Trump's Actions Clearly Advance Russian Interests

"In 1969 Richard Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell advised the press to 'watch what we do, not what we say.'”  (I double-checked this at HistoryNewsNetwork)

If we listen to what the Trump administration says, there's been no collusion with Russia, though he does seem to like Putin and other authoritarian leaders like the Philippines' Duterte, Turkey's Erdogan, and the feeling is apparently mutual.

If we look at some of the Trump administration's key 'achievements'*, they all seem to help Russia, mainly by weakening the West's alliances that keep Russia in check.
*I put quotes around 'achievements' because most of them are about breaking things rather than creating things.

1.  Getting out of the Paris Climate Treaty
2.  Getting out of the Iran Nuclear Agreement
3.  Tariffs for Europe, Canada, and Mexico, etc.
4.  Getting out of the Trans Pacific Partnership
5.  Trump's support of Brexit

All these actions weaken alliances by a) removing the US, b) building distrust for the US  c) making it harder for the remaining countries to reach an agreement.  The last one has particular benefits for China by weakening US influence in the Asia Pacific region.  And by removing the US  from these situations, Russia gains more influence.

6.  North Korea

Let's see where this goes.  As I've said before, I would guess that North Korea is far better prepared for any summit talks than the US.  Since the armistice (not end)  of the Korean War (which the North Koreans call, “Victorious Fatherland Liberation War,”) the North Koreans have been far more focused on the US than vice versa.  The US walked away and most US citizens have forgotten, if they ever knew, that

“The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating U.N. forces,” [Charles K. Armstrong, a professor of Korean history at Columbia University] wrote.  [From Washington Post]

They've been rehearsing for this meeting since the 1950s.  Meanwhile, Trump's assault on the State Department (through budget cuts, position cuts, and demoralization that has led to a large scale resignations) means we lose the expertise we had on North Korea and Asia (not to mention everywhere else), which makes it harder for us to be prepared.  This echoes the purging of China experts in the 1950s.

It's also important to remember that besides South Korea, North Korea borders China and Russia, so both have an interest in what happens there.  If, in the end, North Korea denuclearizes, that's good for China and Russia.  If they don't, and the US loses face, that's also good for China and Russia.

And we have to remember that meeting with Kim Jong Un is NOT a victory for Trump.  Any American president could have met with him.  BUT, it is a huge victory for Kim Jong Un, who is seen by the world on equal footing with the president of the United States.  This is something other presidents have refused to give him without reassurances of ending his nuclear program in advance.

7.  Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric

Aside from securing military bases in Syria, which help assure that the Russian navy can get out to the world through the Bosporus in Turkey, Putin's benefited by the build-up of refugees trying to get into Europe.  This issue, probably more than any other, has weakened the European Union.  Rising nationalism in the Eastern bloc of the EU, particularly in Hungary and Poland, is fueled in large part by immigration that threatens linguistic and cultural identity.
Brexit added UK to this, and now Italy is shifting right, in both cases immigration played a role.
All this means that Europe is less united in standing up to Russia in the Ukraine and possibly the Baltic states and who knows where else.  Even Sweden is preparing to better protect itself from Russian aggression.  

8.  Trump's destruction of civil discourse and traditional presidential norms

Anything that makes the US less able to take on new challenges, to look positively toward the future, and to have a united population that can strongly support its government, makes it harder to  maintain the US's strong role in the world.  I'd add a few caveats here:

• we were already losing our civility and unity, though Trump was a key player in this by keeping the birther movement going and stoking the racist hatred of a black president
• many would argue that we were too strong at times - waging wars that basically supported US business interests (including the arms industry) at the expense of the economies of developing countries.  

But there is no doubt that Trump's actions have further divided the US and our Congress can't move because of the radical right wing of the Republican party and the inability of the 'traditional Republicans' to deal with Trump.  This leaves him to willy-nilly wreak havoc.  

Consider this a thought piece.  A draft. I've offered some links where you can get more info to support my claims, you can check the others as well as I.   It's way too nice a day to be inside at the computer.  Even outside at the computer.  Much better things to do.  

American People Are Starting To Fight Back

When FDR called for Americans of Japanese descent to be rounded up and put into camps, most Americans did nothing in protest.  A number took advantage of the situation to take possession of the property of those rounded up.  Though there were exceptions as the movie The Empty Chair documents.

But when Donald Trump ordered a ban on refugees and Muslims, American people went to the courts to file suit against the president, and they went to the airports to protest the holding of refugees and others held in airports from being sent back.

We've had presidents who have done things people disagreed about.  But we haven't had a president who ignores every tradition, every norm, every law, every norm of decency that interferes with his whims.  We've never had a president who has put into place so many people who have no regard for the basic values of the Constitution and the law.

