again over these past months, Trump has argued for doing whatever it takes — even if it rewards an evil act or risks a recurrence down the road — to simply end the killing. Faced with little choice, President Zelenskyy agreed to the risky strategy of an unconditional ceasefire after previously resisting the idea, softened his security requests and started spending more time giving the American president praise.

Thanks in part to First Lady Melania Trump also speaking up on Ukraine’s behalf to mollify her husband, that proved temporarily enough.

I’ll confess I suspect a lot of the bluster felt like it was because Trump wanted Zelenskyy to kiss the ring and praise him, but for the sake of the argument, let’s grant Trump was sincere and really did just think a bend-to-Putin approach was the only way to stop the killing. Even if so, by telegraphing “the killing must stop at any cost” so loudly, the Art of the Deal author has committed the ultimate negotiating faux pas. He told his opponent how much he was willing to pay.

Putin’s correct read on Trump has been proven over and over. The former KGB agent dangles a promise of an end to the killing, says something nice about Trump (or — even better — unkind about Biden) and any bravado Trump has mustered melts. Much as Wall Street joked Trump Always Chickens Out — TACO — on implementing his full tariff plan, Moscow clearly believes a slight bit of diced tomato of promised peace and cilantro of 2020 conspiracy can put Trump’s annoyance on siesta.

Trump wants it to be true so badly, he willingly plays Charlie Brown to Putin’s football holding Lucy. If Kyiv or our other allies react less excitedly, the frustration that should have been directed at Moscow gets redirected towards our reliable friends instead.

This has been the loop turned on repeat, though there was a ray of hope this summer where President Trump seemed to see that Putin wasn’t serious. He started to support the idea of using his favorite cudgel — tariffs — against the rabid bear. Combined with NATO allies’ offers to make a huge business deal buying American weapons for Ukraine and it looked like we could be getting somewhere.

Maybe America will finally treat the victim as the victim, rather than acting like it had any choice in the matter of being attacked. The president knows the better recipe.

Unfortunately, while the president hasn’t minded slapping tariffs on friends like Canada, the offer of a new chance to kick the football with Putin always gets in the way of such with Russia. Perhaps TACO isn’t always true, but it does seem like the president is fond of Mexican cuisine when he can put Russian dressing on it.

There have been too many times consequences for Russia were two weeks away, but the weeks went by and the consequences didn’t materialize. Trump has made “two weeks” a euphemism for “something I don’t want to do, so I’ll kick it down the road.” There was a lingering hope that he’d also promised a fifty day deadline. Unlike his menagerie of unfulfilled two week threats on various subjects, the Iranians can confirm Trump’s sixty day threat to them had teeth.

So, Trump can respond against both allies and small roguish states. His administration can even blow up small drug cartel boats. Not everything he says is a taco mix.

Alas, when it comes to Ukraine, that elusive peace and illusive opportunity to get Putin to play ball turn even fifty days into merely a longer two weeks. Over two weeks after the Alaska summit with Putin, which Trump said needed to conclude with a ceasefire or there’d be consequences; two days after the post-summit two-week deadline expired and two days after the end of his fifty-day threat, where are we? The president might really get very mad if Putin doesn’t eventually somehow kinda shape up.

Trump may finally see that Putin is playing him at his weakest point. I must say President Trump’s Truth post yesterday in response to Putin and Kim Jung-un joining Xi Jinping for Chinese festivities is one of my favorite things he’s uttered.

The administration has rightly recognized that China is an even greater threat than Russia. But they are connected threats, as my own colleague, Dennis E. Powell, wrote several years ago. Russia may not be as much of a direct threat as China, but Russia is China’s test dummy. For our sake and for the world’s sake, Xi needs to see Moscow come back broken and battered from its malevolence.

If Russia’s conquest works, even mostly, Xi will surely bring his own wars of subjugation against neighbors. Those will start with Taiwan and be executed with greater competence. And they will not stop with Taiwan.

The President’s post stated that the Russian and North Korean leaders were “conspir[ing] against The United States” in their show of unity with China. This might be the most on point foreign policy observation he’s ever uttered. But what of it?

Saying it is a good start, but left without any corresponding military or economic consequence, he might as well have muttered something about “two weeks” in the quip. China is not scared. Putin, by launching his largest ever drone attack last night, made it clear he was unfazed. And Kim, well, he’s Kim.

Yes, Mr. President, the Axis of Evil is conspiring against our country and all of the peace-seeking world. But they need to know your words aren’t just the latest taco bowl.

You know the better recipe. Now it’s time to cook it. You need to serve up crippling secondary sanctions against anyone who will help fund Russia’s war machine (including China). You need to pour the best weapons into Ukraine so Russia is not only starved of future funding, but also robbed of any present battlefield advantage.

If you don’t change the menu, they’ll keep passing the salsa. A salsa of innocent blood to season the very world war you say you want to avoid.