After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Jimmy Carter acknowledged a misjudgment of Soviet intentions and implemented a suite of punitive and defensive measures, including ending economic assistance, suspending arms talks, withdrawing the ambassador, and arming insurgents. Donald Trump has acknowledged overestimating his ability to end the Russia-Ukraine war and expressed puzzlement at Vladimir Putin's continued bombardment of Ukrainian cities, yet he has taken few consequential actions. Trump's long-standing favorable view of Putin remains unchanged. He told Sean Hannity he expected the Ukraine war to be the easiest to end but now finds it the most difficult.
Carter's critics chortled at his belatedly acknowledged naïveté, but at least he admitted that he'd been wrong and took corrective actions -ending economic assistance to the USSR, suspending nuclear arms control talks, withdrawing his ambassador, pulling out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, stiffening defenses in southern Asia, and arming anti-Soviet insurgents (a move that had woeful consequences later on, but that's another story).
his view of Putin's character and goals-which has always been, to say the least, rosy-hasn't changed one whit. In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity last week, Trump said that of all the wars going on in the world, he had thought the one in Ukraine "would be the easiest" to end, yet it's turned out to be "the most difficult."
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