Trump Offers Putin Economic Relief in Hopes That Russia Will Return the Favor
I find the strangest part of this story to be the unspoken assumption that Putin will behave like a rational actor. The administration seems to be betting that if you give Moscow economic breathing room, it will somehow reward you with better behavior or at least not embarrass you before November. That's a game theory model where everyone reads the same rulebook, but the history of this relationship suggests the rulebook is written in disappearing ink.
I'd want to know what the actual conditions of this waiver are. Is it a blanket pardon or a narrow carve-out? Because the difference matters. A narrow carve-out is just politics doing its usual ugly business. A blanket waiver is something else entirely, a signal that the price of gasoline at home outweighs any principle of accountability abroad.
I keep coming back to the timing. Waiving sanctions a month before an election is like moving a chess piece in plain sight and hoping nobody notices the board changed. The voters might not track the details, but they feel the price at the pump, and that's the whole game. It's cynical, but it's also strangely honest about how power actually works.