Do not designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism

OPINION:

In the final days before Christmas, the Washington establishment tried to check off an item on its Christmas wish list: Make it easier for America to go to war with Russia. It hoped to accomplish this by designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Designating Russia as a state terror sponsor would represent a dangerous provocation and is a roundabout way of allowing military strikes on Russian targets.

No one can doubt this or say it’s hypothetical. Just ask the Venezuelans. All the “kinetic strikes” on Venezuelan targets have been justified by Venezuela’s designation as a terrorist sponsor.

In its insistence that Moscow be a permanent enemy of the United States, the foreign policy establishment is pushing to impose more punitive measures on Russia that may make globalists in Washington feel virtuous but, in reality, will do nothing to help Ukraine. Nor will they bring peace to Europe or make Americans safer or more prosperous.

The effort to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism also directly undermines President Trump’s diplomatic efforts to end the 4-year-old war in Ukraine. It is no coincidence, as undoing the president’s diplomacy is exactly the point.

This misguided plan would destroy any semblance of U.S.-Russia bilateral relations and empower Russian hard-liners, and wouldn’t achieve its desired intention.

It’s absurd to think, after all these years, that applying more economic pressure on Russia will get it to change its objectives. It has fought a brutal war for four years and suffered 1 million casualties. We have already imposed some 16,000 sanctions on Russia. Do we really think 16,001 is going to do the trick and get it to walk away?

Had the establishment’s bill been enacted, Russia would likely conclude that negotiations are futile, that Congress will not let Mr. Trump pursue peace and that it could continue its grinding war of attrition on the battlefield.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly made clear that “this is not our war” and that his primary desire is to end the killing. He is 100% right. Congress should fully support his efforts to end the needless slaughter of a generation of young people in Ukraine and Russia.

The way to end the war is to pursue realistic negotiations. Demanding unconditional surrender hasn’t worked, and trying to force it by enacting provocative new laws hasn’t either. In fact, it has only prolonged the war. This new attempt to designate Russia as a terror sponsor is not a step toward peace but instead toward extended and expanded conflict. Again, this is exactly why the Washington establishment wants it.

The Washington establishment thinks it has found a loophole here that makes it easier to start wars. They have already succeeded in designating drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere as terrorist organizations, which has enabled extrajudicial killings of individuals seemingly every day, with no congressional authorization or oversight. Now they want to expand it elsewhere.

If a White House attorney can declare it OK to kill a Venezuelan drug runner because they were designated a terrorist, even when no congressional authorization exists, what would stop them from including Russians one day soon?

Designating countries, fighting units or cartels as “terrorist” has essentially become an end run around explicit congressional war-making authority. Once these nations are designated as “terrorists,” attacks on them are claimed to be authorized. Under this faulty logic, Congress wouldn’t need to authorize a war with Venezuela because the Venezuelan government is a terrorist government. Put another way, any president could provide himself with his own war authorization.

That is not how the Constitution works.

So while we are not at war with Russia, designating it as a state sponsor of terrorism implies that no further vote of Congress is necessary before letting the missiles fly (or, perhaps, selling the missiles to a willing customer, also implicating the United States).

It would be folly to think that the risk of escalation has faded or should no longer concern us, simply because the war has gone on for so long. We must still take great care to ensure that the United States is not foolishly dragged into a military conflict through stupidity or miscalculation.

Americans supported Mr. Trump because they agreed with his message of “America First.” Outside the globalist elites in Washington, everyday Americans do not want to be further entangled in a war 5,000 miles away from our shores.

Congress must reject this bill and instead focus its efforts on advancing realistic peace negotiations in Ukraine and pursuing policies that advance America’s national interests.

• Rand Paul is a Republican senator from Kentucky.