In an inexplicably naïve article Brendan Gauthier at Salon argued that Russia was the only country that seemed to want Donald Trump to be president. But rather than asking why this is so, or wondering what Russia might reasonably do to promote that outcome given that it is so, Gauthier simply repeated a conclusion from a NYT article that referred to unnamed FBI sources saying there was no Russian connection to Trump, at a time when the FBI is obviously seriously partisan. The Times did no more to offer reasoning for its conclusions than he did. Perhaps pride at being scooped by Slate and Mother Jones is the explanation for their openness to claims a careful reporter would want backed up.
What’s in it for Russia?
In fact Russia’s interest in Trump makes plenty of sense and does not involve Trump being a knowing conspirator serving Putin. It simply involves Trump being Trump- an exceptionally vain man who responds to flattery and with a fairly well established record of very poor business judgment. Further, what has already been uncovered makes perfect sense. Here’s why and how. However, it requires taking a Russian point of view.
Russia has a vested interest in weakening the US. We have surrounded the country with military bases, are threatening its Syrian naval foothold on the Mediterranean, and are by far the world’s largest power militarily. Russia has been invaded twice in the 20th century and has plenty of reason not to want that to happen again. And they have their own serious internal troubles. Seriously weakening the US would be in the interests of any conceivable Russian leader.
Igor Panarin, a major Russian political scientist with long and close connections to the government, received considerable attention in 2008 for predicting the imminent break up of the US. He was obviously wrong, but many of the factors he pointed to, especially immigration and ethnic conflict, are issues that deeply concern and divide this society. In addition, Russians are still very interested in his arguments. Any Russians studying his argument quite easily could have deduced it was in the interests of Russia to exacerbate the tensions Panarin identified.
The basic point was that the Panarin’s argument emphasized the US might be vulnerable internally, and if so it would be from rising tensions within its cultural and racial divisions. Even if not strong enough to fulfill Panarin’s predictions, it might be a vulnerable point that could be exacerbated to seriously weaken the country.
The logical policy implication would be to encourage those who might ratchet this tension higher.
A useful idiot
Trump’s entire campaign has focused on exacerbating internal tensions. If I were Putin I would certainly see his efforts as potentially useful to my goals and Trump needn’t be in on it. he simply needed to be encouraged “by one strong leader to another” to pursue his goal to become President. Helping him financially would encourage his self-confidence. This would explain his secret bank connections.
More evidence? As Samantha Bee demonstrated by interviewing them, Russians are being paid to get involved on social media sites, claiming to be Americans, and always favoring Trump. Why would anyone in Russia pay Russians to imitate Americans on US social media, and to do so always taking Trump’s side? They have never done this before so far as we know.
Similarly, all hacks we know of have been of Democrats. The Republicans have not been hacked by the Russians or anyone else. If the Russians for some mysterious reason simply wanted to mess with the election wouldn’t they mess with both sides?
(UPDATE 12/11: We now know the Republicans were also hacked– but apparently nothing was done by the Russians with this information other than, perhaps, blackmail.)
Finally, Trump has spoken in ways to weaken the NATO alliance and also moved the US closer to civil violence than any time since the Civil War. He has said he would not necessarily defend NATO members if they were attacked (which violates the treaty) and has threatened to jail his opponents and curtail the press. Some of his advisers have even suggested killing Clinton. This raises the stakes of politics far beyond what can sustain a democratic country and if pursued, promotes, even guarantees, civil conflict. Such conflict will weaken the US and so give Russia a freer hand.
None of this is proof of course, but it does tie all the evidence together along with a motive and strategy for why and how the Russians would do this. There is no countervailing evidence that I know of. And it does not require anything more of Trump’s motives that what we already know: extreme narcissism, openness to flattery, and not having nearly as much money as he claims to have..
No conspiracy is needed- just astute and ruthless foreign policy by Putin or whoever advises him.
And the FBI?
But why would the FBI play along? It is clearly dominated by people who do not care about institutional rules or the law when they get in the way of attacking the Clintons. Many are conservative Mormons and conservative religious people are inclined to see those they oppose as not just wrong, but evil. Many were Bush appointees at a time when the administration demanded political allegiance, got rid of insufficiently loyal people, and then lost the emails. We have people in the FBI chosen for partisanship, predisposed to dislike the Clintons and willing to bend the rules to hurt them. In such an environment people will be disposed to think the worst of those they dislike and reject similar standards for those who also oppose them. And settled institutions like the FBI will pretty consistently lie to cover up mistakes.
The Russians have good made-in-Russia reasons for supporting Trump, whether he wins or loses. Trump has reasons unconnected to any liking for Russia to cooperate with them. The FBI likely has an institutional blindness to information that is inconvenient, which is common in long established organizations. And some journalists would benefit from asking some obvious questions.
You are too kind to Trump, I believe he is up to his neck in Russian crap. I think he owes Russian banks (Putin) big money and he has cooperated with them.
I might be. I have rarely read about a man who, so far as I can tell, has NO redeeming qualities. He must have been terminally screwed up as a little guy and has never recovered. To my mind he’s a perfect example of a man with absolutely no conscience.
That said, I don’t think we need to go that far to see why the Russians support him. But I would not be surprised if what you say is true. He pretty clearly has a fascination with Slavic culture- at least to the point of two of the women he married and the names of his daughters. Nothing wrong with that- but when you add no moral sense to it, anything becomes possible.
