The spectacle of American foreign policy is essentially a series of expensive re-runs, and we are currently being forced to endure a particularly tiresome episode. Donald Trump, a man whose understanding of international diplomacy begins and ends with whose name is printed in the largest font on the marquee, has decided that the way to resolve a grueling, blood-soaked conflict in Ukraine is to tinker with the price of a barrel of Urals crude. It is the ultimate expression of the American delusion: the belief that every soul on this planet has a price tag, and if you just squeeze the wallet hard enough, the ideology, the history, and the stubborn malice of an adversary will simply evaporate. It is a quaint notion, the kind of logic you would expect from someone who thinks a steak is ‘fine dining’ only if it is served in a building he happens to own.

These new sanctions on Russian oil are being touted as the definitive ‘pressure’ needed to force a peace deal. It is a masterpiece of performative economics. The goal, ostensibly, is to deprive the Kremlin of the petrodollars it uses to fuel its war machine. But let us look at the reality through a lens unclouded by the desperate need for ‘hope’ that seems to plague the American electorate. Sanctions are, historically speaking, the geopolitical equivalent of a ‘Keep Off the Grass’ sign in the middle of a riot. They are designed to make the person imposing them feel righteous while having almost no impact on the person receiving them—provided that person has enough nuclear weapons and a population sufficiently accustomed to suffering to ignore the inconvenience of a devalued currency.

On the Left, we see the usual choreographed outrage. For years, these people treated the mere mention of Russia as a gateway to treason, yet now that the Orange King is actually attempting to strangulate the Russian economy, they find themselves in an awkward position. They cannot applaud him—that would violate the primary directive of their personality-based politics—so they instead pivot to fretting about the ‘global market volatility’ or the ‘humanitarian impact.’ It is a beautiful dance of hypocrisy. They want Putin defeated, but they also want their artisanal coffee to remain under seven dollars. They want ‘action,’ but they shudder at the thought of a world where the United States is not the primary consumer of everything, regardless of who produces it.

On the Right, the situation is even more pathetic. The ‘America First’ crowd, which usually spends its time LARPing as isolationists and complaining about ‘forever wars,’ is now cheering for economic warfare. They believe Trump is some sort of tactical genius who can simply tell the global oil market to behave, as if Brent Crude were a contestant on a mid-2000s reality show. They ignore the fact that Russia has spent the better part of a decade ‘sanction-proofing’ its economy, building shadow fleets of tankers that move oil like high-schoolers move cheap gin. To the MAGA faithful, this isn’t a complex geopolitical maneuver; it is just another episode of ‘Winning,’ regardless of how many allies we alienate or how much we destabilize the very global order they claim to despise.

And then there is the man himself. The prospect of a ‘peace deal’ is the ultimate carrot for a narcissist. Trump does not care about the borders of Ukraine or the nuances of Eastern European sovereignty; he cares about the photo op. He wants the Nobel Peace Prize that he feels was stolen from him by a world that refuses to acknowledge his brilliance, and he is willing to rattle the cage of the global energy market to get it. But the ‘pressure’ he is applying is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of his opponent. Vladimir Putin is not a real estate developer who can be intimidated by a lawsuit or a lien. He is a man who views history in centuries, not fiscal quarters. He knows that the West’s attention span is shorter than a TikTok video and that eventually, the domestic cry for ‘cheap gas’ will drown out the moral cry for ‘justice.’

The suggestion that Trump ‘may have to go further’ is the most telling part of the narrative. What does ‘further’ look like in a globalized world? A total embargo? A complete decoupling of the Russian energy sector from the rest of the planet? That isn’t a peace strategy; it is a suicide pact. The global economy is a tangled web of dependencies, and pulling one thread—especially one as thick as Russian oil—does not just hurt the target. It unravels the whole sweater. But in the halls of power, both in the White House and the Kremlin, the men at the top are too busy measuring their legacies to notice that the basement is flooding.

Ultimately, this is just more noise in a world that is already deafening. Whether these sanctions ‘work’ or not is irrelevant to the larger truth: humanity is governed by idiots who believe that numbers on a Bloomberg terminal can override the primal urge for conquest. We are watching a slow-motion car crash and arguing about the color of the bumper. The Left will blame Trump, the Right will blame the ‘Deep State,’ and the rest of us will just keep paying more at the pump for the privilege of watching two geriatric titans play ‘The Price is Right’ with the fate of the world. It’s not diplomacy; it’s a tragedy written by a hack comedian.