US President Donald Trump offended the entire political spectrum with a tweet this morning blaming Washington for poor relations with Russia. “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of US foolishness and stupidity,” the president said, and he is entirely correct.
By this, I do not mean to say that Russia is a beneficent actor in world affairs or that Russian President Vladimir Putin is an admirable world leader. Nonetheless, the president displayed both perspicacity and political courage when he pointed the finger at the United States for mismanaging the relationship with Russia.
Full disclosure: I was a card-carrying member of the neoconservative cabal that planned to bring Western-style democracy and free markets to Russia after the fall of Communism. As chief economist for the supply-side consulting firm Polyconomics, I got an appointment as an adviser to Boris Yeltsin’s finance ministry and made several trips to Moscow.
Of course, the finance ministry really was a family office for Yeltsin’s oligarch friends, who were too busy stealing Russia’s economy to listen to advice. The experience cured me of the neoconservative delusion that democracy and free markets are the natural order of things.
Unfortunately, the delusion that the United States would remake Russia in its own image persisted through the Bush and Obama administrations. I have no reason to doubt the allegations that a dozen Russian intelligence officers meddled in the US elections of 2016, but this was equivalent of a fraternity prank compared to America’s longstanding efforts to intervene in Russian politics.
The United States supported the 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine and the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in the hope of repeating the exercise in Moscow sometime later. Then Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland pulled whatever strings America had to replace the feckless and corrupt Victor Yanukovych with a government hostile to the Kremlin. She didn’t say it in so many words, but she hoped the Ukraine coup would lead to the overthrow of Vladimir Putin.
Evidently, Nuland and her boss, Hillary Clinton, thought that the Ukraine coup would deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base in Crimea, and did not anticipate that Russia simply would annex an old Russian province that belonged to Ukraine by historical accident.
At the time, liberal opinion evanesced with the notion that Moscow would follow Maidan. The Christian Science Monitor reported in February 2014, “Some in Russia’s liberal community see in the Maidan a hope that the Kremlin, no matter how solid it looks, could one day crack under similar popular pressure.
‘What we are seeing in Ukraine is the realization of the Ukrainian people’s aspiration for democracy, of the right to revolt,’ says Sergei Davidis, a board member of Solidarnost, a liberal opposition coalition. ‘It doesn’t mean we’re ready to follow that example. Russian conditions are different. But in the long run, as the contradictions pile up, we may well come to the same pass and find ourselves with no alternatives but the Ukrainian one.’” Of course, no such thing occurred.
The Maidan coup was the second American attempt to install a Ukrainian government hostile to Moscow; the first occurred in 2004, when Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State rather than Hillary Clinton. As I wrote in Asia Times a decade ago, “On the night of November 22, 2004, then-Russian president – now premier – Vladimir Putin watched the television news in his dacha near Moscow. People who were with Putin that night report his anger and disbelief at the unfolding ‘Orange’ revolution in Ukraine. ‘They lied to me,’ Putin said bitterly of the United States. ‘I’ll never trust them again.’ The Russians still can’t fathom why the West threw over a potential strategic alliance for Ukraine. They underestimate the stupidity of the West.”
American efforts to promote a democratic opposition to Putin have failed miserably, and as John Lloyd wrote recently at Reuters, the Russian president remains genuinely popular. This remains a source of perpetual frustration for the neoconservatives, who cannot fathom why dictatorships still exist.
Russia is a brutal country that always has been governed by brutal men. No one talks about Ivan the Reasonable. Compared to Peter the Great or Alexander II, let alone Stalin or Ivan the Terrible, Putin is one of Russia’s gentler heads of state. I attempted to explain why in this 2016 essay for Asia Times.
Thanks to President Trump, Russia (as well as China) now understands that America’s intervention in Iraq was not a deliberate effort to destabilize the region, and that its support for Sunni jihadists in Syria was not a deliberate effort to create an Islamist monster with which to destabilize Russia. Under the headline “They’ll never believe we’re that stupid,” I wrote in May 2015:
“Beijing and Moscow made up their minds some time ago that the United States had deliberately unleashed chaos on the Levant as part of a malevolent plan of some kind. The Chinese and Russians (and most of the rest of the world) simply cannot process the notion that the United States is run by clueless amateurs who stumble from one half-baked initiative to another, with no overall plan (except, of course, to persuade the Persians to become America’s friends rather than enemies).
