Trump Delivers on Russia His Helsinki outing was tone-deaf but his policy is cribbed from Bush and Obama By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-delivers-on-russia-1531868274?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=2&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s
Robert Mueller did his reputation for nonpartisanship no service by launching his indictment of Russia’s military hackers on the eve of what 99% of the media now say was a disastrous performance by President Trump in his summit with Vladimir Putin.
This is the same Mr. Mueller who, as FBI chief, sat for five years on the indictment of a Russian uranium executive when it would have been embarrassing to Mr. Obama’s own Russia rapprochement—and doubly embarrassing to his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, because of the connection of the Clinton Foundation to the Russian uranium business in question.
Mr. Mueller’s timing on Friday was unnecessary. His indictment is only for show. The Russian culprits will never be seen in a U.S. court.
It raises a question I did not expect to be raised: Should we now see Mr. Mueller as part of the retinue that includes former Obama CIA chief John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and (ambiguously) former FBI chief James Comey ? These men don’t like Mr. Trump or his Russia rapprochement; Mr. Brennan openly calls him a traitor.
One hesitates to draw the comparison, but Truman and Eisenhower were assailed as agents of the Soviet Union by Joseph McCarthy. Reagan was accused (by George Will) of selling out to Gorbachev. Critics of FDR’s foreign policy were actually proved right in the historical archives: The British were seeking to assure his re-election in 1940.
Politics never did stop at the water’s edge. It can’t. All presidents use foreign policy the way they do domestic policy: to create, expand or protect their domestic political capital. That’s how our system works.
And their opponents will always have recourse to the accusation that a president is a dupe or worse of foreign interests.
Mr. Trump’s performance in Helsinki left a great deal to be desired, but he delivered the policy he has promised since the 2016 campaign. It is identical to the policy of his two most recent predecessors.
Mr. Trump has a history of financial relations with Russians. He has a history of statements saying that American leaders were “weak” and relations with Russia would improve if the U.S. had a “strong” leader.
He has sought to expand America’s military power; he has sought to expand its energy power. One senses his walloping of Germany over the Nord Stream pipeline is less aimed at weakening Russia than at expanding U.S. gas sales but it would still weaken Russia.
He has said for 30 years that America’s trade deficits and its military spending on allies are related (as they are, sort of).
The best you can say about all this, there’s a consistency here. Mr. Trump may not know Palmerston, who said countries don’t have permanent friends, only permanent interests, but I wouldn’t put it past him to have seen the quote in a Charles Krauthammer column.
Of course, you can never disprove sinister influences, an impossibility on which certain fellow journalists will be hanging their reputations for years to come. But a reliable assumption that covers all cases is that presidents act in their own interest. Meanwhile, we have a democratic process, not to mention an extensive permanent bureaucracy with its own ideas, to help sort it out.
The hell of our situation is that 2016 created a big incentive for Democrats and others to adopt anti-Russia hysteria, likening Russia’s meddling to “Pearl Harbor,” a risky simile when two countries have enough nuclear weapons aimed at each other to make the world uninhabitable.
The only good news is Mr. Trump’s apparent indifference to the media’s attempt to shame him into adopting the media’s Russia policy. He may have no idea of the pressures and constraints under which Mr. Putin acts, but Mr. Trump is a one-man brake on a non-adroit hostility that doesn’t serve U.S. interests. CONTINUE AT SITE
Comments are closed.
