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President Donald Trump put Russian President Vladimir Putin on a 50-day clock. To drive Putin to a deal on Ukraine, Trump has a new plan: massive air defenses backed up by the Trump doctrine, where rade wins wars. But what’s truly at stake is Trump’s unique vision for U.S. power and prosperity.
In the Oval Office with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday, July 14, Trump announced more U.S. aid to Ukraine and a 100% tariff to hit Russia’s oil customers like China by early September.
"I use trade for a lot of things ... it’s good for settling wars," Trump said. Trump cited the example of how he employed trade threats to simmer down India and Pakistan in May.
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However, as he said Monday, "The only one we haven’t been able to get to yet is Russia."
Ukrainian servicemen of the 21st Separate Mechanized Brigade fire a Leopard 2A6 tank during a military exercise, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near a front line in Donetsk region, Ukraine May 12, 2024. (REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/ File Photo)
So, Trump has turned up the heat. The 100% tariffs would hit the $240 billion Russia-China trade and reverberate to India, Brazil and others. This tariff appears to be distinct from the potential 500% secondary sanctions in the Senate bill co-sponsored by Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal, which Trump views as a back-up plan.
The second component of Trump’s new strategy is to deprive Putin of gains from the mass air barrages of drones and missiles attacking Ukraine. Significantly, Trump has now put his personal backing behind aid to Ukraine in the form of a surge of air defenses.
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Trump and Rutte discussed no less than 17 Patriot air defense batteries. That’s astonishing, considering that Ukraine has six batteries in operation now, including three from the U.S. and others sent from Germany, Poland and Romania. Patriot is the gold standard for air defense. It’s a full commitment by Trump and NATO to stopping Putin’s brutal war.
Trump is also brandishing Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles like a stiletto in a street fight. TLAMs could swiftly decimate Russia’s air force. Trump says he won’t give Ukraine TLAMs or other long-range missiles that could hit targets in Russia just now, but then, we all remember the head-fake prior to the B-2 strike on Iran, don’t we?
Russia has taken 100,000 casualties since January for paltry ground gains. With Trump empowering NATO, Putin is targeting Ukraine’s power grid and infrastructure alongside indiscriminate terror attacks. The salvos consist mainly of Iranian Shahed drones, some of which are now manufactured in Russia, along with decoys. Each barrage includes a handful of weapons that are hard to intercept: Iskander ballistic missiles, KH-101 cruise missiles and even old Soviet air defense missiles converted for ground attack. The bad news is that Russia has literally thousands of older missile types.
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Ukraine’s air defenders are top notch, due to considerable assistance from the U.S, NATO partners and others. Sophisticated monitoring and tracking have enabled Ukraine to shoot down most of Putin’s air weapons, but this spring’s saturation attacks have been challenging.
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Air defense is a group effort. The joint U.S.-Norwegian NASAMS use the converted AIM-120 fighter plane air-to-air missile and boast a 94% success rate.
Another favorite is the "Frankenstein SAM" which combines old Soviet-style Buk launchers rewired by clever Americans to fire U.S. missiles like the Sea Sparrow. Australia has deployed its sophisticated E-7 Wedgetail radar surveillance plane to monitor drone and missile trajectories for intercept. If worse comes to worst, a few NATO partner F-35s could scour the skies.
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President Donald Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (L) in the Oval Office at the White House on July 14, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Done right, the air defenses and TLAM threats will diminish the damage to Ukraine and secure Europe against Russia’s ongoing weapons build-up, too. There is nothing the NATO allies want more than to protect their strategic ports, railways and capitals from any threat of Russian drones and missiles.
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Air defense also ties back to Trump’s primary goal, which is a ceasefire to stop the killing and a peace deal that will leave Ukraine with a viable economy. He’s already shifted more of the financial burden to NATO and is a good sign that the European Union on Wednesday proposed $116 billion for Ukraine’s economic reconstruction.
Make no mistake. This is very high stakes move by President Trump. Success with the squeeze of secondary sanctions will take agile behind-the-scenes negotiation and a bit of luck. If his stratagem works, Trump will have proved the duo of tariffs and selective military power can defeat the Russia-China cabal. America will be in a strong position to reconfigure our military posture and economic strategy to face down China’s global menace.
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Dr. Rebecca Grant is vice president of the Lexington Institute.
