Shortly after the sudden and
unexpected death of Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior (and hawkish) U.S. senator,
on 11 July 2026, the Congress passed, and U.S. President Trump signed, the
Graham Act, which is legislation that gives the federal president discretion in
adding economic sanctions and higher tariffs to weaken Russia’s military
machine by hurting Russia’s economy—especially its lucrative oil industry—because
Russia was still invading Ukraine. By Columbus Day, however, President Trump
and Russia’s President Putin had made a deal wherein Russia would sell 300,000
tons of diesel to the U.S. and global markets immediately, with an additional
500,000 tons in November and then one million more. President Trump, using his
discretion as allowed in the Graham Act, “issued a broad sanctions waiver for
Russian diesel until April 2027.”[1]
Euronews reported at the time that this move was “raising concerns in Ukraine
and among its allies,” most notably the E.U. and in its state capitals.[2]
The fact that the deal undercut the Western strategy of pressuring Russia
economically so it would withdrawal its military from Ukrainian territory means
that the diesel sale and broader waiver did more than raise concerns in
Europe. Zelensky was probably hitting his head against a wall in utter
disbelief at one point. For his part, Putin, formerly head of the KGB in the
U.S.S.R., may have been relieved, and dumbstruck, that the Americans could be
such suckers. As is often the case in foreign policy, domestic politics play a
role in the motivation of key actors on the world stage. President Trump was
facing an upcoming Congressional election in early November and whether Trump’s
Republican group would continue to control the U.S. House and U.S. Senate was
preoccupying the president in October because if even just one of the two
federal legislative chambers would be under the control of the Democratic
group, Trump’s legislative will would be compromised at best in getting through
Congress. Trump’s political calculus had a lot to do with his knowledge of his
base—the voters who would be likely to vote for Republican candidates in November.
That base is often a “black box” to many Americans and Europeans alike, and
this impedes accurate analysis of Trump’s political calculus in making a deal
with Putin that would be sure to anger government officials both in Ukraine and
the E.U.
The E.U. foreign minister, Kaja
Kalla, responded to the deal by holding firm to the pro-Ukraine Western strategy
of trying to weaken Russia economically so it would decamp from Ukrainian
territory. “The US is our biggest ally,” she said, “but our message is clear:
if we want to end this war, the only way we can do this is (by) putting more
pressure on Russia.”[3]
Paying for diesel by sending dollars to Putin’s Russia not only does not add to
the pressure; Russia’s military “hand” is strengthened financially and even
emboldened psychologically. Adding, “Russia has started this war” and “We
should not forget about this,” Kallas “urged the White House to enforce [the
Graham Act] that envisions r-reaching sanctions
and tariffs” on Russia—not less.[4]
Kallas predicted that if the Americans would enforce the Act, enough economic
pressure could be put on Russia for it to end the invasion. Trump’s waiver makes
the opposite more likely, and if Russia seizes Ukraine, the Russian bear would
be on the E.U.’s eastern door-step, emboldened by the weakness not only
in the E.U. retaining the veto-power that states enjoy on foreign-policy and European
defense legislative proposals in the European Council and the Council of
Ministers, but also in the American President refusing to “stay the course” and
even augment economic sanctions against Russia.
So why did Trump make the deal
and issue the waiver? Lots of ink was used as various opinions were subsequently
unleashed on Americans and Europeans alike. Generally, the view was that Trump stupidly
thought that the release of 300,000 tons of diesel in October would lower food
prices in grocery stores—as the hike in the market price of diesel, which is
used by trains, trucks, and ships, had already been passed onto consumers of
groceries—in time for the election in early November. Although automobiles
typically do not use diesel, perhaps the president thought that the prices of
gas in gas stations would fall too. That 300,000 tons of diesel covered just half
a day of demand in the U.S., and thus the announcement of the deal hardly
touched the world market-prices of diesel, was generally taken to show just how
stupid the president was in making the deal in order to get more Americans to
vote for candidates of Trump’s group. But such a view is superficial, as it
misses what Trump may have known about his voters.
