Quote:
In the last few days, Donald Trump has been bitterly criticized for his bizarre defense of Russia President Vladimir Putin. We may have thought we’d heard everything in a crazy political year, but having a Republican presidential candidate speak of that authoritarian thug as being morally equivalent to the United States was something so outrageous that it should have been unthinkable for even a Trump.
That Trump would claim in television interviews that America also kills journalists or that nobody has proved that Putin kills people (surely a surprising notion to the people of Chechnya or Ukraine) was disgraceful, but it is actually consistent with the things he has been saying about Russia throughout the campaign. Even as responsible thinkers, as well as some of his more thoughtful rivals, are forced to once again condemn the GOP frontrunner, it’s just as important to acknowledge that he isn’t the only one who is soft on the man who would be Tsar. What’s really interesting about Trump’s statements is that it shows once again that he is far more in tune with President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s ideas about foreign policy than the consensus of the Republican Party he wants to lead.
Trump’s bouquet sent to Putin after he was reportedly praised by the Russian seemed to reflect the egotistic billionaire’s always-fragile sense of self-worth when he issued a statement boasting about how flattered he was to be, “so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.” But while the ensuing kerfuffle about his defense of Putin became an issue in and of itself, the real problem has been his willingness to appease Russia’s desires to reconstitute the old Tsarist and Soviet empires. Trump has stated all along that he had no problem with Putin’s insertion of his forces into the Syrian civil war. Nor has he recognized the inherent threat to European democracy that is posed by the Russian invasion of Crimea, its war in eastern Ukraine or its threats against the Baltic states. In Trump’s view, Putin has always been a fellow tough guy with whom he could do business rather than a man whose main foreign policy goal has been to thwart the U.S. and undermine its security.
That’s a curious frame of reference for someone whose presidential candidacy has been based a sense of grievance against the outside world and the desire to “make America great again.” Though Trump and his admirers have an almost religious faith in his ability to make miraculous deals, his approach to Russia is invariably one in which he gives away the store to the Russians on all of their key demands in Europe and the Middle East in exchange for nothing that is real of any value.
Yet the most astonishing element of that stance isn’t just that it is the antithesis of making America great but that it is very much in tune with the policy the Obama administration has been pursuing with Russia throughout the last seven years.
What is Trump’s belief in his ability to make a bargain with Putin other than a recycled version of Hillary Clinton’s comical “reset” of relations with Russia? But, of course, it goes far beyond that. Obama sought to appease Russia by not defending Eastern European democracies such as the Czech Republic and Poland and refusing to aid a beleaguered Ukraine. Rather than keep Russia out of the Middle East, he has tacitly welcomed it and the result are travesties like the Syrian peace deal he has agreed to that won’t bring peace but does ensure that Russia and Iran will be able to protect the Assad regime while doing little to stop ISIS.
Though he spoke of turning back the oceans rather than making America great, the conceit of Barack Obama’s foreign policy has also been the function of a belief in his own greatness. Obama believed his personality was so magnetic, his intentions were so noble and his historic stature so immense that hostile nations like Russia and Iran would drop their hostility and do business with his America. The collapse of American foreign policy on his watch as the U.S. has alienated allies and earned the contempt of its enemies was not just a function of bad decisions and feckless policies but of the mistaken faith that one man’s magical personality could fix what was wrong with the nation’s problems. If Obama’s self-conceit and unwillingness to admit error has earned him the contempt of conservatives, what should they think about a candidate that has a similar point of view about himself?
It has been pointed out often enough in the past few months that, outside of his stance on immigration, Trump’s stands are curiously closer to those of liberal Democrats than of the conservative Republicans whose votes he seeks. But on no issue is that more true than that of Russia. Whereas most Republicans now think back about the 2012 presidential campaign where Obama poured scorn on Mitt Romney’s correct labeling of Russia as a geostrategic threat as a tragic reminder of how disastrous the president’s reelection has proved to be, Trump seems to be offering us a third term of the same foreign policy. That a plurality of those calling themselves Republicans should be so enraged with their party’s failings and so charmed by Trump as to make him the party’s presidential frontrunner is an act of colossal and inexplicable cognitive dissonance.