Dear John,
Simon published a new piece this morning that argues that the President over the past year has taken steps to align US foreign policy with Russia's in country after country. It has been a dramatic, little understood development that has left America a weakened power and Russia a rising one. You can find the piece here, and below.
We hope you enjoy, and feedback is welcome of course.
Best, Chris
Lavrov Comes To America For A Russian Victory Lap
By Simon Rosenberg
From a national security standpoint, the most important question about Putin’s big 2016 investment in Donald Trump has always been about whether Russia would eventually get something significant in return for helping elect the American President. Surveying President Trump’s actions over the past year, the answer appears to be that Putin is in the process of getting quite a lot from the US, perhaps more than he could have ever imagined. Not only has the US taken very pro-Putin stances in Russia’s hot wars in Ukraine and Syria, but on a grander scale President Trump has helped convey American weakness and Russian strength in region after region across the world — a dangerous development which is going to create enormous challenges for the US and the West for years to come.
As we prepare for tomorrow’s visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Washington, let’s dive a little deeper into just how much Trump has tried to align the US with Russian interests in the past year:
Syria — Trump has been working hard to unilaterally withdraw the US from Syria, a country where Russia has a warm water port and has been fighting on the government’s behalf since September 2015. His unexpected and abrupt withdrawal announcement a year ago caused respected Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to resign in protest, and his recent sudden second attempt at complete withdrawal has been met with extraordinary alarm here in Washington, in Europe, and even in Israel. The President has not just ceded Syria to Putin, but through the US’s unexpected abandonment of our Kurdish allies he has sent a very strong signal about how feckless and unreliable America has become.
Venezuela — In May, after weeks of an aggressive American-led effort to rid Venezuela of its corrupt leader, President Trump abruptly changed course, reorienting American policy in a pro-Russian direction within hours of talking to Vladimir Putin on the phone. Hopes of a restoration of democracy were dashed, and like in Syria the President appears to have willingly allowed this country to become a Russian client state without getting anything for America in return. I spoke to a friend with family in Caracas this week and he said Russian troops are now a common sight throughout the country.
Ukraine — In his infamous July 25th phone call with President Zelensky, Trump asked for help in removing the blame for the 2016 attack on our elections from Ukraine’s enemy Russia and instead placing it on Ukraine itself. I’m not really sure that we’ve collectively processed here the gravity of what Trump asked Zelensky that day — it was essentially a request for him to commit national and political suicide, and it made very very clear that regardless of where the US government stood, Trump himself was with Russia. Again and again the President has conveyed his sympathy towards Russia in this active hot war, including when he ominously turned the August G7 meeting into a discussion about removing the sanctions from Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea. Rudy Giuliani’s return to Ukraine this week should be read as a very public show of Trump’s contempt for Zelensky in the days before his face to face talks with Putin which start today in Paris, a gathering where the US is conspicuously absent.
Iran — At some point Trump was going to have to choose between his Gulf Arab and Israeli friends and the Russia-Iran-Assad axis, and in recent months it seems as if the President has finally chosen Putin over MBS and Bibi. In September the President signaled a desire to negotiate with Iran, backing off his hard line position; the US did little to respond to Iran’s attack on Saudi oil facilities; and Russia’s perceived victory in Syria was a huge win for Iran as well. As this article details, the President’s recent dramatic reorientation toward Russian objectives in the region even has Israel wondering if it can continue to count on America in its struggle with Iran. The President’s embrace of Russian objectives in Syria cost him Jim Mattis. His embrace of Russian objectives with Iran cost him John Bolton.
Europe/NATO/The West — Just this week we will have witnessed Western leaders mocking the US President at a NATO meeting; the US President cutting short his trip to NATO as if it was a bother to him; the US President once again expressing doubts about his willingness to defend others in the Alliance; and the President delivering a potentially crippling blow to the World Trade Organization, a key pillar of the US led post WWII liberal order. The President has backed Brexit and the fracturing of the European project, embraced far-right, pro-Putin, anti-European leaders like Hungary’s Orban, has walked away from a critical nuclear arms control treaty with Russia which directly affects European security, denigrated NATO, and weakened the global trading system. The Western alliance which won the Cold War, caused the breakup of the Soviet Union, and kept America safe is under extraordinary strain. Of all of his gifts to Putin in recent months this one may be the most significant, and the most dangerous for the United States itself.
While there were moments in 2017 and 2018 where one wondered whether Trump was rewarding Putin (Helsinki being a good example), much of the truly significant aligning of US policy towards Russian interests has come in the last year, since December of 2018. While we may never know why, I want to offer an explanation — Trump’s drubbing in the 2018 election. Putin may have understood at that point that Trump had an expiration date, and needed to get from him what he could while he was still in office.
The way Trump has prosecuted these policies has in every case seemed rushed, reckless, sudden — as if there was pressure on him to deliver, and he just didn’t have time to prepare or soften the ground for the decisions. The Ukraine affair has appeared particularly reckless, wild and sloppy — and that it has continued this week with Rudy returning to Ukraine seems reckless to an extreme.
Whatever the explanation for what we’ve seen, in the past year President Trump has fundamentally altered core security arrangements throughout the world in ways which have benefitted Russia and harmed Western and American interests. It is time for US policymakers to come to a clearer understanding of the damage the President has done to our standing in the world and our security by these actions, which is why I have called for the House to conduct a broad security review next year. It is also long past time for leaders of both parties to challenge the President’s alignment with Russia far more forcefully — it has become clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.
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