>>513403199
>Trump needs to call John Thune and ask him to pass an Act of Congress to impose further sanctions on Russia for not making concessions...
There are multiple problems with this idea:
1. That loses the PR war, not only at home but abroad. Trump is asserting that we only want peace, and the Senate bill even explicitly attempts to tie sanctions to peace itself rather than concessions. The Government would need to lie to the American people and falsely claim that Russia is completely unwilling to make peace, which is not true, in order to use this bill.
2. If Russia offers to make peace with concessions, then we actually would still not activate sanctions via that bill.
3. The bill is an emergency measure with extremely harsh conditions that primarily affect other countries, rather than Russia. By imposing sanctions on random countries like Japan, UK, etc. that have already made trade deals with the US, we would sacrifice our trade deals which we have worked so hard to establish in favor of Russia sanctions. Again, this loops back to point 1: You need an extremely good reason for this bill.
4. The war is lost on the ground as far as these territories are concerned. If the Ukraine wants to continue to fight for them, then they can make more concessions later. However, we have no reason to continue fighting a war that Russia is willing to end today.
5. Pence explicitly argues against the "velvet glove" of ending economic warfare against Russia. Russia argues that peace is impossible without this condition, as a continued trade war would lead to another ground war, and insists that there must be a US-Russia trade deal as part of the peace settlement. The fact is that Russia already won this conflict. They aren't going to surrender Crimea because Trump imposed sanctions on Japan or Mongolia.