Trump and the truth about Russia

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, President Trump was by far the most active opponent of Russia since Ronald Reagan and three key policy decisions in stark contrast with his predecessors prove it.

It’s become a popular refrain in the mainstream media:  President Donald Trump was weak in his dealings with Russia, either because Russian President Vladimir Putin possesses compromising information or simply because he has a soft spot for authoritarian strongmen.  As CNN’s Stephen Collinson put it recently in an “analysis” of the supposed schism between Democrats and Republicans on Russia in general, “Trump’s bizarre deference to Putin is not new – his genuflecting was a frequent theme of his presidency.”  Others, such as former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi go even further.  “We’re all wondering this question, Speaker Pelosi, what do you think [Vladimir] Putin has on him?” Ms. Psaki asked last week. “I mean, it sure seems like something,” Representative Pelosi replied, “as you’ve said a few times, given that he refuses to criticize him, that he seems to be a fanboy of him. Are you worried?”  The Daily Beast’s David Rothkopf was even more succinct when he claimed “a vote for Trump is a vote for Putin,” declaring that the former President and all of his supporters were pawns of Russia, the equivalent of the Russian Army itself.  “It is time to move beyond the political spin offered by GOP propagandists and Internet trolls and acknowledge that Trump and the MAGA movement are today active assets of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, as essential to Russia’s future global ambitions as that country’s own armed forces.” Whatever the root cause of this affection and unstated alliance, the end result is the same in their eyes:  The former President was and is much weaker than his predecessors dealing with President Putin and the Russian totalitarian state, ultimately leading to more Russian aggression if not jeopardizing the future of the entire free world, but like so many things the taken for granted these days, nothing could be further from the truth.  These and other statements are, in fact, the complete opposite of the truth by any objective policy measure. In reality, President Trump was by far the most forceful president since Ronald Reagan when it came to Russia, actively thwarting their ambitions to rebuild the Soviet Union at every turn.  Rather than simply talking tough as Biden likes to do, however, Trump made three key policy decisions during this time in office that directly opposed Russian interests and significantly broke with President Barack Obama, Joe Biden as both Vice President and President, and the larger foreign policy establishment.

The first was in July 2017, less than six months into his presidency, when Trump announced a new deal with Poland to supply Patriot missile defense systems.  As Newsweek reported at the time, “In a move set to counter Russia’s reinforcement on NATO’s borders, Poland and the U.S. have agreed that Warsaw will purchase the American-made Patriot air defense missile, the Polish government announced Thursday.  Trump delighted many in Poland when he announced he would be visiting the country before arriving in Germany for the G20 summit this week. The stop in Warsaw has already been welcomed by Poland’s conservative government, who in turn have announced in principle to make the U.S. missile an integral part of their defenses.”  The Polish government raved about the new arrangement as it was announced, “A memorandum was signed tonight that the U.S. government has agreed to sell Poland Patriot missiles in the most modern configuration,” explained defense minister Antoni Macierewicz.  “I am glad that I can pass on this information on the day of President Trump’s visit to Warsaw,” he added.  When President Trump arrived in Poland shortly afterward, he was greeted like a hero and honored with parades almost entirely because this policy was in stark contrast to Barack Obama and Joe Biden who had pursued what was referred to as a “Russian Reset.”  In September 2009, the Obama Administration reversed plans by the Bush Administration to build up missile defense capability in Europe including Poland at least partially to appease Russia, as stated by them, personally.  The Guardian described the move at the time, “Barack Obama has abandoned the controversial Pentagon plan to build a missile defence system in Europe that had long soured relations with Russia.”  While President Obama insisted this reversal was going to strengthen European defenses somehow, “To put it simply our new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter, swifter defenses of American forces and America’s allies,” he initial announced the “review” of the program while in Moscow itself and “Russia had furiously opposed the project, claiming it targeted Moscow’s nuclear arsenal” to use The Guardian’s phrasing.  The Russians themselves described it as an “obviously a positive sign for us” though not one that would be met with any concessions, an early sign that the policy of appeasement was likely to fail.

Also in 2017, President Trump began delivering lethal weapons to Ukraine, again to the dismay of the Russians because they would be used to fight Russian-backed groups, directly opposing their regional goals.  As CNBC reported, “Ukraine will soon have more lethal American-made weapons to help it fight Russian-backed separatists.  U.S. officials said Friday that the Trump administration approved a plan to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, in a long-awaited move that deepens America’s involvement in the military conflict and may further strain relations with Russia.”  Although Russia had seized the Crimean Peninsula three years earlier while President Obama and Vice President Biden were in office, the administration refused to provide military equipment at the time, limiting aid to supplies and non-lethal gear like night vision goggles.  This was despite authorizing packages worth upwards of $500 million, a policy described as merely sending “blankets” by administration critics, who insisted lethal weapons were required to stop potential Russian advances.  “This aid will be completely ineffective,” House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Cory Fritz said about President Obama’s plans. “The Ukrainians are begging for help, and the Congress is begging the administration to provide the defensive lethal assistance we authorized in December. Our allies deserve better.”  By early 2015, Politico was reporting that “Obama [was] pressed on many fronts to arm Ukraine.”  “The Obama administration is at war with itself over the question of arming Ukraine, with Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and key military leaders suggesting they would support a change of course.”  Republicans were not alone in declaring the policy insufficient.  “Providing nonlethal equipment like night vision goggles is all well and good, but giving the Ukrainians the ability to see Russians coming but not the weapons to stop them is not the answer,” now disgraced Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a committee hearing that March.  Meanwhile, President Trump would even expand the armament policy in subsequent years, and ironically, he was impeached for his efforts.