We've watched this sort of thing happen in other countries, but we're only just learning how to handle someone who comes to power and abuses that power every day in his first week as president.  But we're learning.  I'm proud of the people who are finding their voice and their power to stop the illegitimate actions of this elderly child president.

There will be a backlash.  The real test is when people get hurt, even killed.  We all have to stand up and assume the role fate demands we play.  I hope we learn this quickly and well and that Congress sees where the power of the people lies and stops Trump before he carries out any of the orders he got from Putin*.

World, we want you to know we are planning on taking our country back from this madman.**



*If these aren't orders from Putin, they might as well be - take down NATO, take down the EU, weaken the US Intelligence Agencies, destroy US relations with countries like China, and, it appears more and more, take down the USA.

**I don't use this term lightly.  And the man who has called everyone who has opposed him all sorts of disparaging things, has not standing if he protests when people do the same to him - especially when they are close to or right on the mark.

How Close Are Trump's Actions To Putin's Priorities?

Is Putin pulling Trump's strings?  Let's look at some of the signs.

What are Putin's biggest obstacles?

1.  NATO, as weak as it is, is still a threat.  Anything he can do weaken NATO would help him restore the Soviet era power balance in Eastern Europe - Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, etc.

2.   China has a long, long border with Russia and there's always been conflict on that border.  Anything he can do to weaken China's ties with the US would be helpful.

3.   Turkey holds the key to the waterway from southern Russia.  Good relations with Turkey is to Putin's advantage.  Putin's performance in Syria contributed to refugees into Turkey and Europe, destabilizing the EU and threatening Turkey's acceptance into the EU partnership.  But Putin forgave quickly Turkey shooting down a Russian military plane and is making nice to Turkey.

4.   The US Intelligence agencies are always keeping watch on Russia.  The less capable they are, the more power Russia has.

Now, what are some of the things Trump has been promising to do?

1.  NATO is obsolete and doesn't pay its bills according to Trump.  He's going to shake things up.

2.  Trump's been riling China - congratulations call from Taiwan's president,  Secretary of State nominee Tillerman is challenging China's access to nearby islands.   All this looks aimed at making the US-China relations much more fragile and making China's border with Russia weaker.

3.  Trump supports Erdogan and his strongman ways.

4.  National-Security Republican elite fear they are being kept out of Trump administration.



OK, Trump is anti-establishment and we can expect some of his views to be a big change from the past.  But these all seem to line up in one direction - supportive of Putin's agenda.  They are pretty big deals.

And given the help Russia gave Trump in the campaign, and all the Russia friendly appointments, and the most recent news about Russia's leverage on Trump, I'd say that the evidence is lining up to a very dire conclusion.

It took a lot of [for] people to give up their support of Nixon.  They couldn't believe the president would lie, and it meant a change of their whole way of thinking.  But the Watergate committee in the Senate was made up of Republicans as well as Democrats.  While the Republicans made the Democrats prove things, they weren't in denial, and they didn't stonewall the hearings.  This is going to be 'interesting times.'

Rules For Surviving Autocracy

Masha Gessen was born in Russia and moved with her family to the US when she was 15.  Later she went back and worked in Moscow.  She has dual US and Russian passports.  

 I first found out about a her when a friend lent me her book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.  She's knows how things work.  When she writes, we should pay attention.

I found out about this article by Gessen, Autocracy:  Rules for Survival  from the same friend. (Thank you.)  

The world has plenty of examples of countries sliding out of democracy.  I choose to take these rules very seriously.  Starting late Tuesday night, we stepped into an alternative universe.  We have some time of apparent normalcy, but it's going to be obvious soon that things are seriously wrong.  

Below is a greatly abbreviated version of her six rules.  

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. .  .
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. .  .
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy. . .
Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself. . .
Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. . . .
Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. . .

In a previous post I said I was going to try to include in each political post, something useable, something for people to do, so they gain some power in the fight we have looming ahead.  Today it is these rules.  They're tools for not letting yourself be misguided into ignoring all the signs.

I've read Rule 4 carefully.  I tend to remain calm and outrage isn't my style.  But all the rules Americans have come to assume were simply part of nature, no longer can be certain.  Without strong and vigorous opposition - overt and covert - the America we know is toast.

Gessen criticizes Obama and Clinton for being so gracious to Trump.  She rightfully tells us that he simply isn't going to be gracious back.  Being a total jerk (is there a word for jerk that suggests something more menacing?) won him the election.  Why would he stop now?  Even if he could.

Putting The Putin Puzzle Pieces Together

Original image (pre-puzzle) from Esquire

The way I see it, Putin is on a roll.