This does make a lot of sense from their point of view.
Very interesting. My thought before the election was that to Russia and any enemy of the us (including your typical Repug) just generating more chaos and fury in the USA was desirable. If they really thought/think Trump will make a good tool or puppet, they may be in for a nasty surprise. And all the rest of the world, too..
I doubt they expect much from Trump. From their perspective his job is to help destabilize the country and weaken the society. And in him they have hit a home run. If they get other advantages such as oil money, that’s icing on the cake. If I were Putin I’d be in for the long haul, and the long haul from a Russian perspective is to weaken this country internally.
I think Putin is desperate to get current sanctions lifted. I believe there is also an element of playing the US against China to Putin’s advantage.
Likely you are right that these issues matter. There are many tactical advantages with having Trump, but I think the long term strategic goal is the one I suggested, one that has gathered considerable attention in Russia. Presidents come and go- but a serious internal weakening is the gift that keeps on giving for nations like Russia. And from the looks of things Putin hit the ball out of the ball park on that one. We have no likely president, Trump or otherwise, that many Americans will not regard as an illegitimate usurper.
Wait and see what happens in the coming period. While you guys know both Trump and the Russians and the US pretty well, I believe you have no idea what will happen and I can only guess based on the info at hand. I happen to agree with most of Trump’s policies with a great HOORAY and his action plans as well. I believe that the Democrats are far more of a danger in almost everything than Trump.
There was a good WSJ OpEd by former Clinton official Wm Galston laying out where Trump agrees with the American majority and on the other hand several instances of the opposite. I hope that he reads it. I agree with Galston’s points. Trump may pull of some amazing successes or he may mess up. My hunch is that much of what he intends will have very positive results from a mainstream Republican point of view–mine. But he takes risks which ARE actually risks. Major successes are more likely on balance because he works quite a bit from common sense, which the left, so out of touch, lacks.
There are two levels of comments I want to make to Rick’s post. First concerns his (and not just his) style of argument. As I get older I am becoming increasingly averse to relying on broad abstractions in an argument, such as ‘left,’ ‘right,’ and ‘common sense.’ I think its origins are in my father, when asked “why?” frequently answered “Because I said so.” That is not an argument, it is a claim to dominate.
Then, many years later, when in graduate school, many of us were looking for some solid foundation for ethics that could not be dismissed as merely ‘subjective.’ The argument that convinced me such a foundation existed was Jurgen Habermas’s argument about the values intrinsically embedded in speech. While an uncommonly difficult writer to understand and with political perspectives I often disagreed with, I found his argument convincing and with one concrete implication relevant to the present discussion: ANY claim to something being true implicitly implies the person making that claim can back it up with logic or evidence which, itself, can be backed up. From that time on my own writing has studiously avoided making major claims without offering evidence that could be challenged either on its own grounds or by contrasting examples.
Finally, in the past couple of years. I have become convinced that abstractions, valuable as they are, also ‘load the deck’ on what we perceive and think. In a kind of unnoticed hypnosis, those using abstractions at best become somewhat blind to what does not fit them. This phenomenon is common even in science where people can become so attached to their theories that they cannot grasp what does not fit, hence the saying “science advances one funeral at a time.”
Bad as this problem is in science, it is worse in day-to day-discourse where words like ‘left’ and ‘right’ continually modify their popular meanings so that people using the same word may as well be speaking two separate languages. And ‘common sense’ implies the person using the term knows what it means better than the person to whom they address. A mild version of “because I said so.”
We cannot avoid abstractions- language itself is an abstraction from experience which can never be fully described linguistically. The way to minimize this issue is to give examples so others know at least a little about what you actually mean- and can then evaluate it.
\Rick refers to a WSJ editorial, again without any details. Since it is behind a paywall it is irrelevant until you at least us what makes it relevant.
I have wanted to explore this insight and am grateful to Rick for triggering me to respond to his style of argument, which is the dominant one in this society.
Now on to Trump and Russia.
Given that he bad mouthed NATO, suggesting the US might choose not to defend against a Russian attack, and had no big objection to such an attack if the victim was behind in paying its bills, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68266447 met with Putin and his henchmen without allowing an American translator while allowing a Russian one, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/427505-trump-putin-talked-at-g20-without-us-translator-note-taker-report/, spoke multiple times with Putin while a private citizen, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-had-as-many-as-7-private-calls-with-putin-since-leaving-office-bob-woodward-writes-in-new-book and more recently picked fights with two NATO allies, Denmark and Canada, with some of his supporters advocating military force against them if they do not submit, I see little evidence of the ‘common sense’ Rick describes and plenty of circumstantial evidence that he has close relations with Putin.
As a would-be autocrat himself (eliminate the 14th amendment (and by implication any other constitutional provision) by Executive Order?) relations with other autocrats are matters of convenience, and when the Putin/Trump bromance ceases to work for one or the other, it will be over. But given his record since I wrote this piece in 2016, I think the case that he and Putin are more allies than he is with NATO is stronger rather than weaker. Happily, Western Europe is preparing to replace the US in defending Ukraine against Russian aggression, should that prove necessary.
As for “common sense” more generally- Rick, please give examples. Raking forests to reduce or end fires, appointing the loon Kennedy to NIH to the dismay of thousands of doctors and scientists, and saying wind turbines kill whales https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66928305 suggest you define ‘common sense’ much differently than I.