Many voters still inclined to
vote Republican in 2026 may have thought that the U.S. buying diesel and thus
increasing the supply in the U.S. would mean that gas prices would soon drop
substantially. The connection to food prices would be a tougher hurdle, but
Trump making this connection in his speeches campaigning for candidates in
October would likely be sufficient. Why is this likely so? According to the Pew
Research Center, “voters were sharply divided in [the presidential election of]
2024 by whether they have a college degree. Voters with a four-year [college]
degree or more education—who constitute about 40% of all voters—favored Harris
by a double-digit margin (16 percentage points), which those without a college
degree favored Trump by nearly as much (14 points).”[5]
The Pew report includes a graph entitled, “Wide divide between voters with and
without college degrees continues to be a major factor in Trump-era elections.”[6]
A major factor. This is not to say that college graduates have the
knowledge and intelligence of an Einstein. Educated political commentators and non-Trump
voters alike likely dismissed Trump’s political calculus by failing to realize
that many, but not all, voters still in Trump’s “MAGA” base would not think out
the problem far enough to include the likely impact on diesel and food prices
that 300,000 additional tons of diesel on the world market, especially just
weeks before the election. That MAGA and non-Trump voters, and their associated
media outlets, are well-known to have very different perceptions of social
reality does not account for the differential impact that such a gap in
education has in terms of voters’ electoral judgments. That a voter would be more
inclined to keep one’s House representative or U.S. senator in office or vote
for a new Republican simply off the news that Trump is making deals to increase
the amount of gas because the price will then fall a lot is not something that
would necessarily occur to a college-educated person who is used to analyzing
and thinking through, and has more of a knowledge base in general. In fact,
even such a person, already graduated, may not realize that one of the chief
benefits of four years of college lies in the improved use of reasoning (i.e.,
logic) that results from following the train of thought of professors in class,
and of scholars in books, and especially in studying material for exams. After such improvement, a person may have trouble recalling what one’s
own reasoning was like prior to going to college, and thus realizing how people
without a college education think.
In short, Trump knew his base. It didn’t matter that the price of gas would not go down by election day. It didn’t matter that the voters would not see lower food prices in grocery stores. In fact, Trump’s announcement of the deal could outweigh even the most recent release of economic statistics—even that the monthly inflation rate in September was 3.4 percent.
It is not for naught that Jefferson and Adams agreed
that a viable republic—a representative democracy—requires an educated and
virtuous self-governing citizenry. After World War II, a college degree rather
than just a high school degree became the basic, or assumed, level of education:
the base. That 60 percent of the American electorate had—at best—graduated from
high school without going on to college in 2024 can thus be taken as the
proverbial canary in the coalmine, for demagogues know how to exploit voters
whose education is not sufficient for good self-governing (i.e., electoral
judgment) that is the basis of any republic. To be sure, ideology plays a role
too—voters are not merely rational beings. Values should also play a role in voting,
but demagogues can take advantage of a voter’s lack of knowledge and hardship
in reasoning through policies and legislation, either already enacted or
proposed, even in contorting values. Hence, a poor person could be misled, for
example, in voting for a candidate for office who campaigns that he would cut government
aid to cover medical insurance and even necessary treatment, or for a candidate
who says she would vote against a middle-class tax cut and increasing the
earned income tax credit, and vote for a tax cut for people making over
$200,000 a year. It is very hard for educated people to comprehend how any
voter could be so easily tricked. Even if an anti-government ideology, which,
to be sure, is a valid political philosophy, is firmly in place for such a
voter, accepting to take most of the hit of government spending-cuts oneself is
more difficult to justify, especially if one is barely getting by economically.
Even college educated voters
may not reason beyond determining the nugatory price-impact of Trump’s deal with
Putin to consider, for example, the impact of the refusal of the U.S. Justice
Department to enforce anti-trust law on the relevant industries so market
competition could exist and bring down prices to the extent that major oil
companies and grocery companies, as well as seed producers and large agri-businesses
(e.g., poultry). Ironically, the anti-intellectual prejudice in Trump’s “MAGA”
base discouraged such advanced reasoning and analysis from gaining much spotlight
(and credibility) in the media. Rule by mob, which both Plato and Aristotle
considered to be the bad form of democracy, is antipodal to (i.e., inconsistent
with) a meritocracy. This is not to advance Plato’s preference for philosopher
kings, wherein a just polis is one wherein reason rules the passions (i.e., of
the mob); rather, that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams—two very different
politicians, with different visions—agreed on anything is reason enough
to pay more attention to their joint view that an educated citizenry is important
if, as Ben Franklin said, Americans can keep the new republic. Viewing Trump as
a threat to democracy is thus entirely too superficial; the threat is much
deeper, and much more difficult to correct. The American member-states getting
rid of heavy tuition bills foisted on students willing to put in the hard work
of years of study would be a good start, but such an investment in civics would
require an ability to reason beyond today and immediate self-interest, especially
that which is economic. I submit that the state-members of the U.S. should be begging
rather than charging their respective citizens to go on to college as a matter
of necessity for the republics themselves as viable representative democracies.
Moreover, to reason well, to be able cognitively to think things through,
can be regarded as a virtue, and, furthermore, particularly in utilitarian
America, it is worth mentioning that engaging in reasoning-training by studying
knowledge for a sustained period of years (not just two) is useful in all walks
of life, rather than just vocationally. Admittedly, I sacrificed too much of my
youth to such refining and fortifying, so there is a limit to everything, but
getting the U.S. to 60% of voters being college-educated is not asking too much
of a citizenry.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Hannah Hartig, Scott Keeter, Andrew Daniller, and Ted Van Green, “Voting Patterns in the 2024 Election,” Pew Research Center.
6. Ibid.
