When will Donald Trump drop the hammer on Vladimir Putin?

While I think Donald Trump deserves some credit for foreign policy, he's got a huge blind spot that he hasn't fixed. It's called Putin's Russia and it better get fixed or it'll become the biggest stain on President Trump's foreign policy legacy. He hates the killing from both sides. I'll accept that as his honest position. MacArthur ended WWII by unleashing the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Critics said this wasn't a proportional response. That's true. It wasn't proportional. Regardless, WWII ended a few days later when Japan surrendered. Thanks to those bombs getting dropped, thousands of U.S. lives were saved. MacArthur was about protecting U.S. lives before Trump saved U.S. lives.

Trump's repeatedly said that the war wouldn't have started if he'd been president. That's a statement of fact, IMO. It's utterly irrelevant, though. Trump inherited the Russia-Ukraine war. That makes it Trump's war whether he likes it or not. If Trump doesn't tell Putin that this war endsby the end of this week, Putin will keep stringing him along. The war might still be going when he turns over the keys to the Oval Office to Marco Rubio.

President Reagan wouldn't have let things get this far. When asked by a reporter what his strategy for the Soviet Union was, President Reagan replied "Simple. We win, they lose." Inserting Trump into that situation likely would've produced this reply: "Simple. Let's create a deal where everyone get rich."

If you put President Reagan into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Reagan likely would've sent a back-channel communication to Putin telling Putin that his days wqere numbered if he didn't stop the his aggression. The first time that Putin talked nice to President Reagan during the day, then bombed Ukraine by night, would've been his last time of playing Reagan. Reagan would've loaded up Ukraine with ofensive weapons, then told Ukraine to unleash the dogs. Settle this immediately. Russia would've crumbled.

This op-ed is just another rehash of Trump. If Trump truly wanted peace soon, he could have it. He just couldn't attain it by his usual negotiating tactics. To stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Reaganite policies are required. Once the Russians collapse, then the U.S. can neogtiate for Russia's minerals and fossil fuel assets.

This is the heart of President Reagan's historic "Evil Empire" speech:

Here's part of the text of Reagan's speech:

The truth is that a freeze now would be a very dangerous fraud, for that is merely the illusion of peace. The reality is that we must find peace through strength.

I would a-[Applause continuing]…I would agree to a freeze if only we could freeze the Soviets’ global desires.

A freeze at current levels of weapons would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major arms reductions which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve their objectives through the freeze.

Reagan understood that the Soviets would always have expansionist tendencies. I don't think Trump would admit that. Then there's this:

It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable “Screwtape Letters,” wrote: “The greatest evil is not done now…in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is…not even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result, but it is conceived and ordered; moved, seconded, carried and minuted in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."

W0ell, because these "quiet men" do not "raise their voices," because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before them, they’re always making "their final territorial demand," some would have us accept them at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if history teaches anything, it teaches that simpleminded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

Reagan finished that part of his Evil Empire Spech by saying this:

So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I’ve always believed that old Screwtape reserved his best efforts for those of you in the Church. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride–the temptation of blithely..uh..declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

Pray that Trump learns how to become a Reaganite. We definitely need that with Putin.