How much did Putin spend to help get Trump elected? And what did he get for it? It was probably the greatest Russian foreign policy coup in history and didn't cost a great deal. Unfortunately, I doubt we're going to see Trump tried, let alone imprisoned or stood up before a wall and shot. But, it will certainly be interesting to see how history deals with the most peculiar-- and horrific-- episode in U.S. presidential history. Reporting for the Washington Post over the weekend, Shane Harris took a look at what Putin got out of his interference in U.S. domestic politics. Short version: under Señor T, "the United States has abandoned international climate and nuclear arms agreements. It has announced its withdrawal from the World Health Organization, questioned the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and antagonized stalwart allies like Germany. America’s past presidents have long promoted democracy, human rights and the rule of law abroad, yet Trump instead has waged an assault on those values at home, where he has weakened institutions, shredded norms and declared without evidence that the upcoming election will be 'rigged.' America’s moral authority also has been undercut by the devastatingly high death toll and wrenching economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with the racial reckoning that has convulsed the country. These highlights from Trump’s nearly four years in office read like Vladimir Putin’s wish list. Few countries have benefited more geopolitically from Trump’s time in office than Russia. Trump continues to argue he's been tougher on Russia than anyone but whatever aggressive measures his regime did take, he has opposed and has had to be cajoled and prodded into allowing.
In his two decades as Russia’s autocratic leader, Putin has systematically sought to grow his nation’s influence at America’s expense by breaking up its long-standing alliance structure and discrediting its democratic institutions and values. Over the past four years, Putin has succeeded to a remarkable degree, aided by the credibility and support on the world stage that Trump has given him, according to national security and foreign policy experts, some of them Trump’s most strident critics. “The more dysfunctional, polarized and erratic the United States seems at home, the more beset by domestic problems, the more ineffective in demonstrating leadership and dealing with them, especially during the pandemic, the better that is for Russia, because they benefit from a world in which the United States is seen as unreliable and unpredictable,” said William J. Burns, a former deputy secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to Russia under George W. Bush who now leads the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ...More than 130 Republican former military, intelligence, diplomatic and other national security officials signed a joint statement in August endorsing Biden because they said Trump had “failed our country,” in part because of his handling of Russian interference and alignment with Putin and other strongmen. Russia’s longtime aim has been to undermine trust in democratic systems of government around the world, and the United States with Trump at the helm has proved an ideal model to advance that goal. “This president has been the most extraordinary gift to the Kremlin,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “Across every field, in terms of America’s standing in the world, in terms of America’s cohesion at home, no president has done more to damage the United States or to advantage the Kremlin than Donald Trump. That will be his lasting legacy.” Through his rhetorical attacks and norm-busting actions, Trump has eroded public faith in the Justice Department, the State Department and the intelligence community; demeaned the military leadership; threatened the freedom of the press; and challenged the courts. Most recently, he has challenged elements of America’s democracy itself by questioning the legitimacy of the upcoming election and refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. “One of Putin’s primary objectives is to utterly discredit democracy as a model, and on that he’s getting an A-plus, because in Donald Trump you have a would-be authoritarian who is deliberately and overtly taking a wrecking ball to the underpinnings of our democracy,” said Susan E. Rice, a former ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser in the Obama administration. Though Trump appears to have governed in this manner largely to protect and perpetuate his own political power, his objective dovetails neatly with Putin’s, according to longtime students of Russia. “If you turn on state-controlled Russian language television in Russia, what they love talking about day in and day out is how much of a mess the United States is,” said Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis. Russia has been a central player throughout Trump’s presidency-- from that country’s election interference in 2016 and again this year to Trump’s appeasement of Putin on matters both geopolitical and personal. For the first half of his term, Trump was haunted by the wide-ranging criminal investigation into Russian election interference-- so much so that, for the president, simply repeating the country’s name (“Russia, Russia, Russia”) is shorthand for scandal. A report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” in hopes of helping Trump. Mueller also laid out evidence of 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice by Trump but concluded it was not his role to determine whether Trump broke the law. ...Trump has not only played down the Russian threat, he has sought to exploit it. Last December, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani met with a Ukrainian lawmaker offering derogatory information about Biden, the former vice president, and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The lawmaker, Andrii Derkach, “has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services,” the Treasury Department declared in September, sanctioning Derkach for his efforts to “undermine” the 2020 elections. The previous month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence singled out Derkach for his role in helping Russia “denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment’ ” in the United States. Current and former officials said that the false information he peddled to Giuliani, which Trump has spread, also has been picked up by U.S. lawmakers, who are effectively laundering Russian propaganda. “Trump has embraced Russian assistance to destroy his own political enemies,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a career CIA officer who oversaw the agency’s operations in Russia and Eastern Europe. At times, it’s difficult to tell whether Trump is parroting Russian propaganda or if the Kremlin is echoing Trump. “We used to think that our elected officials and those up for elected office would be held to a higher standard about the information they consume and amplify. Instead, we’re seeing a degradation,” said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Wilson Center and author of the book How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict. In September, the Homeland Security Department issued an intelligence bulletin to state and local law enforcement agencies that Russia seeks “to undermine public trust in the electoral process” by spreading false claims that mail-in ballots are riddled with fraud and susceptible to manipulation. The department said Russia spreads such claims through a network of state-controlled media, proxy websites and social media trolls. ...At the same time, Trump has assiduously sought to cultivate a friendship with Putin, through regular phone calls and private in-person huddles. He has publicly excused Putin’s transgressions and has steadfastly avoided denouncing or even lightly criticizing the Russian president. Time after time, Trump has taken Putin at his word, to the consternation of Trump’s top national security advisers. Putin appears to have fueled Trump’s long-standing conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, and not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election-- and that it did so to try to stop him from reaching the White House. Putin seemed to relish the diversion. “Thank God no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore; now they’re accusing Ukraine,” the Russian president said at a news conference last November. “Well, let them sort this out among themselves.” In 2018, Trump traveled to Helsinki for a summit with Putin, where he said he took Putin at his word that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, effectively rejecting the unanimous conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had done so. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the summit “fabulous” and “better than super,” according to Russian news agencies. Retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, a former U.S. permanent representative to NATO, said, “The last four years have been open-field running for Vladimir Putin because he hasn’t received a hard pushback.” ...[E]xperts questioned whether Trump’s pursuit of Putin’s affections has made Americans any safer or better positioned the United States in the world. “I’m not against that in principle, but the objective always has to be, you’re doing this as a means to advance an American national interest,” said Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration. “He’s done all these things to try to befriend Putin over four years,” McFaul said. “What has that accomplished for the United States of America? . . . What tangible, concrete agreement, policy, change in Putin’s behavior has all of this appeasement achieved? I would say it’s empty. It’s literally empty.” National security experts believe Putin’s greatest triumph in the Trump years has been on the foreign policy front, and specifically the U.S. president’s methodical denigration of NATO. NATO, which the United States helped establish after World War II as a bulwark against the then-Soviet Union, has been widely considered America’s most productive security alliance and the foundation of the Western-led liberal order. “Trump is doing to NATO what Russia has long wanted to do, which is to separate the U.S. from our European allies and to decrease NATO’s ability to pose a coherent counterweight to Russia,” Lute said. “This lack of cohesion and absence of U.S. leadership are gifts to Russia.” Rice said Putin’s ambition has been to undermine U.S. alliance relationships, which she argued have been America’s greatest global asset and source of power. “In Trump, he’s found somebody who wants to degrade our alliance structure and has called into question the very concept of NATO,” Rice said. “What better red carpet for Vladimir Putin?” Trump has publicly toyed with the idea of withdrawing from NATO, has questioned the value to the United States of the alliance, and has repeatedly assailed NATO allies. In one particularly vituperative outburst at a 2018 NATO summit, he said Germany was “a captive of Russia,” because Germany imports large amounts of natural gas from Russia. Trump also has withdrawn the United States from a number of trade agreements, as well as the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal. Meanwhile, Trump has praised far-right, pro-Russian leaders in Europe-- a U.S. embrace that is seen as a threat to some in the NATO alliance. In May 2019, he welcomed to the White House Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, whom Western leaders have criticized for his hard-line immigration policies and authoritarian maneuvers. In their Oval Office meeting, Trump remarked, “I know he’s a tough man but he’s a respected man. Probably, like me, a little bit controversial, but that’s okay.” In a further break with Western allies, Trump has repeatedly called for Russia to be added back to the Group of Seven, after it was expelled in 2014 in response to invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. “He doesn’t think of a promotion of freedom, human rights and rule of law as a foreign policy objective,” McFaul said. “That, I think, has let the creepy crawlers of the world advance their interests all over the place, and Russia’s at the top of the list.” McFaul recalled a recent interview he had with a Moscow radio station. “They were like, ‘Man, what’s happened to you guys? It feels like you completely forgot about who you once were.
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