Perhaps the memory of Senator Lindsey Graham, who died in July at age seventy-one, can accomplish what his presence could not: persuade President Donald Trump that his path to a historic presidency runs through stopping Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revanchist designs in Ukraine and beyond.
The late senator understood something that slips in and out of the president’s grasp. A secure, sovereign, democratic Ukraine—integrated in Western institutions—would be an American strategic triumph worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. Conversely, the United States would pay a generational price for a Ukraine abandoned to Russian coercion, however its terms are packaged.
“The world misses Lindsey Graham, and never more than now as President Trump sides more decidedly with Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine and Europe,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board argued on October 11, after Trump announced that Russia would immediately supply 2.25 million barrels of diesel to the global market. “The late Senator might have been able to persuade the President to avoid this moral and strategic mistake.”
That commentary came a few days before Trump, in the words of the same editorial board, further “stuck a shiv in the back of the legacy” of Graham by waiving new tariffs against the primary purchasers of Russian energy—tariffs contained in a bill named in the late senator’s honor that passed by overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. (The Senate vote was 87-11.)
As always with Trump, it’s important to wait for the show’s next episode before settling on conclusions. The administration appeared to take two steps in the right direction this week. The first was a positive meeting in Oslo involving US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European allies. The second was that Washington and Kyiv appear to have moved past a recent disagreement over intelligence sharing. The next day, Zelenskyy himself said that Ukraine would be open to an agreement that would leave Ukrainian territory under temporary Russian control. These are necessary steps toward peace. Then in St. Petersburg, Putin said that he was prepared “in principle” to resume trilateral talks with the United States and Ukraine before Witkoff praised him as a “humanitarian” after releasing an American imprisoned in Russia.
The Trump administration remains too keen to offer rhetorical gifts and negotiating concessions to the Russian side.
by Atlantic Council – Trump will define his legacy through Russia—one way or the other
