The Long Con Comes To An End
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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United States government sanctions
11 min read
The article's central argument revolves around the Trump administration's failure to implement secondary sanctions on countries buying Russian oil. Understanding what secondary sanctions are and how they differ from primary sanctions is essential context for grasping the geopolitical stakes being discussed.
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International sanctions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
15 min read
The article discusses oil sanctions and weapons aid in the context of the Ukraine conflict. This Wikipedia article provides comprehensive background on the sanctions regime that has been built up since 2022, giving readers the full context of what the author claims Trump is undermining.
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China–Russia relations
14 min read
The author mentions Chinese companies buying Russian oil and hints this deserves its own piece. The broader China-Russia relationship, particularly energy trade, is crucial context for understanding how Russia has circumvented Western sanctions and why secondary sanctions on China would be significant.
Yesterday, Friday 21 November, ended up being one kind of day but it was supposed to be another. 21 November, in case you had forgotten, was supposed to be the day that the Trump Administration levelled crippling secondary sanctions on Chinese, Indian and Turkish companies that buy Russian oil. Indeed, the Treasury Department even hinted earlier this week that those secondary were ready to go. It capped off six weeks of a frenzy of reporting about how Trump was going to really hit Putin hard. Piles of articles (many of which had a fundamentally flawed understanding of the oil markets) were written about how Trump’s sanctions were real this time. Even The Bulwark, fell for this con, and we saw a hopelessly naive article by Cathy Young about how Trump really was going to hurt Putin this time.
Well, yesterday came and went and, drumroll please….no secondary sanctions have been announced. Now, Chinese, Indian and Turkish oil companies can get back to business buying as much Russian oil as they want/can. Soon Russia will be making more than they were.
btw, the Chinese probably never stopped buying Russian oil, but that is a piece for another day.
Instead, what actually happened on November 21 was that the Trump Administration came for Ukraine—as they always intended to do. The Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, a very close associate of VP JD Vance, went to Kyiv and tried to bully the Ukrainians into accepting Trump’s 28 Point Plan to neuter Ukraine. Driscoll formally presented the plan to divide Ukraine now, and end it later, and the reality of what Ukraine and Europe was facing finally sunk in. Here was how the Atlantic story on the meeting began.
The most depressing thing from the above story was that the diplomat was surprised at what the administration was doing; or I should say that the unnamed diplomat had fallen for the Trump Administration’s long con. The long con was that they would ever do anything meaningful to hurt Putin and help Ukraine, that somehow they were honest brokers in this war. They never were. They have always wanted Putin to get the best deal possible and they have always wanted to severely weaken Ukraine. Whatever steps the administration took to seem
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