Incompetence has consequences. One of the consequences will be that our competitors and adversaries will take us for knaves instead of fools, or even worse, will recognize that we are fools after all.”
Russia is in crisis, but Russia always is in crisis. Russia has a brutal government, but Russia always has had a brutal government, and by every indication, the people of Russia nonetheless seem to like their government. If they want a different sort of government, let them establish one; what sort of government they prefer is not the business of the United States. America’s attempt to shape Russia’s destiny, starting with the Clinton Administration’s sponsorship of the feckless, drunk and corrupt Boris Yeltsin, had baleful results. So did the State Department’s attempt to manipulate events in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014.
That’s why President Trump’s tweet this morning is entirely correct. Once again, it is refreshing to hear an American president cut through the cant and tell the unvarnished truth.
BS. After a sound public horse whipping, cuff the orange traitor, blindfold him, and put him against the wall.
Alin Zecheru It’s not Trump’s fault that China will surpass the USA. But Trump will arm us with the ability to coexist with China as the new dominant country on the international scene. China will surpass the USA because it has so many more people and their country has become a manufacturing behemoth and a giant consumer that supplies the world with products and services and consumes so much of the world’s natural resources supplied by those that but its products. Trump needs to save us from our past which was to nurture the wiorld at our own expense. We were doing OK until Obama doubled our debt to an unsustainable level and China decided that they would ceate a China dominated world through the BRI which would draw in all the allies of the United States and the United States would therefore be relegated to Banana Republic status similar to Argentina.
Ivor Large Tiawan isn’t another country.
Art Laramee You are right! And as a result of “non combat” ideology (or kind a zen aproach) China will surpass USA! And more tragically the core values of western societies will be evacuated from our self!But who give a dam for this!
The attitude of the Bush and Obama Administrations was driven in part, by globalism. Both were comitted globalists and wanted to push toward that goal.
Influenced by western culture… like smurfs ?
Art Laramee I miss Ronnies sense of humor, imagine his Chinese, Russian or jokes about Mo’
bvvnbn
To use your thinking we should be at war with Chiona and a whole lot of other lesser countries.
Bullshit! The US is not alone in meddling in foreign countries since history began. Russia didn’t impact the US election. Move on to important things.
Very, very good! I seldom agree with most of what you write, but here you were simply brilliant. Congratulations.
I am no fan of Trump, but he is in the right on this one. Interesting that the Meuller indictments came days before the Helsinki meeting. It smells of witch hunt, as Rand Paul says. Could the timing have been more advantageous to the opponents of peaceful relations with Russia? An indictment is merely a formal charge which remains to be proven in court. My hope is that Russia will call Meuller’s bluff and offer to show up in court to request discovery.
Thanks for setting the records straight.
Unfortunately this ‘cynical’ approach led to the “banalization of evil”. Just for the sake of counterfactualism, I imagine, Ronald Reagan would fight against Putin until his regime would collapsed. Reagan was inspired by the core values of democracy (sound idealistic?!).That made him great! Not some tactical wins! Trump proposal is to make pace as a result of a tradeoff. Its this congruent with the values of democratic societies?! I agree about the low standards of democracy in Russian history but this it’s not a excuse for letting those people under a very efficient political class in keeping the people captive! Again, Reagan didn’t presumed about the permanent damages inflicted in people by communist regime?! Were former communist states ready to switch to the democratic values?! Reality its dynamic. Don’t try to use Procrustean solution in order to gain some short-term advantages.
Good press conference in Helsinki and I was positively surprised President Trump raised the questions of where the missing servers is. There is no doubt the US Intelligence community has tried to sabotage Donald Trump election campaign and continued after he became President. The “Awan Spy-Ring in Congress” is the worst security scandal in US history. The US intelligence community have done their utmost to cover it up, because it will open one can of worms after another. These spies monitored the US servers and phones. The IT consultants was not vetted and committed one crime after another.
