Thursday, September 19, 2019

Another look at Russia and Trump

I thought I would use the Twitter thread below from Democratic starategist Simon Rosenberg as a way to comment on it.

First, my general attitude toward the Russia-Trump scandal since 2016 has been that it's important, it should be thoroughly investigated, and the US election process needs to be secured against foreign hacking and domestic gerrymandering and voter suppression. I've also thought and still think that the general , and Democratic approach to approaching the scandal has been a very unfortunate mixture of melodrama, retro-cold-War posturing, and timidity in actually confronting Trump. You don't have to be a political junkie to notice that accusing the President of being a foreign agent and/or subject to Russian blackmail - the latter being almost certain - along with massive corruption and then stedfastly refuse to impeach him is an incredibly mixed message. And a sign of real weakness.

Also, for in-depth and fact-based analysis of the whole Trump-Russia issue, see Marcy Wheeler's Emptywheel. Also, David Cay Johnston of DCReport.org has also been reporting on Trump for a long time.


Getting the US military out of Afghanistan is a good idea for the United States. A more responsible leader than Trump would probably have arranged some agreement with Russia connected to it. As far as we know, Trump didn't. It may be what Russia wants. Or maybe not. The US policy of Forever War is damaging the US more than helping us. I'm not sure Russia would see any great advantage in the US stopping this portio of it. Starting in 1980, the US decided it would be a good idea to keep a war going in Afghanistan to weaken Russia. And it did. So, we should worry that Russia is going to invade Afghanistan again and spead itself even thinner, thereby reducing the already low likelihood of Russian military aggression against NATO members even further?

Here we already see the problem in the Democratic temptation to talk about foreign policy in a neo-Cold-War binary framework. It's ridiculous to assume that if Russia favors it, it must be bad for the US. Foreign policy is all about countries defining and pursuing their interests, managing conflicts with other countries, coordinating complementary priorities. Nor are countries always right in what they think is good for them and bad for others. The Cheney-Bush Administration and a majority of the US Congress in 2003 thought invading Iraq would be good for the US, good for Iraq, and bad for Iran. Wrong, on all counts.

Trump's regime-change policy in Venezuela has been a spectacular mess, motivated by American desires to control Venezuelan oil reserves. (That may be a clichee, but anyone who thinks that's not the overriding consideration on US policy there is way off base, to put it mildly.) Backing away from the current policy pursuing an international arrangement to hold new elections in Venezuela and normalize relations would be a good thing for the US, if not necessary for fossil fuel corporations. Pursuing the previous regime-change policy makes Venezuela even more dependent on its foreign allies, not least of them being Russia. Trump's regime-change policy is good for the US and Venezuela in the same way the Iraq War was for the US and the Middle East.

Rosenberg is right about Brexit. It causes problems for NATO and the EU, which is in line with Putin's goal of weakening European unity. My impression is that Putin doesn't have any particular ideological commitments beyond preserving his own oligarchic-authoritarian rule. But right now it's the rightwing nationalists in Europe that are having the most success in weakening European unity in a way favorable to Putin's goals. It's also a more radical version of the previous US policy under the Clinton, Bush, and Obama governments to encourage European unity but prevent the EU becoming unified and strong enough to be a "peer competitor" to the US in world affairs.

Trump's blundering diplomacy around the G7 meeting also worked to Putin's interest in at least marginally distracting from international objections to the annexation of Crimea. How useful the G7 meetings in themselves are is another question. More to the point here would be how useful Russia thinks they are.


War with Iran is an even worse idea than invading Iraq was. The US pulling out of the nuclear agreement with Iran was a bad idea. Imposing new, wide-reaching sanctions on Iran even though Iran had stuck to the terms of the agreement was a bad idea.

None of this excludes the possibility that Russia may have influenced Trump's decision-making, such as it is, in some inappropriate or illegal way. But here again, a binary assumption that whatever Russia wants is bad and therefore the US should do the opposite would be nuts.

The Ukraine situation is complicated. I have little idea of what we can expect the situation in Crimea to look like in 10 or 20 years. But because it is complicated, having an erratic, uninformed, bad negotiator like Trump calling the shots on the American side right now can't be the best thing. But neither is unnecessarily feeding the military conflict with arms sales.

Yeah, the Republicans are covering for Trump on the Mueller report on related matters. And McConnell is blocking election security measures because he is fine with Putin's government helping the Republican campaign even in illegal ways. But it's also because much of the election security measures required to block foreign interference would also block domestic Republican voter supression and other voting mischief. And that is such a central feature of Republcians strategy nationally that I would think it outweighs any hopes for Russian help in McConnell's and other Republicans' minds.

Saudi Arabia is a very troublesome ally, though Trump obviously likes them. But the apparent assumption backing off military aggression against Iran is evidence of a Russian plot is a gigantic assumption.

And it doesn't quite make sense. Iran does have good relations with Russia, and I assume that Kremlin policymakers don't want to US to invade Iran. But would a disastrous US war in Iran weaken Russia's overall geostratigic position? Like the way our invasion of Iraq weakened Iran's position? (NOT!)
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