He's kept Asad in Syria.  He's helped send half the population out of Syria, many as refugees to Europe, where the sheer number of them is straining Europe's capacity to handle them.  And it's straining Europe's ability to work together.  His machinations probably helped the Brexit vote.

And all that means that Europe's attention is on refugees and [not on] their ability to monitor and respond to his interference in former Soviet nations.

I have little doubt that the Russian government is doing what it can to help recruit young men in Europe and the US to commit terrorist acts.  He's probably not directly supporting ISIS, since Russia's had its own issues and terrorists out of Chechnya, but he surely benefits, in the short term anyway, from a European population that is more focused on internal threats than Russian threats.

His fingerprints are reported to be on the hacked emails of the Democratic National Headquarters and we don't know how else he's working to get the Republican nominee for president elected.

And there is always the very real possibility of someone electronically stealing votes.  I've been assured that our Alaska machines aren't internet connected, so it's unlikely the Russian's will mess with our election.  And we do have hard copies of all ballots to compare the results against, but that only happens when there's a challenge, and the challengers have to pay for the hand count.  But any system that's connected to the internet is very vulnerable.  Here's more on these topics.


Back in December, Putin praised Trump:

"He is a bright and talented person without any doubt," Putin said, adding that Trump is "an outstanding and talented personality."

And in an interview Trump seemed to eat it up:

BRZEZINSKI: Do you like Vladimir Putin's comments about you?
TRUMP: Sure. When people call you brilliant it's always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.

[Note:  Putin said 'bright and talented' but Trump heard 'brilliant.']

Remember back what George W. Bush said about Putin? (From ABC News)

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue," Bush said according a BBC account. "I was able to get a sense of his soul.

I suspect Bush's ability to assess someone's character is better than Trump's, yet his assessment was totally off.

While I was looking for that quote, I also found this one from Joe Biden in the same article:

Biden recalled visiting Putin at the Kremlin in 2011: "I had an interpreter, and when he was showing me his office I said, 'It's amazing what capitalism will do, won't it? A magnificent office!' And he laughed. As I turned, I was this close to him." Biden held his hand a few inches from his nose. "I said, 'Mr. Prime Minister, I'm looking into your eyes, and I don't think you have a soul.' " 

"You said that?" I asked. It sounded like a movie line. 

"Absolutely, positively," Biden said, and continued, "And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, 'We understand one another.' " Biden sat back, and said, "This is who this guy is!"

I'm guessing this is a joke off of Bush's encounter rather than an serious account of the Biden-Putin exchange.

But there are people who have studied Putin.  Several years ago, a friend lent me  a Putin biography  called "THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE:  The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin" by Masha Gessen, a journalist who holds both US and Russian passports.  From a Washington Post book review:

"Most prominent politicians had abandoned Yeltsin, and the remaining prospects were “all plain men in gray suits.” Boris Berezovsky, the wealthy oligarch and ambitious power broker who was close to Yeltsin’s team, personally recruited the largely unknown Putin, thinking he would be pliable. “Possibly the most bizarre fact about Putin’s ascent to power,” Gessen says, “is that the people who lifted him to the throne knew little more about him than you do. . . . Everyone could invest this gray, ordinary man with what they wanted to see in him.”

What Gessen sees in Putin is a troubled childhood brawler who became a paper-pushing KGB man and, by improbable twists and turns, rose to the top in Russia. He grew up fighting in the courtyards of St. Petersburg apartments. He became “a consistently rash, physically violent man with a barely containable temper.” When studying at a KGB academy, he once got into a fight on a subway when someone picked on him. On the day of his inauguration in 2000, Putin’s stiff gait was “the manner of a person who executes all his public acts mechanically and reluctantly, projecting both extreme guard and extreme aggression with every step.” Putin, she concludes, is a “hoodlum turned iron-handed ruler.”

So far I'm just looking at puzzle pieces.  Some seem to fit together, but many don't yet, and others are missing.  So this is conjecture, but it's starting to feel chillingly probable.  Putin's destabilizing much of the world, including the US.  Trump may see Putin as just another narcissistic entrepreneur, but he's much, much more than that.  Russians play chess and he's half a dozen moves ahead of Trump.

[UPDATE July 26, 2016, 8:19pm:  Minutes after posting this, I opened Twitter and the first was a tweet linking to this article by Masha Gessen, responding to others comparing Trump to Putin or saying Trump was Putin's plant.  She doesn't agree.  And I want to be clear about what I was trying to say.  Not that Trump was, as someone wrote, 'the Siberian Candidate', or that he is a lot like Putin.  I was just saying that Trump would be more in Putin's interest (Gessen says Putin hates Clinton more than liking Trump).  And yes, there are similarities between Trump and Putin, but there are dissimilarities as well.]