A lot of nonsense intended from the US MSM "Deep State" propaganda machine. The DOJ allegations against the alleged GRU officers is not accurate. The DNC missing e-mails was not hacked. It was an inside job, where the e-mails were copied to a thumb drive. This can be proven by the data transfer speed. NSA and DNI can easily check the logs to verify this. This is confirmed by ex-NSA manager Bill Binney. Vault 7 was according to CIA an inside job. The Cable leaks was Manning.
GRU did not do pillow talk with Peter Strzok and James Wolfe, the GRU was not even under the bed!. Despite all of these facts, Rod Rosenstein insists it was doing their job, and taken advantage of the US poor security. The GRU has allegedly also hacked into the illegal server the gullible Hillary Clinton had at home! Did the GRU copy the top secred data and illegal nude pictures to Anthony Wieners lap top too? LOL
The DOJ report is a smoke screen to divert attention from the US Intelligence community collusion to help Hillary Clinton to become President. US Intelligence community did all types of crimes to hamper Donald Trump possibilities to be the next President, including using foreign intelligence company.
The FBI is trying to cover up the “Awan Spy-ring in Congress” that has been spying in the US Congress for a decade! One thing is for sure, all these leaks proves the US has a SEVERE security problem. Rosenstein is proving the US is totally incompetent in protecting sensitive data. LOL
There is an enormous difference between the US intelligence industry and the Russian Intelligence industry. Russian intelligence industry work for the best interest of the Russian people and try to provide the lawmakers accurate and unbiased information. The US Intelligence industry does NOT work for the American people, but for the US “Deep State”. It seems the US Intelligence industry main objective is to spy on the US lawmakers and provide them with false information. In Russia the FSB, GRU, and SVR is funded by Government funds. In the US CIA is partly funded by the US Government in addition the CIA “Black budgets” seem to be funded with revenues from smuggling of drugs.
Mr. Goldman alleges Russia is a brutal regime! The US has killed millions of innocent people in the Middle East and currently assists the Saudis in killing millions of people in Yemen. The CIA genocide in America. 100,000 Americans has died from Afghan heroin since the Afghan war started! Who smuggled the heroin? The CIA, US military, and US contractors are the suspects. Does FBI investigate how the huge shipments of heroin arrive in the US? Nope! It looks like the US and NATO is significantly more brutal.easy for skilled hackers. Using IT personnel with a criminal mind is a dream come true for foreign intelligence operatives
Even data stored off-line gets stolen from the CIA, by their employees or contractors, they end up in Wikileaks drop box (Example: Vault 7). Ex-CIA director Michael Joseph Morell, admit it was an inside job done by a CIA employee or a CIA contractor. Mueller and Rosenstein say it was the GRU hacking or spearfishing the Vault 7! LOL, How stupid is it allowed to be?
There is too many with Top-security clearance that is given access to information they do not need to do their work. Now the US will store their data in the cloud, making sensitive data more available to professional hackers. LOL. What if military secrets like US direct energy weapons program (mind and mass control technology), get hacked? A DISASTER!
The hilarious thing is that no country in the World beats the US in "influencing" other country’s politics, but this may be the first time the US was the target of being "influenced"… It must have hurt…
Michael Zhao Of course he is!
Good, debatable points. We have a species problem altogther. As for Trump, he thinks like this: ‘Trump First’ with everything interpreted through the it’s-always-about-me filter. It suddenly seems that Baby Trump blimp makes sense after all. Putin capably handled himsef and will be clebrated in Russia for his triumph.
Even if so rat-a-tat-tat, the current situation needs to be particularly addressed with strength by the POTUS. Trump offered no consequences for Putin’s cyber-attack on the US democratic voting process. “What about… the past?” may be a good general point, but certainly does not specifically apply to the present reality. Trump displayed weakness and America is the loser.
A sensible piece.