Finally, President Trump used sanctions to block development of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in December 2019 that would have enabled Russia to more easily sell natural gas to Europe, increasing their economic hold on our allies.  The Atlantic Council described it as, “Christmas came early for Ukraine and much of Europe after US President Donald Trump signed an omnibus defense bill that included sanctions stopping completion of a major new Russian gas pipeline to Germany.”  Shutting down the pipeline was not an easy policy to pursue. They continued, “The fact is that the United States was able to do what the European Union wasn’t. In 2018, the European Union’s parliament recommended Nord Stream 2 be canceled, but to no avail. It has also threatened controls, but been thwarted all along the way because Putin has co-opted influencers with unseemly offers, while Gazprom flouted regulations and openly boasted it would not be restrained once Nord Stream 2 was finished. The geopolitical implications for Europe are indeed significant. Putin’s latest pipeline is designed to give him greater leverage over the continent as a whole, while weakening and bypassing Poland, Ukraine and others.”  President Trump had also famously harangued NATO countries throughout his tenure for being dependent on Russian oil in general.  A year earlier, President Trump took the highly unusual and provocative step of claiming Germany, a key NATO ally, was “captive” to Russia because of this dependence and that it was “very inappropriate” considering they were also not meeting their defense commitments.  “When Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia,” the President said to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on video tape. “We’re supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.  We’re protecting Germany, we’re protecting France, we’re protecting all of these countries. And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia where they’re paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia.  So we’re supposed to protect you against Russia and you pay billions of dollars to Russia and I think that’s very inappropriate.”  “Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas,” he continued.  “You tell me, is that appropriate?”  He asked while Secretary-General Stoltenberg could do nothing except listen in dumbfounded silence.  In contrast, President Biden reversed the sanctions and allowed the pipeline to be completed shortly after taking office in what amounted to another instance of Russian appeasement, so terrible the pipeline would ultimately be sabotaged under mysterious, still unexplained circumstances.  Previously, President Biden had blocked the Keystone pipeline in the US that his predecessor had authorized, meaning he supported Russian fossil fuels in Europe but not Canadian fossil fuels at home.

Ultimately, the only evidence in support of the notion that President Trump was weak on Russia is rhetorical, his general failure to condemn or provoke his Russian counterpart in public.  Many point to a joint press conference in Helsinki in 2018 when President Trump refused to endorse the US intelligence community’s belief that Russia had interfered in the 2016 Presidential Election.  “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” President Trump said after spending two hours alone with President Putin, save for a pair of interpreters.  As CNN described it at the time, “Trump’s statements amounted to an unprecedented refusal by a US president to believe his own intelligence agencies over the word of a foreign adversary and drew swift condemnation from across the partisan divide.”  Rhetoric, of course, is not reality much as President Trump’s detractors would like it to be – if it were Ukraine would not be in flames, Russia would be broke, and Putin would not be brazenly killing his political opponents.  Further, there is an obvious, easily identifiiable reason for President Trump to avoid a public dispute with a chief adversary:  President Putin is a proud man, from a proud country, leading a proud people.  There is little, if any good, that can come out of brash public statements and promises of retribution, as we have seen in real time with President Biden.  To me at least, it is self-evident that President Trump has chosen the path of Teddy Roosevelt in his dealings with German Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was also a prickly, proud, and erratic leader.  Rather than take him on directly, Roosevelt wisely praised him whenever possible, wrangled with his emissaries in private, and displayed force with his policies in public.  The result was avoiding a potentially disastrous war in Brazil.  Likewise, President Trump is in fact the only president this century that did not witness a Russian incursion into another country on his watch.  When George W. Bush was President, he who claimed to see Putin’s soul before wising up somewhat, Russia moved on Georgia.  When Barack Obama was President, they moved on Crimea.  President Biden is the Chief Executive now, and they went for all of Ukraine.  One cannot prove a negative, but acting like there is no reason for this, or even more strangely that the difference is driven by Trump’s weakness can only itself be driven by either a willful ignorance or politics run amuck.  Alas, neither is surprising when it comes to the former President, where ignorance is always bliss, lies are more common the truth, and blind hatred is welcomed over any objective, fact-based analysis.