The Wall Street Journal Opinion | Rethinking Trump and the Ukraine War Opinion by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. • 17h • 4 min read

 The Wall Street Journal 

Opinion | Rethinking Trump and the Ukraine War

Opinion by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. • 17h • 4 min read

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If toning down the hysteria is the mission of the moment after the Donald Trump shooting, will our intelligence agencies get the message?

Four days earlier, an anonymous official served up the intel community’s quadrennial hysteria about Kremlin online activity aimed at U.S. voters. This activity is so microscopic amid the social-media deluge that the only people who notice it are the CIA and NSA nerds who ferret it out.

“We haven’t observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections,” intoned an unnamed “senior official.” Cue the headline: “Russia Seeks to Boost Trump in 2024 Election.”

In the real world if Mr. Putin has a favorite—and he said publicly he prefers Joe Biden—he now knows his trolling driblets aren’t useful. Their only effect comes when Russia’s online efforts are noticed and highlighted by U.S. intelligence agencies and media outlets, resulting in headlines like the one above.

It might seem stupid of U.S. intelligence to play Russia’s game, but the goal—at least before the assassination attempt—was influencing U.S. politics, not Russia’s.

These efforts have been a particularly pernicious contributor to a witless polemic about Mr. Trump and Ukraine, promoted by analysts who, unfathomably, think they advance Ukraine’s cause in the U.S. by painting a likely U.S. president and his 75 million voters as supporters of Mr. Putin.

Related video: Ukraine Army Unit 'Tried To Kill' Trump After Putin? 'Should Have Looked For Better Shooter' (The Times of India)

As little as he has said, Mr. Trump has actually spoken more clearly than the Biden administration. His words, actions and history point to an outcome little different from the one Mr. Biden has been passively anticipating at least since Gen. Mark Milley let the cat out of the bag in November 2022.

That outcome is a negotiated cease-fire, with or without settlement of the underlying issues.

Mr. Trump’s few words also described the rational procedure any interlocutor would follow, including the Biden administration if not for its determination to avoid setting any expectations by which it could be judged.

That rational procedure is to threaten Mr. Putin with higher costs than his war is worth to him.

Why focus on this now? Because the war doesn’t wait on the U.S. presidential cycle, or on a commander in chief who’s available only between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

 MIRVs—ballistic missiles with multiple warheads—to North Korea, his country’s stepped-up campaign of rent-a-crook factory attacks in Western Europe, even his silly diplomatic attempt to link Hunter Biden with the terrorist attack on a Moscow concert.

Mr. Putin’s message to fellow Russians has been, Shut up, the war isn’t your problem. His incentives, in my estimation, change radically if, with no end in sight, Russia finds itself fighting as much on its own territory as Ukraine’s. That’s where we’ve gotten in the wake of his failed Kharkiv push.

Mr. Biden didn’t phrase it the way I would have. But at his NATO press conference, the heavily scripted president made a point of musing on whether it would “make sense” to give President Zelensky “the capacity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin.”

His answer for now, “no,” likely rang less of a bell in the Kremlin than a U.S. president putting these targets on the table.

Mr. Putin’s war, by any standard, has been a geopolitical disaster for Russia, contrary to the galling eagerness of some on the U.S. right to proclaim “Putin is winning.”

I won’t rehearse the reasons. At the moment, he’s spending soldiers on the Kharkiv front faster than his army can recruit them. Tellingly, as Mr. Putin admits, the goal no longer is gaining ground but shielding Russia’s homeland from Ukrainian attack even with the limited NATO weapons now permitted. Mr. Putin’s hope of significant territorial gain is kaput, says the latest U.S. intelligence assessment.

These straws were in the wind. I started plumping for President Harris even before Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance. Mr. Biden is the wrong president at the wrong time. A doddering U.S. president isn’t an image that sells an outcome to either side’s requisite constituents, especially not to Ukrainians, who will need strong backing by the U.S. as long as Mr. Putin or anyone like him remains in power.

Which brings me to my big concern. A deal might be possible and yet the signal wouldn’t emerge from the parties because they judge the U.S. incapable of delivering. At times like this you might wish there were more Trump in the Biden administration—a firm idea (however imperfect) of what it wants, the ability to sniff out a deal, the fortitude and confidence to pursue it.

The Ukrainian war was only ever going to end one way, and it serves all to make the day sooner rather than later.